This is the second post in a two-part series recapping the panel Social Technologies: Why We Can’t Live With Them or Without Them, which was supported by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) at the 2025 AAAS Annual Conference. The first post, Rethinking Social Technologies: Platforms, Protocols, and the Push for Decentralization, explored how researchers and technologists are approaching the future of social media through decentralized design and protocol-driven innovation. This follow-up highlights the second half of the panel discussion, which examined critical issues related to artificial intelligence, online trust, and potential regulatory responses. The panel was moderated by Sarita Schoenebeck, Professor of Information at the University of Michigan, and featured […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) supported a session at this year’s AAAS Annual Conference titled Social Technologies: Why We Can’t Live With Them Or Without Them. The panel was moderated by Sarita Schoenebeck, Professor of Information at the University of Michigan, and featured Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Associate Professor and co-leader of the Princeton HCI Lab at Princeton University, Motahhare Eslami, Assistant Professor of Software and Societal Systems at Carnegie Mellon University, and Bryan Newbold, Protocol Engineer at Bluesky. The panelists provided their perspectives on how social technologies are impacting society. Schoenebeck opened the panel by explaining that while there are many demonstrated benefits to social technologies (e.g., online conversations, relationships, and […]

Last week, CCC, in collaboration with CRA-Industry, submitted a Response to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), Department of Commerce’s Request for Comments: Ethical Guidelines for Research Using Pervasive Data. The response was written by Nazanin Andalibi (University of Michigan), David Danks (University of California, San Diego), Haley Griffin (Computing Research Association), Mary Lou Maher (Computing Research Association), Jessica McClearn (Google), Chinasa T. Okolo (The Brookings Institution), Manish Parashar (University of Utah), Jessica Pater (Parkview Health), Katie Siek (Indiana University), Tammy Toscos (Parkview Health), Helen V. Wright (Computing Research Association), and Pamela Wisniewski (Vanderbilt University).    The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) was seeking, “public input on the […]

For many of us, it is hard to remember a time when finding information wasn’t ubiquitous with an internet search. With the rising popularity and influence of AI, what is next for the future of information retrieval? CCC addressed this question and others during the Future of Information Retrieval Research in the Age of Generative AI Workshop this summer in Washington, DC. Today, the CCC is thrilled to announce the release of the Future of Information Retrieval Research in the Age of Generative AI Workshop Report. The report was authored by the Workshop Organizers: James Allan (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Eunsol Choi (University of Texas at Austin / New York […]

CCC’s mission is to catalyze computing research, and we are always on the lookout for ways to promote visioning about the future of computing across disciplinary boundaries. When I was at the 11th Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany, I asked many of the laureates, all of whom have been awarded prestigious prizes in computing based on their groundbreaking technical advancements, about how they collaborate with diverse groups of experts. In response to my question about the best way to collaborate across disciplines and promote visionary thinking, Dr. Vint Cerf, widely known as one of the “fathers of the internet”, first emphasized the importance of in-person collaborations: “It’s when people are […]

Today is day 4 of the 11th Heidelberg Laureate Forum, and throughout the week I have been asking the computing laureates to identify the grandest grand challenges in computing research, and extrapolating grand challenges based on relevant lectures and discussions. Here are some of the challenges that emerged: Increasing Data Efficiency of Computing Systems. Dr. Alexei Efros posited that computers need to require less data to perform well in order to solve a wider range of problems. While children are very good at learning from a few examples, computers are much less data efficient.  Improving Accuracy of Large Language Models. Dr. Vinton Cerf identified hallucination as a significant problem with […]