“On the Edge — The Future of Computing Research” was the title of a plenary session at the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) biennial Conference at Snowbird last month. And it’s a consistent theme of CRA’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC). Here’s the pitch: Our field has exhibited an ever-changing balance of “technology push” and “demand pull” over the years. Many currently sense a movement of the pendulum in the “demand pull” direction. I’d like to argue that this is fantastic — it’s great news for our field, great news for society, and great news for the future (read more following the link…).

University of Southern California computer scientist and neuroscientist Maja Matarić is the subject of an interview appearing in today’s Nature. On the eve of the release of a new film, Robot and Frank, winner of the annual Sundance Film Festival, Matarić talks about the film and its coverage of assistive robotics — including recent advances for people with disabilities, children with autism, and the elderly. From the Nature piece (following the link):

From The New York Times‘ Bits Blog yesterday: Millions of people watched a robot descend last week on Mars, about 154 million miles away, while it shared video, photos and status updates from its own Twitter account.   I had my own encounter with a robot last week. I had dinner with one … in Silicon Valley.   The dinner was at Willow Garage, a robotics company in Menlo Park, and was intended to introduce some reporters to the robots the company is building.   The main attraction was the PR2, which can pick things up, fold laundry, open doors and bring cups, plates and other small objects to people. The PR2 […]

In an article published on The New York Times’ website this afternoon, the newspaper’s technology writer Steve Lohr describes the history and evolution of “Big Data” — noting it’s “been a crossover year for Big Data — as a concept, as a term and yes, as a marketing tool. Big Data has sprung from the confines of technology circles into the mainstream.” In the writeup, Lohr notes the role of white papers produced by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC):

Several directorates within the National Science Foundation (NSF) — including Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) — issued a Dear Colleague Letter this afternoon calling for proposals relating to the potential threat of debris fields from the March 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami upon the West coast of North America: In the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan, fields of debris are now washing up on the western shores of the United States. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Japanese authorities say that approximately five million tons of wreckage flowed into the Pacific Ocean following the earthquake and tsunami. While a […]

There’s been a lot written about NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory this week, in light of its successful landing on the surface of Mars early Monday morning — including the observation that today’s smartphones are about as smart as Curiosity’s computers. Turns out there was an extraordinary amount of computer science and engineering that went into the rover’s development and testing. According to Computerworld: