Reed's Ruminations: The Past, Present, and Future
Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience
Tag: discovery
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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.
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Innovation Via Client Plus Cloud: Microsoft-NSF Partnership
Today, February 4, Microsoft and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a collaborative project where Microsoft will offer individual researchers and research groups (selected through NSF’s merit review process) free access to advanced client-plus-cloud computing. Our focus is on empowering researchers via intuitive and familiar client tools whose capabilities extend seamlessly in power and…
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The (Scientific) Good News
I am no behavioral psychologist, but I suspect that all children are born with the insatiable curiosity that sustains scientific curiosity. All too often, though, I fear that our educational system punishes curiosity and rewards conformity. Only a small fraction remains sufficiently iconoclastic and self-confident to resist, asking those seemingly annoying questions that defy authority…
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Eudora, You Got the Love?
One summer night when I was about twelve years old, I sat watching the Dick Cavett Show on our old black and white television, the small town boy’s version of Plato’s Cave. Dick was a thoughtful and insightful interviewer, and he hosted a diverse and eclectic set of guests, from Salvador Dali to Groucho Marx.…
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Computing is Beauty; Computing is Truth
Truth and beauty, beauty and truth: as I recall, John Keats also had a few words to say on this topic. The universe in a grain of sand is here, in ways neither Blake nor Keats could have imagined.
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eScience: 21st Century Science
Today, computing is the third pillar of scientific discovery, complementing and mutually enabling theory and experiment.