The NSF has recently issued a new program solicitation- Networking Technology and Systems (NeTS: JUNO), Japan-US Network Opportunity: R&D for “Beyond Trillions of Objects.” According to the solicitation, the joint research and development program “addresses a critical subset of the issues that arise when environments with trillions of device and information objects are network-connected, as is expected to be the case by the year 2020. This trend will require novel approaches for network design and modeling, new technologies for network management and control in support of object mobility, and flexible networks with the speed, capacity and environmental characteristics needed to accommodate communications among objects in the emerging world. This program […]

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 […]