Reed's Ruminations: The Past, Present, and Future
Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience
Category: Innovation
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The Ghosts of Holiday Shopping: Past, Present and Future
In many parts of the western world, the frenzy of holiday shopping has reached its crescendo. In the U.S., it began with Black Friday, the day immediately after U.S. Thanksgiving. Not only is holiday shopping a major component of retail profits, financial analysts also use such consumer spending as a barometer of possible economic recovery.…
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Technology Strategy and Policy
It seems axiomatic that technology strategy must include – drumroll please – both technology and strategy. It is all about the right ideas at the right times. We live in a world of exponential technology change, and understanding when quantitative technical change begets qualitative strategic and policy change is the essence of innovation.
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Consilience: Innovation Enabler
In this era of hyper-specialization, it is important to remember the combined power of generality and specialization, lest we render true the old joke that education teaches one more and more about less and less until finally one knows everything about nothing and is eligible for a Ph.D. After all, Ph.D. is an abbreviation for…
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Cray and Fernbach Awards Redux
I am delighted that the 2009 Seymour Cray Award will be presented to Kenichi “Ken” Miura and that Roberto Car and Michele Parrinello are joint recipients of the 2009 Sidney Fernbach Award. I look forward to presenting the awards at SC09.
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It’s the Sum, Not the Parts
Computer architects create something of functional beauty, just as do their cousins who work in the more tangible media of rock and stone. Consider John Cocke and the IBM 801, Ken Batcher and the Goodyear MPP, Tadashi Watanabe and the NEC SX. Similarly, Seymour Cray’s designs balanced many aspects of power engineering, packaging and cooling,…
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Smart Grids: Getting Personal
How many electronic devices do you own? Here’s a simple experiment that will (quite literally) illuminate the truth. Some evening, after darkness has fallen, turn off all the lights in your house, walk from room to room and count the number of lighted power indicators, blinking LEDs and glowing screens. I suspect you will be…