Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.

“Dining With Robots in Silicon Valley”

August 14th, 2012 / in big science, research horizons, Research News / by Erwin Gianchandani

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 […]

“How Big Data Became So Big”;
New York Times Cites CCC White Papers

August 11th, 2012 / in big science, CCC, research horizons, Research News / by Erwin Gianchandani

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):

NSF Seeking RAPID Proposals on Tsunami Debris Field Threats

August 10th, 2012 / in research horizons, resources / by Erwin Gianchandani

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 […]

“If Xerox PARC Invented the PC, Google Invented the Internet”

August 9th, 2012 / in computer history, Research News / by Erwin Gianchandani

An interesting article on Wired.com today, featuring Google computer scientists Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat: Time and again, we hear the story of Xerox PARC, the Silicon Valley research lab that developed just about every major technology behind the PC revolution, from the graphical user interface and the laser printer to Ethernet networking and object-oriented programming. But because Google is so concerned with keeping its latest data center work hidden from competitors — and because engineers like Jeff Dean aren’t exactly self-promoters — the general public is largely unaware of Google’s impact on the very foundations of modern computing. Google is the Xerox PARC of the cloud computing age (more following the link…).  

The Science Behind Curiosity

August 9th, 2012 / in big science, research horizons, Research News / by Erwin Gianchandani

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:

Big Data and the 2012 Summer Olympics

August 7th, 2012 / in Research News / by Kenneth Hines

Over the past year, we have blogged extensively in this space about the promise of “big data” — noting the enormous volume and heterogeneity of data, as well as the velocity of its generation, across nearly all areas of science, engineering, and society. Now, California-based enterprise storage and data management company NetApp has produced an infographic describing big data at the 2012 Summer Olympics, noting the sheer volume of data expected to be generated by social networks, connected devices, and broadcast companies throughout the world. NetApp notes “the figures are staggering,” with over 60 gigabytes of information expected to flow across British Telecom’s networks every second — the equivalent of all of Wikipedia every five seconds. Check out the impressive […]