acm - an acm publication

2011 - May

  • An interview with Bob Metcalfe: Bob Metcalfe is going meta on innovation

    Bob Metcalfe thinks we are in a bubble, an innovation bubble, seeing that the word "innovation" is on everybody's lips. To help ensure that this bubble does not burst, he has embarked on a new career path as Professor of Innovation and Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise at the University of Texas at Austin. This is his fifth career, building on his work as an engineer-scientist leading the invention of Ethernet in the 1970s, entrepreneur-executive and founder of 3Com in the 1980s, publisher-pundit and CEO of InfoWorld in the 1990s, and venture capitalist in the 2000s. As General Partner with Polaris Venture Partners, he has invested primarily in cleantech and currently serves on the boards of five companies: Ember, Sun Catalyx, 1366 Technologies, Infinite Power, and SiOnyx.

  • An Interview with Peter Denning: the end of the future

    Ubiquity is dedicated to the future of computing and the people who are creating it. What exactly does this mean for readers, for contributors, and for editors soliciting and reviewing contributions? We decided to ask the editor in chief, Peter Denning, how he approaches the future, and how his philosophy is reflected in the design and execution of the Ubiquity mission. He had a surprisingly rich set of answers to our questions. We believe his answers may be helpful for all our readers with their own approaches to their own futures.