The Known World

Although they might bring great utility to the world, innovations always involve fundamental challenges to the way we think.

Information technology has not only expanded the scale and scope of global markets, it has also provided the means for probing the meaning of every give-and-take transaction.

As technology has changed, the fundamental way of extracting meaning from data has also changed.

While it might seem otherwise to most individuals, we live in an age of leisure as much as we live in an age of information or industry or globalization.

As with all engineering problems, we need to balance the twin factors of stability and control and do so in a way that doesn't damage either of them.

Social networking has neither altered the way that technical knowledge is presented nor has it dislodged computer science from its central place in the technical canon.

The task of building a smart grid requires us to solve two kinds of problems: technical and social.

Crowdsourcing is one of the more intriguing forms of computation that employs markets.

In the Internet's artificial geography, an organization is identified by what it can do rather than by where it's located.

In most circumstances, computing has faded into the background of our lives as part of the global infrastructure. However, it still has the ability to remind of us its presence.

The grand ideas that led to the 1991 High-Performance Computing Act shaped the modern Internet only as they sifted through layers of the vertical division of labor.

As we look to the future, we must not only anticipate a year of innovation and progress but also a migration of labor that will remake the field of digital technology.

The task of navigating the information hierarchy is harder than we would like to think and involves more uncertainty than we care to admit.

The idea that an organized team of computer scientists might have created a major worm comes at an uneasy time for engineers.

Activities that attempt to coordinate the contributions of the general public with the Internet have a way of disciplining work and overcoming gross inefficiencies with mass labor.

When we adopt augmentative technologies, we usually find that we have to adjust our ideas, goals, and habits to fit our new tool.

The practices of engineering and computer science are influenced by the same forces that shape manual labor and office work. Occasionally, it’s useful to reassess our skills and question the value of our training.

Games on the internet, Wikipedia, and Diderot, and the structure of knowledge. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2010.210

In the modern age, identity may not be a name or a number. It's a story. And the question may be "who owns it?" Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2010.181

The failure of a complex product tells just as much about how the organization operates as it does about the skill of individual workers. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2010.144

No matter what we may believe, scientific practice often begins with a season when we don’t know what we know.

Invention and discovery are both creative acts, and both require us to place new ideas within a context or infrastructure. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2010.78

Who stands watch over a software engineering project to ensure that a job is well done and every individual has learned what he or she needs to know? Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2010.49

A good technological design requires substantial effort that shapes both the social and technical sides of an artifact. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2010.12

David talks about the origins of the podcast and what’s in store for upcoming episodes.

Without a human organization that can sift information and raise the gold from the dust, knowledge will die as rumor and innuendo will overwhelm any truth that may be making the rounds. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.394

Potential customers will be interested in new technology only if it somehow makes their lives better—if it moves them toward a goal they hold for themselves, their family, their company. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.342

Part 4: Like many of the accomplishments of software engineering, connecting the grid to a virtual machine is a way of hiding information, of allowing programmers to focus on the task they want to complete and ignore details beyond that task. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.332

Part 3: Like many of the accomplishments of software engineering, connecting the grid to a virtual machine is a way of hiding information, of allowing programmers to focus on the task they want to complete and ignore details beyond that task. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.332

Part 2: Like many of the accomplishments of software engineering, connecting the grid to a virtual machine is a way of hiding information, of allowing programmers to focus on the task they want to complete and ignore details beyond that task. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.332

Like many of the accomplishments of software engineering, connecting the grid to a virtual machine is a way of hiding information, of allowing programmers to focus on the task they want to complete and ignore details beyond that task. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.332

Part 4: Gunshot detection systems are a form of geographical information system, a technology that has expanded rapidly in the past two decades and has substantially altered how we deal with the physical landscape. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.281

Part 3: Gunshot detection systems are a form of geographical information system, a technology that has expanded rapidly in the past two decades and has substantially altered how we deal with the physical landscape. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.281

Part 2: Gunshot detection systems are a form of geographical information system, a technology that has expanded rapidly in the past two decades and has substantially altered how we deal with the physical landscape. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.281

Gunshot detection systems are a form of geographical information system, a technology that has expanded rapidly in the past two decades and has substantially altered how we deal with the physical landscape. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.281

Becoming a professional means joining the family, with all the rights, responsibilities, and discipline that come with membership. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.272

Becoming a professional means joining the family, with all the rights, responsibilities, and discipline that come with membership. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.272

Becoming a professional means joining the family, with all the rights, responsibilities, and discipline that come with membership. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.272

Becoming a professional means joining the family, with all the rights, responsibilities, and discipline that come with membership. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.272

In computer science education, we tend to emphasize the knowledge that we need to impart to our students and the skills they need to develop, but we generally fail to talk about the emotional and cultural aspects of their growth. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.236

In computer science education, we tend to emphasize the knowledge that we need to impart to our students and the skills they need to develop, but we generally fail to talk about the emotional and cultural aspects of their growth. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.236

In computer science education, we tend to emphasize the knowledge that we need to impart to our students and the skills they need to develop, but we generally fail to talk about the emotional and cultural aspects of their growth. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.236

In computer science education, we tend to emphasize the knowledge that we need to impart to our students and the skills they need to develop, but we generally fail to talk about the emotional and cultural aspects of their growth. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.236

Electronic systems change the flow of work, the habits of thought, the way we perceive our activities. In the case of healthcare, such changes could easily produce a system that is radically different from the one we know. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.196

As Web technology moved from the laboratory to the public sphere, website design moved from being the product of a single individual to become the responsibility of a group. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.166

Step by faltering step, the front page has been vanishing from the American news industry.

Virtual machines are a technology that was invented in one era, overlooked in a second, and rediscovered in a third. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.98

Part 2: In addition to reducing the time it took to pay for purchases, bar codes and scanners provided a system that would track inventory, reduce theft, and provide data to help merchants understand how their goods were purchased. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.58

In addition to reducing the time it took to pay for purchases, bar codes and scanners provided a system that would track inventory, reduce theft, and provide data to help merchants understand how their goods were purchased. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.58

Building an adaptive power grid requires cooperation, getting a common agreement among a large collection of engineers, investors, policy makers, corporate executives, and voters. Article link: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2009.21