Reed's Ruminations: The Past, Present, and Future

Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience

Category: Web/Tech

  • The World Is Small
    The World Is Small

    There was a time, not that many years ago, when international travel meant one was largely inaccessible to colleagues at home, wherever home might be. Today, I struggle to stay afloat in a deluge of email, regardless of my international location.

  • Language Shapes Behavior: Our Poor Cousin, Data
    Language Shapes Behavior: Our Poor Cousin, Data

    One of the major lessons from web search and cloud data centers is the power of truly massive scale, near real-time data analysis. When anyone with a cheap cell phone and a web browser can extract data and insights from a non-trivial fraction of the human knowledge base, behavior and culture are transformed. I would…

  • Twitter Is Three
    Twitter Is Three

    Yesterday (March 21, 2009), Twitter, the microblogging service, turned three years old. I’ve been twittering for two years now, watching the evolution of social networking and the nature of the participants.

  • Electronic CACM Is Now Live
    Electronic CACM Is Now Live

    In an earlier post, I mentioned that the Communications of the ACM (CACM) was about to “go live,” together with a series of blogs, including one written by yours truly. CACM is now live, and the blog (Blog@CACM) is live as well. My first two blog entries are entitled Pipelining, Computing Innovation and Economic Growth…

  • Seeding The Clouds
    Seeding The Clouds

    I came to Microsoft to lead a new research initiative in cloud computing, one that complements our production data center infrastructure and our nascent Azure cloud software platform. You can read the press release and the web site for the official story. What follows is my personal perspective.

  • Beyond The Azure Blue
    Beyond The Azure Blue

    From the first day I arrived at Microsoft, my academic colleagues have been asking me about Microsoft’s strategy for cloud computing and when (or if) there would be public announcements. At our Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft announced Azure, our cloud computing platform, with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale and manage Internet or…