|
Items in cart [0] |
Questions? Call 888-624-8373 |
PAPERBACK PDF BOOK Free Resources |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2009. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Terms of Use and Privacy Statement |
Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 55
2
Looking to the Future of CS&E
BROADENING THE FIELD
The time has come for the CS&E community to adopt a broader
agenda that builds on the traditional strengths and interests of com-
puter scientists and engineers. In particular, a broader agenda asks
the community to:
· Look outward as well as inward. A broader agenda would legiti-
mize closer couplings to science, engineering, commerce, and indus-
try. The committee believes that outward-looking interactions will
enrich CS&E as a discipline by identifying new and challenging re-
search problems, and will provide valuable assistance to those in
science, engineering, commerce, and industry whose problems re-
quire the best talent and expertise that CS&E has to offer.
· Encourage greater interaction between research (especially theoreti-
cal research) and computing practice. CS&E has a tradition of deriving
inspiration and richness from practice, and, in turn, contributing clean
concepts and fundamental theory that have been effective in further-
ing computing practice. This tradition is well represented by the
extensive interplay between theory and practice in programming lan-
guages and compiler design, databases, machine architecture, operat-
ing systems, distributed computing, and computer graphics. How-
ever, as CS&E has matured, the theoretical side of many of these
areas has become more inwardly focused. This is not altogether un
55
OCR for page 56
56
COMPUTING THE FUTURE
desirable, but it is crucial that researchers working in these areas
maintain an active effort to draw inspiration from practice and to
continue to rise to the challenge of making a difference to the outside
world. Box 2.1 illustrates possible connections between theoretical
research and computing practice that arise in the context of the High
Performance Computing and Communications Program.
The committee's belief in the wisdom of a broader agenda for
CS&E is based on several considerations. The first is that computing
most often serves disciplines and areas other than CS&E; even the
practice of such a characteristic CS&E topic as designing computer
languages cannot be fully abstracted away from application domains,
a point all too often overlooked in CS&E's search for the generally
applicable. It would, for example, be folly to try to build even the
framework of a computer language for music composition without a
background in music. Beyond the inescapable engineering substrate
of digital electronics and communications, computer scientists and
engineers need to have some appreciation for the economics, finance,
and administration intrinsic to business, the mathematics and phys-
ics behind engineering, and the mathematics and other sciences that
underlie computing applications in industry.
Moreover, the number of problem domains to which CS&E is
directly relevant will grow dramatically over time as a direct result
of the increasing proliferation of computing into all sectors of soci-
ety. Thus broadening presents major intellectual opportunities for
1 1
researchers in CS&E. A precedent to keep in mind in this regard is
that of mathematics (Box 2.2~.
Finally, nonroutine applications of computing technology to oth-
er problem domains can be regarded as explorations undertaken to
OCR for page 57
[OO~G TO ~ TITLE OF CSSE
~7
understand empirically the actual utility of ~ given generation of
computing technology. If computer scientists and engineers are in-
volved in the design, implementation/ and analysis of these expert
mental inadequacies in any given genershon of computing technolo-
gy ~iH be better understood, laying the groundwork for the invention
of the next generation.
OCR for page 58
58
COMPUTING THE FUTURE
A second consideration is that regardless of whether computer
scientists and engineers participate, computing will continue its march
into the various sectors of science, engineering, commerce, and ir~-
dustry. But as argued in Chapter 1, the future will belong to those
who understand best how to apply new computing technologies to
an ever wider range of problem domains; computer scientists and
engineers are ideally situated both to create these technologies and to
understand and articulate the appropriate application of these tech-
nologies to other domains. Indeed, specialists in other areas are of-
ten unable to articulate the computing aspects of the problem they
want solved. If CS&E professionals remain uninvolved with other
areas, the application of computing to those areas will most likely
not reflect the most current or most relevant work that CS&E has to
offer.
The pace as well as direction of the information revolution will
also be affected by the participation of computer scientists and engi-
neers. Developments that may occur decades in the future without
their participation may be only years away with it. The committee
believes that dramatic improvements in computing efficiency and
performance will be possible only with the full participation of com-
puter scientists and engineers.
The third consideration is one of recognizing social responsibili-
ty. As Robert M. White, president of the National Academy of Engi-
neering, has argued,
~_ ~
~. .
--r ~
Investments in research and development have to have an eco-
nomic, social, or defense payback. Science and engineering research,
like any other [federally funded] activity in this country, has a social
purpose, and it must justify expenditures in ways that can be under-
stood and lead to the social and economic betterment of the coun-
try.i
Given the growing ubiquity of computing in all sectors of society
and the intimate connection between computing and CS&E, research
in CS&E among all the C~iton~f~ anti niacin disciplines has a
o ~ r
particularly powerful justification with respect to social payback.
The fourth consideration is that CS&E itself may contribute im-
portant intellectual abstractions to other fields. Such contributions
may be serendipitous, but when these applications do occur, their
intellectual reach is often quite compelling. Consider the following:
· The study of chaos, fractals, and dynamical systems. While work
in this area goes back to the late 1800s (the days of Poincare), modern
computation has rejuvenated this work and underscored its impor-
tance. Many of today's insights into chaotic phenomena are the di
OCR for page 59
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CS&E
59
rect result of extensive computational experimentation with dynami-
cal systems and are often displayed in graphical form. A computer
can be used essentially as a laboratory for experimental mathematics;
as a result, computer-generated visualizations of chaotic phenomena
at ever higher resolutions have led to conjectures about their proper-
ties, which can then be addressed in a mathematically rigorous fash
.2
· Cognitive psychology. The conceptualization of the human brain
as a computational information processor, perhaps operating in par-
allel, has emerged as an important paradigm for the investigation of
human cognitive processes. A computational model allows indeed
requires researchers in cognitive psychology to formulate explicit
and testable models of cognition.
