Since several years ago, with the beginning of nanoscience, the idea having of micro factories, like household microwave ovens, is floating in the air.
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Consumerization of IT and Research
When a corporate, government, or university IT department of the 1970s debated an upgrade to its IBM S/370 mainframes, it is doubtful that the IT director was in any way influenced by the computing experiences or opinions of their teenage children.
Turns out That Brain Training Games Don’t Work
A brief article pointing to a new large scale study published in Nature about the effect of brain training games.
Robots After Roomba: The Ethics of Electronic Companions
As robots become woven into the fabric of daily life, what ethical issues will the world face?
Social Media and the Twitter Backchannel at CHI2010
A marked difference at CHI 2010 compared to last year is the amount of research around social media and the use of social media during the conference. These practices are enabling the conference to be less about one-to-many lectures on the latest research and more about peer-to-peer interactions.
CHI 2010: User Interfaces Learn a Thing or Two
The 2010 conference in Human Factors in Computing Systems has seen a noticeable uptick in projects on and engagement with machine learning.
CHI 2010 Opening Plenary: Thinking About Messy Futures
"Messy Futures: Culture, Technology and Research" was the title of Genevieve Bell’s opening plenary speech at CHI 2010, and it gave attendees a plethora of facts and ideas to consider—or reconsider.
Encouraging Girls to Study Geeky Subjects (part 2): Programmable Bracelets
Some thoughts about novel ways to attract girls to study computing: e-textiles and computational crafts.
Internet Information Freedom Revisited.
Many countries have started to control access to information on Internet for their citizens, most famous case being China, but Latin America does not escape this situation.
Connecting Computing Education Research to Practice
The SIGCSE 2010 keynotes by Sally Fincher and Carl Weiman suggest how we connect research to changing practice. It's complicated! It's enculturation.
Cleaving Computer Science Into New Degrees
Computer science is becoming too broad to fit under the tyranny of a single bachelors degree. Cleaving the BS in CS into new degrees is a natural growth path.
Encouraging Girls to Study Geeky Subjects (Part 1): Emotionally Intelligent Tutoring Systems
The first in a couple of articles in which I look at some ways of encouraging girls to engage with technical subjects; this focuses on an emotionally sensitive tutoring system to help girls with maths.
Errors in Database Systems, Eventual Consistency, and the CAP Theorem
Recently, there has been considerable renewed interest in the CAP theorem for database management system (DBMS) applications that span multiple processing sites. In brief, this theorem states that there are three interesting properties that could be desired by DBMS applications.
What are the implications of electronic voting? Which countries are using this system? What are the advantages of using such systems? And what are the problems with normal voting systems?
Time to Rethink Computer Science Education: The (Social) Web Changes Everything!
Let's rethink computer science education in face of Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and beyond. The Internet have changed everything we know about how computing is done. It's time to revamp the entire curriculum to make it more relevant to the new world.
SQL Databases v. NoSQL Databases
Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about NoSQL databases. In fact, there were at least two conferences on the topic in 2009, one on each coast.
How Much Software Testing Is Enough?
Investing in a large amount of software testing can be difficult to justify, particularly for a startup company. How much software testing is enough?
Computer science education gets a boost from an historic document released by governors and education leaders in the United States and you can show your support for this effort.
A Personal View of the Future of Personal Computing
The future of computers will be created by a conjunction of several key aspects of technology.
SIGCSE 2010: Keywords, Final Thoughts
The keywords for SIGCSE 2010 include computational thinking, parallel programming, compilers, introductory CS courses, and Initial Learning Environments like Alice, Greenfoot, and Scratch.
SIGCSE 2010: Carl E. Wieman Keynote
Physicist Carl E. Wieman’s keynote speech at SIGCSE 2010, "Science Education for the 21st Century: Using the Insights of Science to Teach/Learn Science," focused on a scientific approach to the teaching and learning of all sciences.
SIGCSE 2010: Sally Fincher v. Barbie
Sally Fincher’s keynote focused on the importance of representation, such as how computer scientists represent their work, how they represent their work to each other, and how they represent themselves to the world.
Shape the Future of Computing
ACM encourages its members to take a direct hand in shaping the future of the association. There are more ways than ever to get involved.
Get InvolvedCommunications of the ACM (CACM) is now a fully Open Access publication.
By opening CACM to the world, we hope to increase engagement among the broader computer science community and encourage non-members to discover the rich resources ACM has to offer.
Learn More