Month: March 2004

Future of computer science

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.

Emergent transparency

Someone once said to me that they no longer read newspapers, because whenever they read an article about an area they were an expert in, the article was invariably 90% bollocks. Key facts would be missing, or misunderstood; known charlatans would have been interviewed and treated as holy; old or misleading conclusions would have been made. And if, this guy reasoned, that was true for the stories he knew about, it must be true for everything in the paper. Why, then, should he bother reading it?
Government is having the same problem, but it is made worse. It’s not that experts grumble into their beer about obscure nuances of law, as they’ve done that for 1000s of years. It’s not even just that experts can point out the fallacies of proposed legislation on the internet – and reach a large and active audience – although this is increasingly true. It’s that the internet specifically allows everyone to become an expert in whatever field. What we have is not Emergent Democracy, as many would have it, but Emergent Transparency. It’s not enough for a minister to say “Trust Me” anymore, because 5 minutes with Google usually finds every single lie, or spin, or misplaced understanding. To return to my non-newspaper buying friend, it’s not just that 90% of the statements about things I know about are wrong, but that I now know 90% of everything you make statements about. The internet hive mind is fact-checking as you go.

ben hammersley on why voters are staying away from the voting booths in droves. with the end of practical obscurity, a new polis needs to emerge.

Writing articles for free

i got suckered into writing 2 articles about open source for infoweek. and just today, handelszeitung called about an article as well. it seems articles about open source are all the rage now.. maybe we should add it to our services? 🙂
also, they had a concert downstairs this afternoon. it was so loud that my ears were ringing all afternoon, and the windows were about to burst any moment. what is wrong with people? is monday afternoon the new saturday night for the unemployed?

urlbot

Gregor always has given me the impression he was looking for new opportunities for Xaraya, evangelizing the web in general and Xaraya in particular. Quite often the first thing said by gregor on IRC was the paste of an URL pointing either to something interesting or something very lame. With always something new to tell, gregor has been a great motivator for our team.

very lame urls? 🙂 thanks, marcel. i have recently been pondering what the most effective contribution may be for me. pointers welcome.