· The study of algorithms in mathematics. The study of algorithms
and computational complexity (i.e., the complexity of mathematical
processes) has added completely new chapters to mathematical re-
search. The classification by computer scientists of computational
problems into large classes of problems of equivalent complexity (e.g.,
P. NP, PSPACE, EXPTIME) has led to new insights in game theory,
logic, and recursive function theory. For example, the study of com-
plexity has resulted in the systematic study of resource-bounded strate-
gy selection as a part of game theory. Driven by the computer, the
study of logic has also evolved from an emphasis on the foundations
of mathematics to the design and study of effective, easy-to-use proof
systems for use in the verification of programs and communication
protocols.
· City and building planning. Cities become more congested as
they become larger, and they are most severely congested near the
center. Theoretical analysis of the wiring of chips and circuit boards
(analysis that computer scientists and engineers pioneered) helps to
explain why congestion within cities occurs in this fashion and has
influenced the planning of cities, factories, and office buildings.
In each of these cases, intellectual insights have been gained not
just by using a computer to perform some calculation more rapidly,
but by understanding how the abstractions of CS&E might be rele-
vant to some conceptual framework in another area of inquiry.
Lastly, a broadening of CS&E speaks to economic realities faced
by the field. As discussed in Chapter 1, the computer industry is
undergoing a major shift, from selling thousands of million-dollar
computer systems to millions of thousand-dollar systems. The mass-
market nature of today's business calls for relatively fewer people
who build computer technology (hardware or systems software) and
OCR for page 60
60
COMPUTING THE FUTURE
relatively more people who know what to do with computers (e.g.,
write applications software or integrate complex systems for specific
tasks).3 The importance of domain-specific knowledge relative to
programming skills has increased, partly because new tools make
programming much easier to learn and do (although this may change
if new computing systems such as parallel processors require new
programming paradigms), and partly because knowing a field (e.g.,
accounting) is often harder and more relevant than knowing a pro-
gramming language.
CS&E researchers also face economic concerns. Research budgets
for all science and engineering will come under increasing pressure
in the future, and despite the HPCC Program, CS&E is no exception.
A broader research agenda for CS&E will enable CS&E researchers to
make a better case for receiving support from nontraditional sourc-
es.4 A relevant point of information is that over 42 percent of the
entire federal science and engineering research budget (i.e., over $10
billion out of the total $24 billion) for FY 1991 was obligated by 12
federal agencies whose individual science and engineering research
budgets each allocated less than 1 percent to computer science re-
search.5
An action plan to develop a broader agenda for CS&E that recog-
nizes the confidence, strength, maturity, and social obligation of the
field calls for the CS&E community to broaden its research scope by
expanding intellectual interaction with science, engineering, indus-
try, and commerce, and to broaden undergraduate and graduate ed-
ucation in CS&E accordingly. (Box 2.3 gives the view of the Associa-
tion for Computing Machinery (ACM) on the need to broaden the
CS&E agenda.) Concomitantly, other fields will need to develop some
familiarity with modern CS&E if they are to maximize the benefits
that computing can bring to them; this need for other fields to broad-
en toward CS&E is discussed further in Chapter 4.
A broader agenda for CS&E in research and education is elabo-
rated in the sections "Research Opportunities in Broadening" and
"Broadening Educational Horizons in CS&E." The section immedi-
ately below provides some historical perspective and context for un-
derstanding the relationship between CS&E and other fields.
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Chapter 1 described the impact of computing in all aspects of
society and explained the important role CS&E plays in computing
practice. Increasingly, fields such as computational medicine and
computational physics are emerging as subdisciplines of their parent
OCR for page 61
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CS&E
61
fields-indeed, for every field X, it sometimes seems that someone
creates a subfield, computational X. Cooperation and interconnec-
tion of CS&E with these computational subdisciplines should be a
major aspect of computing, as suggested in Figure 2.1.
In the past, however, CS&E has been slow to participate directly
in the research and development of these computational fields. This
is understandable. Even though CS&E was initially populated main-
ly by people from other disciplines,6 a natural tendency was to con-
centrate on the development of the scientific base in core areas of
CS&E. There were more than enough exciting problems in this core
to keep the relatively small number of researchers busy without wor-
rying about applications in other disciplines, and a lack of incentives
to pursue interdisciplinary work kept most researchers working irk
the core areas.
There have been a few instances of interdisciplinary work. For
example, computer science at the University of Michigan was closely
allied with medicine and psychology, at the Georgia Institute of Tech-
nology with library science. The University of North Carolina has
had medical imaging and molecular graphics projects for many years.
