Computing the Future A Broader Agenda for Computer Science and Engineering (1992) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
2 LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CS&E
2 LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CS&E
Pages 55-94
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From page 55... ...
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 furthering computing practice. This tradition is well represented by the extensive interplay between theory and practice in programming languages and compiler design, databases, machine architecture, operating systems, distributed computing, and computer graphics.
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From page 56... ...
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.
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From 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 involved in the design, implementation/ and analysis of these expert mental inadequacies in any given genershon of computing technology ~iH be better understood, laying the groundwork for the invention of the next generation.
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From page 58... ...
The committee believes that dramatic improvements in computing efficiency and performance will be possible only with the full participation of computer scientists and engineers. The third consideration is one of recognizing social responsibility.
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From page 59... ...
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.
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From page 60... ...
A broader research agenda for CS&E will enable CS&E researchers to make a better case for receiving support from nontraditional sources.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 research.5 An action plan to develop a broader agenda for CS&E that recognizes 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, industry, and commerce, and to broaden undergraduate and graduate education in CS&E accordingly.
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From page 61... ...
Even though CS&E was initially populated mainly by people from other disciplines,6 a natural tendency was to concentrate 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 worrying about applications in other disciplines, and a lack of incentives to pursue interdisciplinary work kept most researchers working irk the core areas.
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From page 62... ...
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 business community.
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From page 63... ...
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 processors. Finally, during its deliberations the committee found relatively few academic computer scientists or engineers with research interests that arise directly from the needs of the commercial domain.
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From page 64... ...
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:
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From page 65... ...
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CS&E Address substantive research problems in CS&E in the context 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 applicable to other problem domains.
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From page 66... ...
Academics, who are generally free to choose their areas of research without constraint, should be encouraged to select problems that involve commercial products as long as significant new kr~owledge is created and demonstrable intellectual achievement is the result. As computer scientists and engineers engage research problems that arise in other problem domains, the center of gravity of traditional CS&E research may shift.
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From page 67... ...
But it is clear today that funding sponsors are more selective about the directions in which they wish to focus their efforts, and they find willing allies in the many researchers who submit grant proposals for "basic" research in sponsor-preferred areas of interest. Framed as it is in the context of grand challenges in science and engineering, the HPCC Program is a good start toward a broader CS&E research agenda.
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From page 69... ...
Earth Sciences and the Environment Among the great challenges of computing is modeling the earth system, including the climate, hydrologic cycle, ocean circulation, growth of the biosphere, and gas exchange between the atmosphere and the terrestrial and oceanic biota. In this complex physical system are a multitude of phenomena that change on local, regional, and global scales.
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From page 70... ...
As a result, the concept of repeatability is in danger of being lost. Thus collaboration between CS&E and the earth sciences will be necessary; Box 2.5 describes one example of such an interaction.
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From page 72... ...
The preceding discussion suggests how a tough scientific problem requires solving generic and genuinely challenging CS&E problems. Progress will depend on more scientists knowing something about CS&E as a research discipline, and computer scientists and engineers knowing something about the scientific and technical problems in other disciplines.~7 Computational Biology Computational methods have a long history of application to problems in the physical sciences and engineering.
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From page 73... ...
The primary driving force behind the proliferation of computational techniques in biology and medicine has been the rapid development of computing technology, which has become increasingly less expensive and better adapted to the complex data-processing tasks required in these fields. Box 2.6 describes one example of a biological problem solved by applying a good algorithm developed by a computer scientist.
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From page 74... ...
together with advanced algor~hms for predicting structure may finally enable the prediction of protein structures from their amino acid sequence. Simulations of large molecular assemblies ~i]
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From page 75... ...
Diagnostic techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging are based on physical processes that need to be better understood if the diagnostic method is to achieve resolution on the scale of a single biological cell. A high level of understanding is reached if the measuring process for a sample can be simulated in its entirety, a task that requires monitoring the nuclear spin precession of millions of diffusing water molecules over many precession periods of their nuclear spins.
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From page 76... ...
The preceding possibilities for computational biology will depend on the availability of advanced computer technology, including very large massively parallel computers deployed at the national supercomputer centers and the national laboratories, smaller models of scalable parallel computers operating at many sites for program development and testing, concurrent computation exploited across networks of workstations, and new visualization techniques (perhaps making use of digital video) for data postprocessing and interactive computation)
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From page 77... ...
and the uses of computers that extend the state of the art. However, where the challenges of large-scale scientific computing center on the need to perform huge numbers of floating-point calculations and to display huge amounts of data in comprehensible form, the challenges of largescale commercial computing arise from the need to: · process and store huge amounts of data, often with relatively little processing for each piece of data.
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From page 78... ...
FIGURE 2.3 The potential down side of "greater" functionality. Although the technology involved in this example is voice mail, the lesson of the example applies at least as well to computing technology.
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From page 79... ...
Software Development Metrics and Modeling Software development metrics and modeling present vast research opportunities. To a large extent these topics have "fallen through the cracks" because computer scientists often view these areas as the domain of management, while management scientists often view them as the domain of computer science.
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From page 80... ...
Research aimed at creating powerful but flexible technology and standards that facilitate interoperation among heterogeneous computer systems and convenient electronic data interchange will be a boon to all computer users, but will be especially valuable for business applications.l9 Although in many cases the lack of interoperability is a problem of choice for manufacturers that opt for proprietary architectures and data formats, the development of good standards nevertheless requires technical expertise. For example, interconnected devices or software conforming to a set of poorly designed or inconsistent standards may exhibit unanticipated interactions or behaviors, possibly as the result of timing problems.
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From page 81... ...
Commonly known as "groupware," such computing technology might, for example, provide ways for collaborative annotation of a single document, facilitate electronic interaction by keeping track of different threads of discussion in e-mail messages, or support decisionmaking processes in large groups. The development of groupware customized to the requirements of individual offices and different work styles will require careful attention to the social context in which such groupware will be used (Box 2.8~.
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From page 83... ...
But for retrieval other than simple regurgitation of pages by number, one needs digital text. Making optical character recognition practical on a library scale requires advances in natural language processing, to say nothing of new special-purpose architectures for image and pattern recognition.
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From page 84... ...
Presentation Electronic libraries promise simultaneous availability to all readers, access at a distance, and easy capture of relevant passages. Offsetting 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.
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From page 85... ...
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 graduate and undergraduate CS&E education will be necessary if a broader agenda is to win wide acceptance.
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From page 86... ...
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 customers 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.
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From page 87... ...
PREREQUISITES FOR BROADENING Although the committee found a reasonable consensus that academic CS&E would benefit from a broader agenda, the inward-looking 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.
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From page 88... ...
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.
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From page 89... ...
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.
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From page 90... ...
Intellectually substantive CS&E issues and themes can be found in many problem domains, from biology and the earth sciences 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 academic computer scientist or engineer.
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From page 91... ...
position paper notes that "analyzing how computer science and engineering R&D can assist with solving national and international needs can result in new opportunities and directions, such as increasing funding and more diverse funding sources." See Association for Computing Machinery, "The Scope and Directions of Computer Science: Building a Research Agenda," Communications of the Associationfor Computing Machinery, Volume 34(10) , October 1991, p.
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From page 92... ...
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 Computer Science: Building a Research Agenda," Communications of the ACM, Volume 34(10)
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From page 93... ...
18. For example, the American Express Company and Schlumberger, both stalwarts of the American business community, will be among the first organizations to purchase a massively parallel computer recently offered for sale by the Thinking Machines Corporation.
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From page 94... ...
(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.)
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