Jeff Naughton, a top database researcher from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, has made available a superb keynote that he gave at the 26th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering.  It will be worth your time to read and think about Jeff’s slides – “We guarantee it!”

A bit of shameless self-promotion: I’ve been asked many questions about the Computing Community Consortium in the past year — and we’ve recently put together a two-page flyer that attempts to address the most common ones. Please click on the image to the right to open the PDF version — for what we hope is a quick read detailing the CCC’s history, objectives, and principal activities. And while we’re on the subject, a few shameless plugs: Below are key activities the CCC is leading right now. I encourage you to e-mail me if you’re interested in getting involved with, or participating in, any of these. Research Frontiers sessions at major […]

CCC Council chair Ed Lazowska is one of eight columnists featured in a New York Times “Room for Debate” essay series on education.  Lazowska says: “There are a few facts about education, employability and economic growth that we should keep in mind. “A balanced education serves you best … “The further out you are from college graduation, the less your success is attributable to the field in which you majored, and the more your success is attributable to a set of abilities imparted by any top-tier bachelor’s-level education … “But let us not fool ourselves about what fields offer job opportunities, create jobs for others and drive the economy … […]

The New York Times picks up on a point made in the recent report of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology assessing the Federal Networking and Information Technology R&D program:  “performance gains in doing computing tasks that result from improvements in software algorithms often far outpace the gains attributable to faster processors.” “The rate of change in hardware captured by Moore’s Law, experts agree, is an extraordinary achievement. ‘But the ingenuity that computer scientists have put into algorithms has yielded performance improvements that make even the exponential gains of Moore’s Law look trivial,’ said Edward Lazowska, a professor at the University of Washington. “The rapid pace of […]

Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey – the only physicist in Congress, one of the staunchest Congressional supporters of science, recipient of this year’s Philip Hauge Abelson Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a five-time Jeopardy! champion – has defeated IBM’s Watson AI system at Jeopardy! As much as we value the extraordinary accomplishments of Watson and of the AI field, score one for the people!  We need more of them like Rush Holt in Congress! Read about the match here.

Some interesting news items in the past week: “The Art of Video Games” The Smithsonian Institution’s American Art Museum will debut on March 16 an exhibition titled The Art of Video Games — exploring “the 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects, the creative use of new technologies, and the most influential artists and designers.”  But before then, the Smithsonian needs the public’s help to determine which 80 video games should be represented.  Click here to see the options and vote for your favorites.  And as the Smithsonian notes, “Remember, this is an art exhibition, so be sure to vote for games that you […]