Stanford University was a pioneer in the application of artificial in
OCR for page 62
62
COMPUTING THE FUTURE
Medicine
//,
Entertainment
~ _ ~
~'' 1
/ ~
<.._~
1=
CompL'fin9
Computer \
Science
and
Engineering /
Humanities ~ ~/
Art
:~ =
Science
\,,
Business |
//
Engineering
l
FIGURE 2.1 Computer science and engineering, computing, and other problem
domains. CS&E is central to computing, which in turn affects many problem
domains.
telligence to medicine. And from the beginning, numerical analysis
was considered part of computer science in many departments many
of these numerical analysts are now beginning to call themselves
computational scientists and are playing a major role in computa-
tional science. But by and large, the very nature of CS&E and its
growing pains forced the field to look inward.
A striking example of this inward-looking tendency today is the
attitude of the academic CS&E community toward the general busi-
ness community. Both the number of commercial users of computers
and the dollar value of computers used for commercial purposes far
exceed the analogous quantities for academic science, and yet, apart
from a few in the database community, academic CS&E researchers
have been extraordinarily reluctant to engage the problems faced by
business and commerce (although they do contribute to and benefit
from the activities of businesses that produce computer-related prod-
ucts).
A simple illustration can be found in the divergent attitudes to-
ward the programming language Cobol. Among those involved in
advancing the field, Cobol is derided as 30-year-old technology, an
OCR for page 63
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CS&E
63
anachronism. But Cobol is the language in which the vast majority
of business and commercial programs have been written and are sup-
ported. A second point is that for the last 25 years' the need to solve
computation-intensive scientific and engineering problems rather than
business problems has motivated the design of ever faster proces-
sors. Finally, during its deliberations the committee found relatively
few academic computer scientists or engineers with research inter-
ests that arise directly from the needs of the commercial domain.
This important aspect of the field has generally been left to business
schools, library schools, and departments of operations research and
manufacturing. As a result, the mainstream academic CS&E commu-
nity has not participated much in the development of the many com-
puting innovations that have transformed the modern corporation
and the practice of business today.
The inward-looking attitude of CS&E manifests itself to a lesser
(though still substantial) degree with respect to other applications as
well. Although increasing numbers of computer scientists and engi-
neers have research interests relevant to other scientific and engi-
neering problems, the CS&E community still views with some appre-
hension efforts to promote collaborations with other disciplines. For
example, a recent CSTB workshop intended to bring together young
computer scientists and engineers with molecular biologists in need
of sophisticated computational systems elicited some concerns that
pursuing such challenges would be inimical to progress in the aca-
demic CS&E environment. The relevance and value of such work
from a CS&E perspective are not widely recognized, and promotion
opportunities for computer scientists and engineers who choose to
work in this interdisciplinary area could thus be damaged.7
Conversely, various disciplines have likewise been mistrustful of
CS&E and have not known whether to embrace CS&E as a real disci-
pline. Wasn't computer science just programming? Was it really a
science? Consider, for example, the following quotation, taken from
a recent National Research Council report on physics:8
... computer programming introduces problems.... [F]or the
computational theorist the programming problems have led to spe-
cial difficulties, including a great deal of misunderstanding and un-
derestimation of the role and intellectual quality of computational
physics. Computer programming and debugging is, in large part, a mind-
dulling, menial task, in which hours and days and weeks are spent making
trivial changes in response to trivial errors orfiguring out how to format
the output. Yet one must be able at any moment to apply the deepest
analytical skills in order to understand an unexpected result or to
track down a subtle bug. "Emphasis added.]
OCR for page 64
64
COMPUTING THE FUTURE
Although the statement does acknowledge the intellectual chal-
lenges of debugging programs, it fails to do justice to the wealth of
knowledge and talent needed to construct correct programs in the
first place. Indeed, it suggests that knowledge of a programming
language's syntax and the ability to perform low-level coding are all
that a scientific programmer needs, whereas in fact knowledge of
data structures and algorithms is the key to effective programming,
and the structured decomposition of a problem and the stepwise re-
finement of proposed solutions account for the largest portion of
serious programming efforts. Even more problematically, it implies
that the only function a program must serve is to solve a given prob-
lem. Such a view is overly narrow, because it does not recognize that
problems evolve, that therefore programs must evolve, and that CS&E
is responsible for most of the tools and concepts needed to write
evolvable programs. Put another way, it is understandable if physi-
cists do not fully comprehend the intellectual challenges required to
create the tools they use so freely. But rejection of those challenges
as irrelevant to the business at hand may well discourage the intel-
lectual work necessary to develop better tools.
Beginning around 1986, CS&E as a field began to recognize the
importance of interdisciplinary research and broadening. For exam-
ple, interdisciplinary research became an issue at the biannual meet-
ings of the chairs of Ph.D.-granting computer science departments as
early as 1986. The HPCC Program, with its interdisciplinary orienta-
tion, had its roots in various planning meetings held in 1986. Senior
officials in NSF's Computer and Information Sciences and Engineer-
ing Directorate in the late 1980s were important advocates for inter-
disciplir~ary work. Concerns about the insularity of the field were
raised at the ACM-CPA conference on Strategic Directions in 19899
and at the 1988 Snowbird meeting.~° In response to an inquiry from
the committee, the ACM argued for a CS&E agenda that was broader
and more closely linked to social needs. Today, one can find many
more though still not substantial-instances of CS&E faculty mem-
bers taking part in interdisciplinary work.
At present, CS&E is in transition: many computer scientists and
engineers are aware of its previous isolation and the need for a broader
agenda, but the field as a whole has not yet taken sufficient action to
remedy the problem or to change its culture.
RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES IN BROADENING
One simple principle should guide the formulation of a broader
research agenda:
OCR for page 65
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CS&E
Address substantive research problems in CS&E in the con-
text of their application in and relevance to other problem
domains, and derive inspiration for identifying and solving
these research problems from these other domains.
65
By so doing, CS&E can be framed simultaneously as a discipline
with its own deep intellectual traditions, as well as one that is appli-
cable to other problem domains. CS&E can thus be an engine of
progress and conceptual change in these other domains, even as they
contribute to the identification of new areas of inquiry within CS&E.~2
In developing this notion further, it is useful to consider the tra-
ditional distinctions between basic research (conducted to obtain a
fundamental understanding of some phenomenon), applied research
(done to investigate the nuances of this phenomenon with an appli-
cation area in mind and perhaps to construct proof-of-principle pro-
totypes), and development (which builds on research-based under-
standing to construct engineering prototypes that demonstrate economic
and manufacturing feasibility and results in items that are very close
to marketable products).~3 This neat and orderly progression de-
scribes the evolution of some products, but it often happens that in
the course of bringing a product to market, it is not clear when a
given activity fits into one of these categories. Indeed, some prod-
ucts have bypassed the traditional development phase, going directly
from research to use as the core of a new application. Although such
products generally have not met the usual standards of quality ex-
pected of more traditionally developed software products, they have
established markets for the services provided by those products. In
turn, these markets have then driven further improvement of those
products. Examples include the Mach kernel for operating systems,
the Scribe text formatter, the Emacs text editor, the Ingres relational
database system, the Magic CAD system, the Query-By-Example da-
tabase system, and the Unix operating system, all of which were first
developed in a research environment and widely distributed initially
at little or no cost. Such phenomena persuade the committee that the
separation of basic research, applied research, and development is
dubious, especially within CS&E. Given the way research in CS&E is
actually done, distinctions between basic and applied research are
especially artificial, since both call for the exercise of the same scien-
tific and engineering judgment, creativity, skill, and talent.~4 A1-
though the traditional areas of CS&E research (e.g., those discussed
in Chapter 3) remain at the core of CS&E research and still present
major and substantive intellectual challenges worthy of sustained ef-
fort, they should not alone define the boundaries of the CS&E re-
search agenda.
OCR for page 84
84
COMPUTING THE FUTURE
in"," even at the level of a simple stream of text characters, is a
daunting task. Furthermore, typesetting is not typically fully auto-
matic. Title pages, page numbers, figures, and proofreading correc-
tions are likely to come from separate places, and so there may be Rio
complete electronic version of a document. The printed version may
have to serve as a guide for the reconstruction of a full electronic
document from partial electronic sources. We thus have the problem
of correlation of multiple texts.
Retrieval
A document in a library is useful only insofar as information can
be extracted from it, either by direct retrieval or by processing. In-
formation retrieval systems usually depend on indexing (manual or
automatic) to home in on documents, and then perhaps on full-text
scanning to find exact information. The suitability of various index-
ing and scanning techniques depends strongly on scale; there is much
room for innovation and experiment. At a higher level, the quality of
retrieval should be enhanced by "text understanding." Still not com-
monly used today, statistical methods for analyzing documents are
likely to be the first scalable techniques. (For statistical analysis, the
details of language are unimportant arid sample size is a boon, not a
bane.) Understanding at the level of identifying certain formal parts
of a text, such as titles and table of contents, will be important for
. .
nc being purposes.
Searching, even among indexed documents, on a library scale is a
challenge for both architecture and algorithms. And searching for
Contextual matter visual or audio is almost virgin ground. The
possibility of novel and massive search techniques, however, is a
prime motivation for developing the electronic library. In a print
library, images can be found only by leafing through the holdings.
Presentation
Electronic libraries promise simultaneous availability to all read-
ers, access at a distance, and easy capture of relevant passages. Off-
setting these advantages is the fact that electronic presentation of
substantial amounts of static information is rarely as satisfying as
print, either for browsing or serious reading. That judgment may be
altered by the advent of new modalities, such as hypertext,2i for
navigating documents. One thing is certain: the availability of large
bodies of text for experimentation will stimulate creative new ways
to present and interact with the documents and with search proce
OCR for page 85
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CS&E
85
cures, and bring new models to the attention of CS&E. How, for
example, can the enormous numbers of "hits" that automated search-
es often return be summarized for effective further selection? Or
again, how with reasonable speed can a reader "see" a whole book as
effectively as one does today by leafing through it?
Performance
It is easy to conceive of automatically "reading" whole books of
text over a high-speed fiber-optic network; a book is one or a few
megabytes of textual data, and a megabyte takes ten milliseconds to
transmit at gigabit rates. It is less easy to imagine, say, an art book
coming as page images at a megabyte apiece. Issues of data com-
pression akin to those present in high-definition television come to
the fore, in storage as well as in transmission. Memory hierarchies,
probably distributed, will be needed for economical storage of infor-
mation, the demand for which differs by many orders of magnitude.
Simultaneous searches on behalf of multiple readers pose a challenge
to information retrieval technology, likely involving massive paral-
lelism, distributed computing, and scheduling.
The matter of survival poses problems, too: how can a library
that archives material for the ages exploit technology that goes utter-
ly obsolete in a decade? And how can indexing and retrieval strate-
gies, which will surely evolve rapidly in the light of experience, be
introduced gracefully?
