Communications of the ACM
Computing as a Force For Social Good
Credit: Invisible Children
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently organized the Symposium on Computing Research: Addressing National Priorities and Societal Needs, a two-day event focusing on whether research-based innovations in computing could become a catalyst for addressing societal problems. Participants in the Symposium presented numerous ideas that could shape the future.
For example, they said data will play a key role in all aspects of future society, and technology for the elderly could allow for an immeasurable improvement in quality of life. Another concept espouses that better models that increase food production efficiency by only 10 percent could save tens of millions of lives while sparing the environment from long-term damage.
Another idea concentrates on how the modern city is increasingly challenged by traffic congestion, aging infrastructure, and socioeconomic disparity. Developing flexible instrumentation at a city-wide scale could deliver a platform to acquire data resources that could be used to transform the management of all aspects of urban life.
"Achieving these goals requires finding ways to fund work that spans the gap between basic research and societal needs," writes Johns Hopkins University professor Greg Hager. Representatives from government, industry, and foundations discussed ways to expand basic computing research in shaping society during the final symposium plenary and panel session.
From CCC Blog
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Abstracts Copyright © 2016 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
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