Blogs

Jonathan Grudin

Jonathan Grudin has been active in CHI and CSCW since each was founded. He has written about the history of HCI and challenges inherent in the field’s trajectory, the focus of a course given at CHI 2022. He is a member of the CHI Academy and an ACM Fellow. [email protected]


A perfect storm

Posted: Wed, May 01, 2013 - 10:03:24

Full disclosure: I generally don’t mention my company’s products in print, but can’t avoid it here. It’s not something I worked on.The summer after high school I was hired to teach tennis at a local park. It was before Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors turned the sport upside down. There was a “right way” to hit every shot—forehand, backhand, volley—…

Couch Potato U.

Posted: Wed, March 06, 2013 - 10:19:48

An essay by Clay Shirky asserts that MOOC impact on higher education will parallel the impact of MP3s. The music industry could suppress Napster but not a deeper change: We can listen to the song we want when we want rather than buy it packaged in a CD with unwanted content. Whether or not a particular MOOC platform succeeds, the…

No place for Hobbits

Posted: Mon, February 04, 2013 - 3:49:42

ACM conference program committees may not violate the Geneva Conventions or international law. But they are unquestionably un-American. Presumption of innocence?—forget about it. “Until the rejection quota is reached, we must pass death sentences.” Double jeopardy?—bring it on! If the initial set of reviewers can’t agree to hang an author, have another program committee member read the submission after dinner…

Wrong about MOOCs?

Posted: Wed, January 02, 2013 - 4:32:50

In July, I was sceptical. "We have no idea where this is going. Let’s stomp on the accelerator pedal and hold it to the floor!" My summary of the online education discussion at the biannual Computing Research Association Snowbird conference by Stanford’s President John Hennessy and Professor/Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller, Salman Khan of Khan Academy, and Coursera instructor Peter Norvig…