BROADENING EDUCATIONAL HORIZONS IN CS&E
A broader research agenda for the field requires people willing to
engage in a wider scope of activity than they have been accustomed
to pursuing. Thus changes in the educational milieu of both gradu-
ate and undergraduate CS&E education will be necessary if a broad-
er agenda is to win wide acceptance. Computer scientists and engi-
neers may not need to fully master other disciplines, but they will
need to know enough about other domains to understand the prob-
lems in those domains and thus how to apply their own unique ana-
lytical tools to their solution. Employment opportunities may well
be wider for broadly educated computer scientists and engineers than
for those who know only about computing per se.
In addition, CS&E education will need to reexamine some of the
values with which it socializes its graduates. At present, CS&E stu-
dents are led to believe that doing "pure" CS&E research is the high-
est pinnacle to which all good students should aspire. Values consis
OCR for page 86
86
COMPUTING THE FUTURE
tent with a broader agenda would teach budding computer scientists
and engineers that in the information age, they should learn to make
contributions to a wide range of fields and problem domains. And
finally, CS&E has a responsibility to help those in other areas to
understand the implications of the new information age. Thus it
must take a broader view of its responsibilities for service education
to practitioners in other disciplines and problem domains.
Chapter 4, "Education in CS&E," discusses these issues in greater
detail.
A SPECIAL ROLE FOR
UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY-COMMERCE INTERACTION
Ties between universities and the industrial and commercial world
have a special role to play in promoting a broader agenda for both
research and education. One overarching reason is that industry and
commerce, concerned with developing products and services for cus-
tomers who want their problems solved, assemble multidisciplinary
project teams and research efforts with much greater ease than do
universities with their discipline-centered departments.22
Computer hardware and software vendors have a vested interest
in being responsive to the needs of the user community. Over the
long run, software packages and hardware systems improve, or their
vendors go bankrupt. Because of its need to gauge accurately what
its customers are willing to buy, the computer industry can play a
special role in specifying for computer scientists and engineers re-
search areas that have relevance to the user community as a whole-
general-purpose advances that make computers easier to use or more
practically powerful from the perspective of individual users. A good
example of such a role is found in the industry-driven spread of
graphical user interfaces. (Of course, such contributions will be pos-
sible only with the involvement of people whose vision can tran-
scend narrow company perspectives.)
Commercial users of computers can also help to define a broader
research agenda that is relevant to particular segments of the user
community. Problems that arise in specific applications are often an
instance of a more general and incompletely understood issue with
substantive intellectual challenge. Research undertaken to solve the
specific problem may well shed light on the more general issue. Fur-
ther, by working with the ultimate end users, academic computer
scientists and engineers can help those users to better understand
their future needs in their particular settings and to develop technol-
ogy that better meets those needs.
OCR for page 87
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CS&E
87
On the educational front, both the computer industry and com-
mercial computer users have an important role to play in broaden-
ing. As the need emerges for businesses of every possible descrip-
tion to manage information of all types, individuals who understand
the possibilities of computer-mediated management of such informa-
tion will be in demand by both industry and users. This imperative
has fueled the development of a host of computer-related programs
in information sciences, information systems, management sciences,
and so on, in addition to programs in CS&E. However, a broadly
educated CS&E graduate is most likely the person who will under-
stand how or whether existing technology can be adapted to meet
existing needs and how to specify and design new technology that
may be required. Thus a move by industry and commercial users to
widen the employment opportunities they offer to CS&E graduates
beyond the narrow computer-related jobs that CS&E graduates now
fill may well benefit these firms as they move into the 21st century.
These issues are discussed at greater length in Chapter 4.
PREREQUISITES FOR BROADENING
Although the committee found a reasonable consensus that aca-
demic CS&E would benefit from a broader agenda, the inward-look-
ing and applications-avoiding traditions of the field are likely to make
implementation of a broader agenda difficult. The present structure
of CS&E as an academic discipline often impedes the participation of
faculty members in applications-oriented or interdisciplinary work.
Reorienting academic CS&E to embrace interdisciplinary or applica-
tions-oriented work will require serious attention to several factors,
including the following:23
.
Adequate departmental or university support. The research hori-
zons of many faculty (especially junior faculty) could be expanded if
they believed that good applications-oriented or interdisciplinary re-
search would lead to tenure or promotions. Senior faculty, even
though protected by tenure, are not immune to the pressures of their
colleagues, and if other departmental faculty believe that such work
is not intellectually worthy of attention, they too may be inhibited
from pursuing such activity.
Many CS&E departments believe that the evaluation of interdis-
ciplinary research is daunting when assessment of work related to
other fields is required. Even the definition of a peer in interdiscipli-
nary research is unclear. In the words of H.E. Morgan, "Is a peer a
person knowledgeable primarily in the technical aspects of the ap
OCR for page 88
88
COMPUTING THE FUTURE
proach that is to be applied, or is both technical expertise and a
broad knowledge of the field encompassed by the hypothesis and
questions to be addressed also a requirement for designation as a
peer?"24 When even the general characteristics of those who should
be making assessments are unclear, departments may well shy away
from encouraging work that requires such assessments.
· Provision of appropriate funding. Funding to pursue interdisci-
plinary or applications-oriented research is certain to encourage such
work, especially in times of tight research budgets. Partly because of
its novelty, interdisciplinary or applications-oriented research is of-
ten seen by the typical funders of research as high-risk or irrelevant.
In the absence of funding specifically targeted to such work, more
traditional, discipline-oriented work often appears the safe route to
follow for seekers of research funding.
