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 Communications Editor-in-Chief Moshe Y. Vardi

 

Moshe Y. Vardi has been serving as Editor-in-Chief of Communications of the ACM since 2008. Dr. Vardi is the Karen Ostrum George Professor of Computational Engineering and  Director of the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology at Rice University, Houston, Texas.

 

 
 
 
 
Fair Access
May 2012
There has been sound and fury in the Open Access movement over the last few months. I would like to revisit the arguments for open access, which I discussed first in July 2009, in "Open, Closed, or Clopen Access?" The basic question I would like to address again is what ACM's stance should be with respect to open-access publishing models. View full article
 
What is an Algorithm?
March 2012
The 14th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, held last July in France, included a special symposium on the subject of "What is an algorithm?" This may seem to be a strange question to ask just before the Turing Centenary Year, which is now being celebrated by numerous events around the world. Didn't Turing answer this question decisively? View full article
 
Artificial Intelligence: Past and Future
January 2012
The most dramatic chess match of the 20th century was the May 1997 rematch between the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue and world champion Garry Kasparov, which Deep Blue won. While this victory of machine over man was considered by many a triumph for artificial intelligence, John McCarthy, who not only was one of the founding pioneers of AI but also coined the very name of the field, was rather dismissive of this accomplishment. View full article
 
Computing for Humans
December 2011
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz conceived of computing as "a new instrument that will enhance the capabilities of the mind to a far greater extent than optical instruments strengthen the eyes." This definition captures, I believe, the essence of our field. On one hand, our discipline is a technical one, focusing on hardware, software, and their theoretical foundations. On the other hand, the artifacts we build are meant to enhance the human mind. This duality of our field is witnessed by two pioneers we lost last October: Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie. View full article
 
Is Moore's Party Over?
November 2011
For almost 50 years we have been riding Moore's Law's exponential curve. Oh, what a ride it has been! No other technology has ever improved at a geometric rate for decades. It has been nothing short of a wild party. But exponential trends always slow down eventually, and the end of "Moore's Party" may be near. View full article
 
Are You Talking to Me?
September 2011
I recently attended a rather theoretical computer-science conference, and sat, as is my habit, in the front row. The speaker was trying to convey the fine details of a rather intricate mathematical construction. I was hopelessly lost. View full article
 
Solving the Unsolvable
July 2011
On June 16, 1902, philosopher Bertrand Russell sent a letter to Gottlob Frege, a German logician, in which he argued that Frege's logical system was inconsistent. The letter launched a "Foundational Crisis" in mathematics, triggering an almost anguished search for proper foundations for mathematics. View full article
 
Technology Has Social Consequences
May 2011
A conference program committee (PC) member received a paper for review. He distributed the manuscript to his research group to "solicit their opinions of the paper." The research group then submitted their own paper to another conference, their submission occurring three months before the first paper was to be presented at a conference. Amazingly, the PC member was not aware that a conference paper submission constitutes privileged communication. For reviewers to use such privileged material for their own work immediately creates a blatant conflict of interest. View full article
 
Fumbling the Future
March 2011
Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer tells the gripping story of how Xerox invented the personal-computing technology in the 1970s, and then "miscalculated and mishandled" the opportunity to fully exploit it. To "fumble the future" has since become a standard phrase in discussions of advanced technology and its commercialization. This editorial is a story of how I fumbled the future. View full article
 
Where Have All the Workshops Gone?
January 2011
My initiation into the computing-research community was a workshop on "Logic and Databases" in 1979. I was the only graduate student attending; my graduate advisor was invited, and he got permission from the organizers to bring me along. In spite of the informality of the event I was quite in awe of the senior researchers who attended. View full article
 
On P, NP, and Computational Complexity
November 2010
The second week of August was an exciting week. On Friday, August 6, Vinay Deolalikar announced a claimed proof that P # NP. Slashdotted blogs broke the news on August 7 and 8, and suddenly the whole world was paying attention. Richard Lipton's August 15 blog entry at blog@CACM was viewed by about 10,000 readers within a week. Hundreds of computer scientists and mathematicians, in a massive Web-enabled collaborative effort, dissected the proof in an intense attempt to verify its validity. View full article
 
