Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From Blog@Ubiquity
Why Can’t Programmers Be More Like Ants? Or a Lesson in Stigmergy
If we want to advance the art and science of software development, we should direct our attention to the insect world of stigmergy. The post Why Can’t Programmers...
From Blog@Ubiquity
Why We Don’t Know Know-How
In pursuit of scientific understanding, too often we forget our level of know-how is far more important than our know-what. The post Why We Don’t Know Know-HowBLOG...
From Blog@Ubiquity
The Facebook Method of Dealing With Complexity
Computer systems used to be weak, so we had to make their world simple and standardized. They now can handle almost endless complexity—but we still need to understand...
From Blog@Ubiquity
Government Surveillance Will Fragment the Internet
The NSA's track record on government surveillance, which many argue violates fundamental constitutional rights, may lead to a fragmented Internet. The post Government...
From Blog@Ubiquity
Will the Internet Crash Democracy?
Many people in the Western world believe Internet freedom equals freedom of social and political life. The more access we get, the more freedom and democracy we...
From Blog@Ubiquity
Are We Wrong About Innovation?
The notion that creating ideas and imagining new worlds fashioned around these ideas are the keys to innovation is all wrong. Ideation is not innovation The post...
From Blog@Ubiquity
The Self-Similarity of Tech
The tech world is caught in a repeating, self-similar fractal, where the gadgets may be new, but the business models are as old as the Industrial Revolution itself...
From Computational Complexity
Thanks for the Fuzzy Memories
In the 1990's Manindra Agrawal and V. Arvind published a paper claiming that if SAT is reducible to a (non-uniform) weighted threshold function then P = NP. Their...
From Computational Complexity
The Molly Solution
This week Bill and I are both at the Dagstuhl Workshop on Algebraic Methods in Computation Complexity. I'll try to cover some of the talks and discussions on the...
From Computational Complexity
Complexity Vidcast 2
Bill and I battle it out over what should be taught in a complexity course in our new vidcast.
From Computational Complexity
Publicity for P versus NP
On the New York Times website, John Markoff writes an article Prizes Aside, the P-NP Puzzler has Consequences motivated by my CACM article on The Status of the....
From Computational Complexity
You are coordially invited... Why?
When you get an invitation via email should you accept? How well targeted is it? Some real examples that I got. EXAMPLE ONE: I would like to invite you toclick...
From Computational Complexity
Two Recent Complexity Books omit Mahaney's theorem- ovesight or wisdom?
In a prior post (a while back) I pondered if Mahaney's theorem (SAT \le_m S, S Spare, implies P=NP) should be taught in a basic grad course in complexity. I thought...
From Computational Complexity
On Being Narrow
In a tweet a few days ago, David Bacon wonders why everyone always assumes all he can do is quantum computing? Oh, because that's all he's done. Time to do something...
From Computational Complexity
The Journal Manifesto 2.0
Reminder: FOCS early registration deadline today. Go here Below is a revised version of the Journal Manifesto. I restate the key sentence from my last post and...
From Computational Complexity
The Journal Manifesto
Some people say that for-profit journals do not currently serve our community well. Some even think they cannot do so. Others think they are doing a fine job as...
From Computational Complexity
The IT Rules
My family has discovered a British Series, the IT Crowd, about two techies in a corporate IT department. An American version never got past the pilot phase. ...
From Computational Complexity
Debunking Proofs
One of the comments of the last post asked my (or someones) opinion on the proofs floating around that P=NP or P\ne NP. As a grad student I used to readWhat...
From Computational Complexity
Inspiring a Love of Math
A reader writes I come to you by way of your computational complexity blog. I get that there is some really good stuff there, but frankly don’t understand about...
From Computational Complexity