· Strong communication between CS&E and other problem domains.
The sine qua non of most academic work is the published paper or
book. But interdisciplinary or applications-oriented work often lacks
suitable forums that will provide appropriate attention. The solution
of a given problem may require collaboration between researchers in
CS&E and another field, but journals in the other field may be inter-
ested only in the results relevant to that field, while CS&E journals
may be unwilling to give space to describing details of the other field
relevant to the solution of the problem. Thus special outlets for such
work may be necessary.
· Common educational experiences and mutual respect. Collabora-
tions between researchers in CS&E and other disciplines and applica-
tions areas are most successful when computer scientists and engi-
neers have a modicum of knowledge about those other areas and
disciplines, arid when people from those other areas have some fa-
miliarity with current concepts in CS&E. Moreover, each side of the
collaboration must respect the basic intellectual interests of the oth-
er the interest of computer scientists and engineers in the challeng-
ing CS&E aspects, and the interest of other party or parties in the
problem at hand. Without such respect, it is all too easy for the
computer scientist or engineer to be regarded merely as a hired hand
responsible for the intellectual equivalent of washing test tubes.
· A broader definition of research. Even when interdisciplinary
research is considered, prevailing notions in the academic CS&E com-
munity limit the definition of research to fundamental intellectual
work that underpins a product or may have no connection to any
product now or in the future. Thus academic CS&E research may
OCR for page 89
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CS&E
89
involve theoretical work and proof-of-principle and laboratory pro-
totypes, but nothing closer to product application. In fact, a great
deal of intellectually substantive work and inquiry can be associated
with "productizing" a concept. As an example, chemical engineering
and, to a lesser extent, chemistry both include within their defini-
tions of Ph.D. research work that improves chemical manufacturing
processes. Certain challenging computing problems (e.g., the con-
struction of large-scale software systems) have solutions that in prac-
tice often do not require a single key insight but rather many small
ideas solving subproblems across many areas. Such problems are
best solved by people with breadth, but breadth often comes at the
expense of the depth that characterizes most traditional research.
In addition, traditional notions of academic research call for work
in which students and faculty are expected to make their mark as
individual scholars and researchers, rather than as members of teams
or groups (as would better characterize an industrial environment).
Since many interesting and substantive problems in CS&E involve as
a primary or secondary activity the construction of large systems that
require extended efforts by large groups, those with interests in such
areas may be left at a disadvantage.
· Leadership. By definition, the leaders in any given field play a
major role in setting the tone and character of that field. The judg-
ments and opinions of these leaders determine the standards to which
other participants in the field are held. Thus, expanding the bound-
aries of CS&E research will require the intellectual leaders in the
field to proselytize vigorously in favor of such expansion. They must
lobby for departmental or university support of a broader agenda.
And, most importantly, they must engage the public policy process
on behalf of change with an intensity and persistence that they have
not often demonstrated in the past.25
As a general rule, individuals can participate in or contribute to
the public policy process through either the executive branch or the
legislative branch. Interaction with the executive branch is especially
meaningful when it involves sustained effort (e.g., serving as a pro-
gram officer), simply because such service generally involves deci-
sion-making authority. Interaction with the legislative branch is po-
tentially more profitable for the field, since the legislative branch
determines actual funding levels. However, it is often much more
frustrating, because the Congress is often unable to consider the full
implications of various proposals from the scientific community. Box
2.10 describes some of the opportunities available to computer scien-
tists and engineers to engage the public policy process.
OCR for page 90
So
COMPUTING THE FUTURE
it,
........................................................................................................................... ............ ... .............................................................................................................
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Broadening academic CS&E offers benefits from several perspec-
tives. From the perspective of the field itself, extending its bound-
aries will identify new challenges and offer new opportunities for
students and research support. Those in other areas and fields will
also benefit from the application of state-of-the-art hardware and software
technologies customized to their specific problems. And finally, the
interaction of CS&E with other disciplines is likely to lead to intellec-
tual insights and developments in both CS&E and those other disci-
plines that would not otherwise be possible. The broadening of CS&E
will lead to a flowering of new ideas, advancing the knowledge of
humankind as well as promoting the growth of industry and the
economy. Intellectually substantive CS&E issues and themes can be
found in many problem domains, from biology and the earth scienc-
es to commercial computing and electronic libraries. But broadening
the CS&E field will require concerted university and funding agency
support, educational programs to support a broader conception of
the field, and a rethinking of what constitutes research for an aca-
demic computer scientist or engineer.
NOTES
1. See Robert M. White, "The Crisis in Science Funding," Technology Review, Vol-
ume 94(4), May/June 1991, p. 47. Lest the reader believe that the need to justify
science on the basis of its social and economic return is a new sentiment brought about
today by increasingly tight budgets and short-sighted political leaders, it is interesting
to recall that Vannevar Bush, in the July 1945 document widely regarded as the semi-
nal statement of philosophy underlying creation of the National Science Foundation,
argued for the support of science on the basis of its ability to contribute to society.
