XRDS Editors

Issue leaders: Richard, Hannah, Jed, Andy?

Fall 2013 (features due July 2013, issue co-editor?): TBD

Winter 2013 (features due September 2013, issue co-editor?): TBD

Spring 2014 (date? issue co-editor?): TBD

Summer 2014 (date? issue co-editor?): TBD

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Brainstorming…

EFFICIENT COMPUTATION [VOTE HERE: AB, JK2 , IT]

• An issue dedicated to *positive* algorithmic results
• Primality testing
• Advancements in Traveling Salesman problem (TSP)
• Relating the complexity of problems in P (http://www.stanford.edu/~rrwill/tria-mmult.pdf)
• Quantum algorithms
• Multiplying matrices – (arguably) Result of the Year in theory http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=839
• Algorithmic techniques every student should know
• (Computational Complexity of Fermat’s Last Theorem?)

COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION [VOTE HERE: JRB, AB, LDR,BD,EC]

• Computers in Schools (OLPC project?)
• Intelligent Tutoring Systems (Vincent Aleven, Ken Koedinger)
• Teaching programming to kids
• Virtual Learning Environment, virtual teachers/agents/classrooms (James Lester NC State)
• On-line teaching (MIT open course work?)
• Mind maps
• Natural language processing? (Carolyn Rosé)
• Education technologies
• Direct brain learning
• Sensing affect/posture/etc. to predict learning ability
• Individualized learning, hyper customized teaching (technology teaching you in your specific way).
• Open source education materials (Turadg CMU).
• In addition to computer science’s impact on education, computer science education is an important and relevant area. High-school level CS education is a messed-up and interesting area
• Stanford online courses (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/august/online-computer-science-081611.html)
• Coursera and Udacity
• https://www.canvas.net and http://wiki.creativecommons.org/LRMI
• Conferences at: http://www.educause.edu.

POST-MODERN CRYPTOGRAPHY / SECURITY [VOTE HERE: JRB, JK2, EC, IT]

• Weakness of passwords (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/mat-honan-itunes-hack/), new kinds of passwords (finger swipe), LinkedIn hack
• Homomorphic encryption – Encryption which allows specific types of computations to be carried out on ciphertext
• Instead of just encrypted/plaintext, a whole range of possibilities. For example, can decrypt a financial transaction “just enough” to know whether it involves a sum that exceeds a certain threshold (Gil Segev)
• Disagreement within the community as to future of field (http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~oded/on-pmc.html)

QUANTUM COMPUTATION [VOTE HERE:]

MOBILE COMPUTING / APP DEVELOPMENT [VOTE HERE: JK,BD IT,FK]

• iOS versus Android
• Development platforms
• Designer-oriented programming (no code!)
• Mobile computing in Developing Nations
• Obituary of the classic PC
• small screens are changing the face of the web

COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING THEORY [VOTE HERE: ]

• Learning as a computational process
• Highly useful in industry
• Connection to economics (e.g., design of auctions / pricing mechanisms)

MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY / COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY [VOTE HERE: ]

NETWORKING [VOTE HERE: ]

THE RISE OF RESEARCH IN ASIA [VOTE HERE: JK ]

• Emerging research from areas of the world besides North America and Europe (http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/papers/contribution/sakata/01.html)
• New universities being build with a world-competitivness outlook (http://opac.yale.edu/president/message.aspx?id=91)
• Sharp increase in papers published, conferences and start-ups (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/education/04iht-educbriefs.html)
• Increased amount of funding for academic R&D (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/world/asia/13iht-educSide13.html)
• Multinational companies setting up research facilities in many parts of Asia (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf07319/content.cfm?pub_id=1874&id=4)
• More and more science and engineering students at the undergrad and graduate level (http://thetravelingexperientialist.blogspot.com/2011/06/rise-of-asian-universities.html)
• Asian universities rise in world-wide ranking (http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20101120000653689)
• New ways to conduct and disseminate science (science 2.0) being adopted, such as open access journals, etc. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-great-new-tool-or-great-risk)
• http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66216/richard-c-levin/top-of-the-class and http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/opinion/21iht-edlevin.html
• Ranking and other ways of encouraging students in China, India etc. For example, “Andy Yao’s class”

AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE [VOTE HERE: JRB, AB, LDR, JK2 , EC]

• 2013: 10 years after the ISTAG report (Ambient Intelligence: from vision to reality)
• Novel way to interact with smart environments
• Smart Homes: how far are we? Can home automation be considered a first step toward Smart Home vision?
• Microsoft HomeOS project (and similar projects)
• Nest, the intelligent thermostat (http://www.nest.com)
• Automatism (the home has the control) vs. people control: two paradigms in contrast
• Ambient Assisted Living (elderly, impaired people, …)
• Role of the Semantic Web
• Internet of things: How can you make a common object intelligent (e.g. a carton of milk)
• MIT’s vision in early 2000s. Where are we today?

TINY [VOTE HERE: JK]

• Computing is facing new challenges as things get smaller
• (Systems:) Power and heat as a bottleneck for processors now, rather than clock cycles
• (Theory:) Sketching/Streaming algorithms make sense of data without seeing the entire dataset
• (AI:) Semisupervised learning adapts machine learning techniques to datasets that have only a little labeled data
• (Vision/Ubicomp:) Tiny cameras and tiny sensors
• (Quantum Computing): What does a 1 Qu-bit processor do?
• (HCI) Interacting with tiny devices (Sifteo Cubes, small touch-screen, etc.)

OPEN SOURCE [VOTE HERE: LDR,BD,FK]

• Year 2013 = 30 years after the first launch of the free software movement.
• Adoption and usage by firms and individuals
• Business models – commercial open source software
• The future of software (software as a service)
• The community and how it works
• Legal aspects – Lawrence Lessig “Code is Law”
• Explanation of some common licenses and their differences (2-clause BSD, GPL v3 etc.)
• Digital rights, and the relation to SOPA
• GNU/Linux

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Subjects we covered since relaunch in 2010 (in chronological order):

• Human-Computer Interaction & Interfaces
• Programming
• Human Computation
• E-Commerce
• Green Technologies
• Neuroscience
• CS in Service of Democracy
• Turing Centennial Issue
• Startups
• Big Data
• ICT for Development
• Scientific Computing
• CS & Creativity

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Ideas that aren’t developed enough (feel free to flesh out and move to the main section above) or sound too close to past issues:

• Gadgets
• Social interaction and viral environments
  
• Animation, graphics and film effects
  
• Mirrored worlds
  • JRB: Can someone elaborate on this one? Is this referring to the Gelernter vision? And maybe even Agre’s critique? If so, super sexy cool! So here are some random thoughts:
  • “The World is its own best model” <- the challenge of computational representation
  • Social media as social sensors
  • Location-based media
  • Deployment of camera-based networks in urban Shanghai (Mic Bowman would probably write something for us.)
• The computational lens
• Health technology
• Networking
• Security
• Creating software through models
• Business intelligence
• Sci-Fi
• Storage
• Output
• Efficient parallel computing
• Reconfigurable computing
• 8-bit is back
• Digital humanities
• Technology for emerging markets
• Gaming
• Computational biology
• Pattern recognition
• Algorithmic game theory / online auctions
• High performance computing
• Future of the internet
• Predicting the future