Daniel Reed – Page 4 – Communications of the ACM

BLOG@CACM Jun 1 2011

Simple Design; Research vs. Teaching; and Quest to Learn

Daniel Reed writes about design and disruptive technologies. Mark Guzdial discusses the tension between teaching and research at U.S. universities. Judy Robertson argues in favor of educational video games in the classroom.

Computing Applications

BLOG@CACM May 11 2011

Information Privacy: Changing Norms and Expectations

That picture of you at a family reunion, squinting into the sun, can rarely be delimited by a physical location once it is placed on the web. Instead, information flows freely and often globally. We need to rethink our notions of information privacy, moving beyond concepts rooted primarily in person and place, and considering logical privacy.

Computing Applications

BLOG@CACM Mar 20 2011

Explaining Science and Engineering

As I have followed the international news regarding the Japanese disaster, I have been struck by the challenges each news organization has faced in explaining technical concepts. We live in a technological society, where understanding of scientific processes and the engineering design balances are essential to informed debate and decision making.

Computing Applications

BLOG@CACM Feb 18 2011

Intellectual Amplification via Computing

As the recent performance of IBM's Watson system on the game show Jeopardy! illustrated, the combination of large-scale data, rich algorithm suites and powerful computing are opening new vistas. Vannevar Bush's 1940s vision of a Memex, a device capable of storing, indexing and retrieving data from a broad knowledge base, is now within our reach.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

BLOG@CACM Jan 5 2011

Works in Progress: MIA

It is time we extracted a sample of cultural DNA from computing's history and engineered a new generation of contemplative, informal workshops. After gestation, ideas conceived at those workshops might even find their way into technical reports. Imagine that.

Computing Applications

BLOG@CACM Dec 1 2010

2010 Seymour Cray and Sidney Fernbach Awards

This year, I again had the honor and privilege to chair the selection committee for the IEEE Seymour Cray and Sidney Fernbach awards, both of which were presented at SC10 in New Orleans. These eponymously named awards recognize truly outstanding contributions to high-performance computing, in honor of two early leaders of our field.

Architecture and Hardware

BLOG@CACM Oct 24 2010

HPC and the Excluded Middle

Betwixt and between ubiquitous consumer software and the ethereal realm of ultra-high-performance computing, lies the excluded middle, the world of day-to-day computational science problems.

Computing Applications

BLOG@CACM Oct 4 2010

Technology Transfer: A Contact Sport

The success or failure of technology transfer depends on many factors. No single mechanism is guaranteed to succeed, though there are many mechanisms that are likely to fail.

Computing Applications

BLOG@CACM Sep 6 2010

Simple HPC Wins

You want to be the first person to design a successful, transistorized computer system, not the last person to design vacuum tube computer. Any designer's challenge is to pick the right technologies at the right time, recognizing when inflection points — maturing, disruptive technologies — are near.

Systems and Networking

BLOG@CACM Aug 8 2010

Remembering Internet Dogs

An iconic cartoon by Peter Steiner, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1993, captured the nature of the nascent Internet. It shows a dog seated at a computer, remarking to a second dog on the floor that, “On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog.”

Computing Applications

Shape the Future of Computing