Advances in science when put to practical use mean more jobs, higher wages, short-
er hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for recreation, for study, for learning how
to live without the deadening drudgery which has been the burden of the common
man for ages past. Advances in science will also bring higher standards of living, will
lead to the prevention or cure of diseases, will promote conservation of our limited
OCR for page 91
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CS&E
91
national resources, and will assure means of defense against aggression.... [S]ince
health, well-being, and security are proper concerns of government, scientific progress
is of Nrital interest to government. Without scientific progress the national health would
deteriorate; without scientific progress we could not hope for improvement in our
standard of living or for an increase in the number of jobs for our citizens; and without
scientific progress we could not have maintained our liberties against tyranny. (Van-
nevar Bush, Science-the Endless Frontier, NSF 90-8, National Science Foundation, Washington,
D.C., 1945/1990, pp. 10-11.)
2. For example, mathematically rigorous investigations of the Mandelbrot set were
begun only after Benoit Mandelbrot had examined many computer-generated visual-
izations of the set. Mandelbrot observed that the islands present in low-resolution
pictures were apparently not present at higher resolutions. As a result of these exam-
inations, Mandelbrot conjectured that the set was connected. A rigorous proof of this
conjecture has subsequently been developed.
3. This point was reinforced at the recent CSTB Workshop on Human Resources
in CS&E, a report on which is forthcoming.
4. An Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) position paper notes that "analyzing
how computer science and engineering R&D can assist with solving national and in-
ternational needs can result in new opportunities and directions, such as increasing
funding and more diverse funding sources." See Association for Computing Machin-
ery, "The Scope and Directions of Computer Science: Building a Research Agenda,"
Communications of the Associationfor Computing Machinery, Volume 34(10), October 1991,
p. 123.
5. The basic data for this claim are given in Table 1.1. The agencies in question
include the Departments of Education, Justice, Agriculture, Health and Human Servic-
es (including the National Institutes of Health), Labor, State, and Veterans Affairs; the
Smithsonian Institution; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; the Tennessee Valley
Authority; the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; and the International Trade
Commission. Even if the National Institutes of Health is omitted from this list, the
research budgets for the remaining agencies still account for $3.4 billion.
6. At 38 key institutions, academic computer science was seeded by a number of
different disciplines, including mathematics, electrical engineering, business, physics,
psychology, physiology, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, and management
information systems. (See Lois Peters (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) and Henry
Etzkowitz (State University of New York at Purchase), "The Institutionalization of
Academic Computer Science," p. 5. Paper presented at the Study of Science and
Technology in the 1990s, a joint conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science
and the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, Amsterdam,
November 16-19, 1988.) Even today, the majority of CS&rE faculty who have Ph.D s
received them in other fields (as noted in Table 8.11 in Chapter 8), although projecting
forward from the approximately 300 new Ph.D.s in CS&E who took faculty positions
in the 1990-1991 academic year, this may change soon.
7. Some of the intellectual issues in this area are reported in Eric S. Lander, Robert
Langridge, and Damian M. Saccocio, "Computing in Molecular Biology: Mapping and
Interpreting Biological Information," Communications of the ACM, Volume 34(11), No-
vember 1991, pp. 33-39. This article describes some of the key computational challeng-
es in molecular biology as discussed by participants in a CSTB workshop.
8. National Research Council, Physics Through the 1990s: Scientific Interfaces and
Technological Applications, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 121.
9. Association for Computing Machinery and the Computing Research Associa-
tion, Strategic Directions in Computing Research, ACM Press, 1990, pp. 1-2.
OCR for page 92
92
COMPUTING THE FUTURE
10. David Cries, Terry Walker, and Paul Young, "The 1988 Snowbird Report: A
Discipline Matures," Communications of the ACM, Volume 32(3), March 1989, pp. 294-
297.
11. Association for Computing Machinery, "The Scope and Directions of Computer
Science," Communications of the ACM, Volume 34(10), October 1991, pp. 121-131.
12. This approach to building a research agenda has much in common with one
discussed in an ACM position paper that argues for a strategy that "proposets] a set of
goals and needs, and recommend[s] computing research that can help attain those
goals." See Association for Computing Machinery, "The Scope and Directions of Com-
puter Science: Building a Research Agenda," Communications of the ACM, Volume
34(10), October 1991, p. 122. The use of "computing research" in this reference is
equivalent to the use in this report of "CS&E research." See also John Rice, "Is Com-
puting Research Isolated from Science?", Computing Research News, Volume 2(2), April
l990,p. 1.
13. The definitions used by the National Science Foundation are the following (Na-
tional Science Foundation, Federal Funds for Research and Development: FY 1988, 1989,
1990, NSF 90-306, NSF, Washington, D.C., 1990, pp. 2-3):
"Research is systematic study directed toward fuller scientific knowledge or under
standing of the subject studied. Research is classified as either basic or applied accord-
ing to the objectives of the sponsoring agency.
In basic research the objective of the sponsoring agency is to gain fuller knowl-
edge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of phenomena and of observable
facts without specific applications toward process or products in mind.
In applied research the objective of the sponsoring agency is to gain knowledge or
understanding necessary for determining the means by which a recognized and spe-
cific need may be met.
Development is systematic use of the knowledge or understanding gained from re-
search, directed toward the production of useful material, devices, systems, or meth-
ods."
The U.S. definition of "basic research" as research without application in mind
stands in marked contrast to the Japanese notion of "basic research" as research that is
basic to the future of industry. See David Cheney and William Grimes, Japanese Tech-
nology: What's the Secret?, Council on Competitiveness, Washington D.C., February
1991, p. 4.
