Reed's Ruminations: The Past, Present, and Future
Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience
Category: News and Events
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Reflections on the B20 Meeting
Last week, I have the privilege to participate in the B20 meetings in Los Cabos, a prelude to the G20 economic summit. My takeaway is that the global economic situation is not going to get better any time soon. The Chinese economy is clearly slowing, the Eurozone crisis seems endless, and the U.S. situation is…
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White Spaces: Celebrating the Cambridge Trial
Today, in Cambridge, UK, we celebrated the ten months of experiences and successes from the Cambridge white spaces trial, which was organized by a consortium of companies, including Microsoft. Sometimes called “Super Wi-Fi,” the white spaces can provide wireless coverage for rural areas that are often digitally disenfranchised, support machine-to-machine communication that can enable smart…
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Make No Little Plans: NITRD Plus Twenty
What national research strategy should the U.S. pursue in light of the coordination now present in other parts of the world? It is a question grounded in the ever-rising importance of information technology and innovation to global economic competitiveness.
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Planting Seeds in the Field of Knowledge
In these challenging economic times, U.S. universities are under great stress – economically, politically and socially. It is tempting for those of us in computing to ignore these issues. Like agriculture and engineering before us, I believe computing has a social responsibility to be an active and enthusiastic partner in helping chart the nature of…
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Digital Inclusion
An economic and cultural chasm, a digital divide, separates the digitally connected from those who lack the ways or the means to join the digital community. In a knowledge economy, the separated are cut off from a plethora of services, educational materials, and business prospects.
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One Life to Live
The world lost two innovators in computing. About the first, Steve Jobs, much has been written, but far less about another pioneer of computing, Dennis Ritchie. Richie’s passing was not noted with great fanfare, but he made a difference. All of us in computing honor that.