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


On the Microsoft blog, I posted a few thoughts on SC10, the rise of clouds and the power of simplicity in high-performance computing. There is also a video of my smiling face expounding on this topic.

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…