Programs are getting re-shaped everywhere, and in many cases this is causing a real identity crisis. Which is it: computational biology, or bioinformatics? The fear at first was that computer science would become the servant of all the other disciplines; however, what some schools are seeing is that in the cross-discipline research efforts, often the computer scientists are emerging as the lead researchers on the projects. Things are going to look very different in 5-10 years. I honestly can’t tell you what a CS department will look like. But the very good news here is that computer science is alive and well, and in fact there is an energy and enthusiasm in the field that I have not felt for a long time, and a recognition that computing will have a huge impact on the world in almost every field of endeavor.

paul graham expresses the same notion in his typical eloquent style:

I’ve never liked the term “computer science.” The main reason I don’t like it is that there’s no such thing. Computer science is a grab bag of tenuously related areas thrown together by an accident of history, like Yugoslavia. At one end you have people who are really mathematicians, but call what they’re doing computer science so they can get DARPA grants. In the middle you have people working on something like the natural history of computers– studying the behavior of algorithms for routing data through networks, for example. And then at the other extreme you have the hackers, who are trying to write interesting software, and for whom computers are just a medium of expression, as concrete is for architects or paint for painters. It’s as if mathematicians, physicists, and architects all had to be in the same department.

when i started my studies in 1997, freshly minted graduates would mostly end up in incredibly dull bean counter roles at various financial institutions. luckily for me, the internet shifted the focus away from computation to communication. if kevins and pauls observations are correct, the hard (and interesting) problems outside of computer science are now coming into view. exciting times.

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