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


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…

Today, we face economic challenges that are unprecedented in the memory of most of the living. The proposed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 (aka the economic stimulus package) emphasizes investment in infrastructure construction, reminiscent of the CCC and WPA, health care, education, efficient energy and one of the key foundations of our…

The CCC Blog (http://www.cccblog.org) is now up and running. It is intended to be a forum for discussing “longer range, audacious research challenges” in the computing field. The plan, initially, is to have about two articles a month, with each article offering opinions on the future. Several of us will be contributing material.

Like many of you, I give lots of public (and not so public) presentations, on a variety of topics. A couple of those were recently captured and placed on the web.