Marguerite Reardon writes in CNET News.com what’s becoming a very familiar refrain: An outspoken group of information and communications technology innovators is worried that the United States is falling behind the rest of the world in technological innovation because fewer dollars are being allocated to long-term research. The piece does a good job of laying […]
Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby has an interesting op-ed today inspired by news of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates’ tour of college campuses, urging students to consider majoring in computer science. The piece does a good job of making the case that Gates makes in his talks to students — computing is a field with a […]
A quick pointer to two interesting not-directly-related pieces running today. First is Aliya Sternstein’s article in Federal Computer Week that fleshes out the PITAC to PCAST switch we noted back on September 30th. She quotes CRA Chair Dan Reed and ITAA president Harris Miller: Former PITAC member Dan Reed, vice chancellor of IT and chief […]
Mort Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of US News and World Report uses his latest column to berate the Administration for cutting the federal investment in scientific research: The American century, as the 20th century was known, was built on scientific progress. American corporations were the first to develop major in-house research labs and the first to work […]
Federal Computer Week’s Aliya Sternstein has an interesting piece in this week’s issue on the role of computing technology in helping predict and mitigate the cost of Hurricane Katrina. Scientists are using a range of technologies to better predict the impact hurricanes can have on the economy and environment to minimize future damage and save […]
Last Thursday, NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate (CISE) officially unveiled their Global Environment for Networking Investigations (GENI) initiative, a program designed to “advance significantly the capabilities provided by networking and distributed systems.” As NSF points out in their fact sheet covering the program: The GENI Research Program will build on many years […]
The New York Times has a great piece today by reporter Steve Lohr on computer science majors — what they do (“It’s so not programming,” one says), what the job market for their skills is like (pretty strong), and what some schools are doing to get the message out. On campuses today, the newest technologists […]
The New York Times’ John Markoff, who launched much of the media and congressional attention on computer science this year with his April 2005 piece “Pentagon Redirects Its Research Dollars“, is still on the computing beat. His most recent is today’s “A New Arms Race to Build the World’s Mightiest Computer.” Here’s a sample: A […]
A nice follow-up to last week’s post on the “science gap” and some of the ways the computing community is dealing with its “image problem” can be found today over at MSNBC in a piece focusing on the new National Center for Women in IT (CRA and CRA-W form one “hub” of NCWIT — other […]
The Washington Post’s Politics Columnist (and resident contrarian) Robert Samuelson has an interesting Op-Ed in yesterday’s edition dealing with the fact that the U.S. is producing “a shrinking share of the world’s technological talent.” After noting that there’s a pay disparity between science and engineering PhDs and other “elites” like MBAs, doctors and lawyers that […]
