Reed's Ruminations: The Past, Present, and Future
Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience
Category: Current Affairs
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The Love of Language
I am a lover of well crafted, erudite prose that captures and conveys nuance and subtlety. Such prose brings a smile to the lips, both the writer and the reader’s reward for dutiful and diligent background research, thoughtful paragraphs that flow as mellifluously as a mountain stream, and phrases that delight with their craftsmanship.
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Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
Had Thoreau had a smartphone, he would not have been texting his best bud, Ralph (Waldo Emerson), about the joys of solitude, nor would he have been tweeting or posting photos of his house construction. I am rather more confident he would have espoused the healing virtues of periodic digital seclusion and contemplation.
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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.” Not only does the Internet now know you…
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Lessons from the Gulf of Mexico
The computational demands of an integrated, fully multidisciplinary, parametric simulation study of the oil spill and all of its effects would make today’s complex models seem like child’s play on an abacus by comparison.
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In Vivo, In Vitro, In Silico
The wide dynamic range of temporal and spatial scales of systems biology models, from picosecond first principles molecular dynamics to the geological timescales of environmental shifts, is a full employment act for computational scientists. In many ways, we are attempting to come full circle, from in vivo observations to in vitro experiments to holistic, in…
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Spectrum Future Shock
Several studies have shown that large parts of the available spectrum are unused most of the time at most locations, within a reasonable detection threshold.With the rise inexpensive, high-performance microprocessors and radio frequency (RF) system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs, more nimble, cognitive radio designs are now possible that can operate across wide portions of the spectrum.