Science Has Only Two Legs
September 2010
Science has been growing new legs of late. The traditional "legs" (or "pillars") of the scientific method were theory and experimentation. Then in 2005, the U.S. Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee issued a report stating that "computational science now constitutes the 'third pillar' of scientific inquiry." This leg has been recently augmented by yet a "fourth paradigm" (or "leg"). I find myself uncomfortable with science sprouting a new leg every few years. View full article
 
Hypercriticality
July 2010
In the two years since we launched the revitalized Communications of the ACM, I have received hundreds of email messages from readers. The feedback has been mostly, but not universally, positive. Nothing in life is perfect. Communications is an ongoing project; continuous improvement is the name of the game. At the same time, I have also received a fair number of notes with nothing short of withering criticism. View full article
 
Revisiting the Publication Culture in Computing Research
March 2010
In my May 2009 Editor's Letter, "Conferences vs. Journals in Computing Research,” I addressed the publication culture of our field: "As far as I know, we are the only scientific community that considers conference publication as the primary means of publishing our research results." In response, Lance Fortnow wrote a Viewpoint column entitled "Time for Computer Science to Grow Up," in which he concluded: "Computer science has grown to become a mature field where no major university can survive without a strong CS department. It is time for computer science to grow." Both pieces attracted a lot of attention in the blogosphere. View full article
 
More Debate, Please!
January 2010
In the May 1979 issue of Communications, a powerfully written article by Richard A. De Millo, Richard J. Lipton, and Alan J. Perlis entitled "Social Processes and Proofs of Theorems and Programs," argued that formal verification of programs is "difficult to justify and manage." That article did not cite a 1977 paper by Amir Pnueli entitled "The Temporal Logic of Programs." His paper had attracted little attention by 1979, but by 1997 it would be described as a "landmark paper" in the citation that accompanied Pnueli's 1996 ACM A.M. Turing Award. View full article
 
Open, Closed, or Clopen Access?
July 2009
A frequent question I hear about Communications, and about ACM publishing in general, involves its access model. I am asked: "Why don't you adopt the open-access model?" Good question! Why don't we? View full article
 
Conferences vs. Journals in Computing Research
May 2009
An old joke tells of a driver, returning home from a party where he had one drink too many, who hears a warning over the radio about a car careening down the wrong side of the highway. "A car?" he wondered aloud, "There are lots of cars on the wrong side of the road!" View full article
 
Yes, It Can Be Done
March 2009
The 2008 presidential campaign slogan "Yes, We Can" is the English translation of the United Farm Workers' 1972 slogan "Sí, se puede," or "Yes, it can be done." View full article
 
How Are We Doing?
January 2009
A rabbinical story tells about an angry reader who stormed into a newspaper office waving the day's paper, asking to see the editor of the obituary column. He showed him his name in the obituary listing. "You see," he said, "I am very much alive. I demand a retraction!" View full article
 
Let Us – Together – Make CACM Exciting
October 2008
It's been four months since we launched the "new CACM." By now, I hope it is quite clear to our readers that the revamped flagship publication of ACM has undergone a rather dramatic transformation. View full article
 
"Where Do You Come From? And Where are You Going?"
July 2008
Booz Allen Hamilton recently issued a report identifying the world's 10 most enduring institutions of the 20th and 21st centuries. More interesting than their findings is their list of chosen determinants: innovative capabilities; governance and leadership; information flow; culture and values; adaptive response; risk structure; and legitimacy. View full article
 
CACM: Past, Present, and Future
January 2008
The French adage "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," or, the more things change, the more they stay the same, still rings true today. An April 24, 1964 report to the ACM Council stated, "It was felt that Communications was becoming too much of a journal and that a re-evaluation is in order." I suspect this ongoing need to rethink CACM will stay with us for the foreseeable future. View full article

 

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