14. Indeed, a powerful argument can be made that the linear model of basic re-
search leading to applied research, applied research leading to development, develop-
ment leading to product manufacture, and manufacture leading to sales is highly
oversimplified and in many ways downright misleading. Product innovation rarely
resembles the popular view of one revolution followed by tedious development (e.g.,
invent the transistor, and the rest is reduction to practice). Rather, the process more
resembles something like this:
invent the transistor,
then invent technology to place 10 transistors on a chip,
then invent technology to place 100 transistors on a chip, . . .
then invent technology to place 100,000,000 transistors on a chip, and so on.
This model, often called the cyclic development model, is discussed in R.E. Gomory
and R.W. Schmitt, "Science as Product," Science, Volume 240, May 27, 1988, pp. 1131-
1132, 1203-1204.
15. See, for example, Computer Science and Technology Board, National Research
Council, The National Challenge in Computer Science and Technology, National Academy
Press, Washington, D.C., 1988, pp. 34-35.
OCR for page 93
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CS&E
16. As used in this report, the terms "interdisciplinary research" and
oriented research" are not synonymous. ~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~ ~
93
"applications
lnterdisciplinary research is research that
requires and draws on intellectual contributions from CS&E and some other discipline
together. Applications-oriented research is CS&E research pursued in the context of
some specific problem that may well be fully understood from an intellectual stand-
point but whose scale or nature may overmatch the capabilities of current computing
technology.
17. The National Research Council's interim report on EOSDIS noted the synergy
possible in a collaboration between the earth sciences and CS&E, arguing that
"EOSDIS, as it evolves, must maintain the flexibility to build rapidly on relevant
advances in computer science and technology, including those in databases, scalable
mass storage, software engineering, and networks. Doing so means that EOSDIS should
not only take advantage of new developments, but also should become a force for
change in the underlying science and technology where its own needs will promote
state-of-the-art developments." See National Research Council, Panel to Review EOS-
DIS Plans: Interim Report, Washington, D.C., April 9,1992, p. 3.
18. For example, the American Express Company and Schlumberger, both stal-
warts of the American business community, will be among the first organizations to
purchase a massively parallel computer recently offered for sale by the Thinking Ma-
chines Corporation. Such purchases indicate that problems faced by these firms can-
not be solved economically with routine computing technology. See John Markoff,
"American Express to Buy Two Top Supercomputers," New York Times, October 30,
1991, p. C-7.
19. However, it should also be noted that technology changes rapidly enough and
the lag time in making purchases is long enough that it is often difficult for any
standard to be widely used and accepted. Still, electronic data interchange of various
types is growing rapidly.
20. For example, as this report goes to press, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science and the On-Line Computer Library Center are about to launch
an on-line, peer-reviewed journal titled "The Online Journal of Current Clinical Tri-
als." Manuscripts will be submitted, reviewed, and published in electronic form to as
great a degree as possible. See Joseph Palca, "New Journal Will Publish Without
Paper," Science, Volume 253, September 27, 1991, p. 1480.
21. Hypertext is a way of presenting text that is not structured linearly. A hyper-
text document has cross-references and other links that allow the reader to peruse the
document in an order that makes sense for his or her needs at the time.
22. As the value of interdisciplinary work is recognized, it may become easier to
perform interdisciplinary research in universities. The NSF-sponsored engineering
research centers and the science and technology centers appear to represent a positive
step this direction.
23. The first four factors listed are inspired by a presentation in National Research
Council and Institute of Medicine, Interdisciplinary Research: Promoting Collaboration
Between the Life Sciences and Medicine and the Physical Sciences and Engineering, National
Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1990, pp. 12-15.
24. H.E. Morgan, "Open Letter to NIH- Review of Cross-Disciplinary Research,"
in The Physiologist, Volume 31(April), 1988, pp. 17-20. Cited in National Research
Council and Institute of Medicine, Interdisciplinary Research: Promoting Collaboration
Between the Life Sciences and Medicine and the Physical Sciences and Engineering, National
Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1990, p. 12. Although the letter concerns interdisci-
plinary research in the life and health sciences, the moral is the same.
25. An example of past indifference to participation in the public policy process is
evident in the experience of NSF's Computer and Information Sciences and Engineer
OCR for page 94
94
COMPUTING THE FUTURE
ing Directorate, which provides a considerable percentage of research funding for
academic CS&E and thus exerts a substantial influence over the field. Naturally, NSF
looks to the field to provide knowledgeable individuals who can help to shape a
research program and make reasonable decisions about funding directions. But, ac-
cording to NSF officials, finding appropriate individuals willing to fill staff and high-
level management positions within the CISE Directorate has been extraordinarily diffi-
cult.
Why is it difficult? Some people argue that a period of inactivity in research of even
a few years can place an individual at considerable disadvantage. Without special
provisions such as "exit grants," faculty may be hesitant to enter public service even
temporarily. (An "exit grant" is a grant provided to program officials returning to
academia that enables them to restart their own personal research programs and thus
facilitates their reentry into academic life. Such grants may be provided formally
through a designated program, or informally through a mutual understanding of the
participants involved.) Others argue that the salaries paid for government service
tend to be lower than those that could be earned by qualified computer scientists and
engineers working outside of government. Still others contend that most CS&E de-
partments are so "thin" that the departure of an individual for a few years could
cripple such a department's ability to cover an important subarea of CS&E. Finally,
the relative youth of academic CS&E tends to increase the number of individuals who,
in earlier stages of their career, quite naturally and reasonably focus on their own
personal research agendas.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
broader agenda
