A recent issue of Technology Review (October 2021) features an article, “The problem to end all problems,” by Siobhan Roberts. This article addresses the treasured problem of “P versus NP,” the holy grail of theoretical computer science and mathematics. Can particular problems by solved in polynomial time (nx) or non-polynomial time (en), where n is […]
I recently read Javier Blas and Jack Farchy’s The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources (Oxford University Press, 2021). This fascinating book reads like a novel, almost a page turner. What will the traders do next? They chronicle the history of commodity traders of oil, grain, metals, and […]
The old normal involved lots of bus, metro, and uber rides to meetings with sponsors, colleagues, and friends in pursuit of new opportunities, progress on existing opportunities, and just plain socializing. Transit time was at least an hour per day and sometimes two, sitting in a bus, train, or car catching up on your email […]
If you think the complexity of the current situation – pandemic, global warming, and race relations – is overwhelming, I have a suggestion for coping with the complexity. The just published issue of The Bridge (https://www.nae.edu/Bridge.aspx) provides a wonderfully broad and intriguing set of perspectives of how complexity is manifested throughout our society. We cannot […]
Facebook, Twitter, and other emergent platforms have resulted in the Balkanization of the world of information. There are large subpopulations that believe the moon landing was faked, climate change and the pandemic are hoaxes, and the presidential election was fraudulently stolen from Donald Trump. They only pay attention to information sources that support these views. […]
Subramanian, E., Reich, Y., & Krishnan, S. (2020). We Are Not Users: Dialogues, Diversity, and Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. The authors’ central argument is that we have a much deeper relationship with the things we create than just being users. Social media provides compelling examples of how the usability of the interface, while important, […]
George Adams was a graduate student in Public Policy at Georgetown. He relied on a cognitive assistant that he named Emily after his favorite aunt. It was sort of a fun thing to do, thinking that Emily might be of some I’ll-defined assistance. George totally underestimated the possibilities. Emily learned from everything George did. His […]
How does change differ within various aspects of society? Are differing changes somehow related? C.P. Snow has argued that there is a chasm between the arts and humanities, and science and technology (Snow, 1965). However, all of these endeavors are inevitably influenced by the times in which they are pursued. Consider the late 18th and […]
I am at the IEEE Workshop on the Future of Information at the National Academy of Engineering in Washington, DC. The purpose of the workshop is to consider how engineers and scientists will access and use information in 2020, including what types and sources of information they will seek and find available. Yesterday was the […]
In January, I discussed the notion of transforming organizational silos in academia to collaborative networks that can address large-scale research problems. At the moment, I am sitting in a meeting at the University of Illinois that is, in part, focused on this possibility. People are discussing the difficulties that they have encountered in pursuing this […]
The transformation framework from the last post can be applied to thinking through the four scenarios for academia from the post before the last one. Consider the Network U. scenario. This scenario basically involves changing offerings across the instruction function and/or organization via process and technology changes. Put simply, teaching would be quite different. All […]
I have been a faculty member at four universities – two in leadership positions and two in one-year visiting positions. Nevertheless, academia is a bit of enigma to me, perhaps because of my thirteen-year “leave of absence” to found and lead two software companies. In terms of content, in my case science and engineering, universities […]
