Reed's Ruminations: The Past, Present, and Future
Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience
Category: Random Musings
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Research Summers
Research challenges us to pose new questions, choose research avenues carefully, and be frugal and wise stewards of the financial trust invested in us. It means nurturing each new generation of students in the ways and methods of discovery, shaping national and international research agendas, and serving society by transferring promising ideas. Finally, it means…
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Commencement: The Inside Story
Let’s clear up a few things about the history and functions of those strange hats and robes, the archaic academic regalia one wears at commencement ceremonies. A mortarboard, despite the name, should not be confused with bricklaying or a brick hod. It’s a hat, albeit a funny looking one.
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Checkers, Chess and Go
It is the unexpected, the new game, that disrupts and changes. It is that point when you suddenly and terrifyingly realize that your opponent is playing a deep and subtle game of Go, while you have been contemplating your next checkers jump with the wild eyed naiveté of a nine year old neophyte. Careers are…
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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. Today,smartphones, social networks, consumer email, cloud services, community software and tools are blurring the…
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Volcanoes, Travel and Social Networks
Many of us have had family, friends, colleagues or acquaintances stranded far from home by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano. At one point, I joked with one friend that he should consider a land route to central Europe, catch the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok, kayak across the Bering Strait to Alaska, then drive down…
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March Madness, The Zone and The Magic
Over the past thirty years, I have asked scientists of varying distinction and age and across cultures and disciplines to explain the rationale for their intellectual passions. After some prodding and embarrassment, most tell a variant of the same story. It’s the shared tale of The Magic. I suspect you know it too.