Timothy B. Lee of The Washington Post reports on the death of Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the mouse, and why it took 30 years for the public to adopt the technology. “Engelbart created the first mouse prototype in 1963. He showed off the capabilities of his invention, and of software developed to make use of it, in a famous 1968 demonstration. As amazing as his demo was, it would take almost three decades for the mouse to reach a mass audience. Apple released the first successful mouse-based computer in 1984, but text-based DOS continued to dominate the industry until Microsoft developed tolerable versions of Windows in the early 1990s. The release of […]

On July 1, new talents were added to the ranks of both the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) and the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Research Council.  The CCC welcomes five new members to its Council and the CSTB added seven new board members. Joining the CCC Council are: Daniela Rus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mark Hill, University of Wisconsin – Madison Ross Whitaker, University of Utah Tal Rabin, IBM Limor Fix, Intel The new additions to the CSTB are: Robert F. Brammer, Brammer Technology, LLC Luiz André Barroso, Google, Inc. Edward Frank, Apple, Inc. Laura Haas (NAE), IBM Corporation Mark Horowitz (NAE), Stanford University Michael Kearns, University of Pennsylvania […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog from Christos Papadimitriou, C. Lester Hogan Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley.   Christos co-organized the Simons Institute Visions on the Theory of Computing Symposia, which was sponsored by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) this past May.  Christos provides a retrospective look at each presentation from the Symposium below.  You can also view all of the presentations here.   “What Should a Computational Theory of Cortex Explain?” Leslie Valiant, Harvard University. Valiant started by remembering two neuroscience pioneers: Ramon y Cajal, who admired data and derided theory (except in physics); and David Marr […]

We invite you to take a few minutes to complete a brief survey by the Computing Research Association (CRA). Your feedback is important to us and helps improve our communications. The survey deadline is Monday, July 1. If you have already completed the CRA survey, you do not need to fill it out again. This survey should take 10-15 minutes of your time. Here is the survey link: http://www.crasurveys.org/se.ashx?s=0B87D13525E548B1 If you have any questions, contact us at crnonline@cra.org   Thank you, CCC Staff

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsored the Simons Institute Symposium on Visions of the Theory of Computing.  The three-day symposium brought together distinguished speakers and participants from the Bay Area and all over the world to celebrate both the excitement of fundamental research on the Theory of Computing, and the accomplishments and promise of computational research in effecting progress in other sciences — the two pillars of the Institute’s research agenda. More than 300 people were in attendance to hear these world-renown speakers.  You can view videos of the presentations here.

The Computing Research Association (CRA), in consultation with the National Science Foundation (NSF), has appointed five new members to the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council: Daniela Rus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mark Hill, University of Wisconsin – Madison Ross Whitaker, University of Utah Tal Rabin, IBM Limor Fix, Intel Beginning July 1, the new members will each serve three-year terms, and a new executive committee will be formed. Susan Graham, University of California at Berkeley, will become Chair; Gregory Hager, Johns Hopkins University, will become Vice Chair; and Edward Lazowska, University of Washington will become Past Chair. In January 2014, Susan Davidson, University of Pennsylvania, will join the executive committee. […]