Reed's Ruminations: The Past, Present, and Future
Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience
Category: Global Competitivensss
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Disruptive Innovation: Changing Lives
In a world of exponential technological change, with its concomitant social and economic disruptions, it is all too easy for the intelligentsia and technorati to pontificate glibly on macroeconomic trends, demographic shifts and global talent flows while speaking sotto voce, if at all, about the human cost of technological future shock. I confess that I…
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Small Planet, Large Planet
I still dream of the suborbital transport that is described so cavilierly in science fiction novels. A semi-ballistic suborbital flight could cross the Atlantic in less than an hour.
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America COMPETES Passage
My Microsoft colleague, Elizabeth Grossman, has posted a thoughtful essay on today’s passage of America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science (COMPETES) Reauthorization Act of 2010 by the U.S. Congress.
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Social Leadership: Empty Seats at the Table
In the Information Age, computing researchers are well placed to be bilingual, translating computing technology trends and capabilities into the language understood by policy makers and other influentials, and, in turn, relating policy desires to other researchers. However, I am repeatedly struck by the relatively small number of computing researchers who are engaged in the…
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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. This “no man’s land” lacks both the ready availability of application software suitable for solving problems in a host of domains – advanced manufacturing, materials analysis, and biomedical assessment – and…
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Technology Transfer: A Contact Sport
The success or failure of technology transfer depends on many factors, from the personalities and skills of the people involved, through the timing and appropriateness of the offering, to the risks and costs associated with the new idea. No single mechanism is guaranteed to succeed, though there are many mechanisms that are likely to fail.