Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Public Intellectuals

Foreign Policy has brought out a "list of top 100 public intellectuals", a list that contains one computer scientist (Neil Gershenfeld of MIT). Before I continue, let me insert two caveats:
  • Yes, I do think lists like this are beauty contests
  • No, I don't think computer scientists should aspire to being on such lists
Having said that, here's what I'm wondering. We are in the middle of possibly the greatest era of technological disruption of all time, a disruption brought about by a mess of tubes called the Internet. We are seeing the fruits of computer science permeate daily life to a degree that relativity hasn't come even close to, whether it's RSA, recommendation systems, peer to peer file sharing, or what have you. The disruptions created by the Web have changed our society in radical ways: consider Facebook, Myspace and the whole array of social networking tools we use today.

And yet, we lack the voices that speak to this time and place. We lack cogent articulation of the tools that brought us here, of the wonders of Turing, Von Neumann, and others, of the fundamentally radical idea of the algorithm as an idiom. Or we lack recognition of those who do articulate such a vision of today's computationally-driven world.

We don't need to be on lists of public intellectuals, but we need to frame the role of computer science and computation in society today, before we get relegated to the role of glorified telephone repairmen.

6 comments:

  1. Note that Security has a lot of CS figures who are often quoted in the news -- Ed Felten, Ross Anderson, Bruce Schneier, Steve Bellovin...

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  2. Bruce Schneier
    http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/fact/681

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  3. i wouldn't worry about more people not being on that list.... that list was horrible for any field....

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  4. Hm--next door (at Cosmic Variation) it has been noted that the list contains very few physicists as well, and mostly biologists from the fields of natural sciences.

    I say our work is not photogenic enough. We'll get our share of famous faces once we have giant killer robots roaming the streets.

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  5. We lack cogent articulation of the tools that brought us here, of the wonders of Turing, Von Neumann, and others, of the fundamentally radical idea of the algorithm as an idiom.

    I agree with you by and large. However, we do have some intellectuals and great communicators who have made an effort to disseminate the key ideas in our field to the general, educated public. One example that comes to my mind is David Harel with his outstanding books "Computer Ltd: What They Really Can't Do" and "Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing".

    What our field needs is more people like him.

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  6. I agree. David Harel's book was one of the first ones I read on this topic, and is a kind of polestar for me as I think more about the problem of outreach.

    If you read the second sentence after the one you quote:
    "Or we lack recognition of those who do articulate such a vision of today's computationally-driven world."

    you will see that I do recognize those, like Bernard Chazelle, Christos Papadimitriou, and Scott Aaronson among others, who've definitely had impact "outside the field" in communicating the essence of computing. Jeanette Wing's 'Computational Thinking' initiative at the NSF is another example of such an effort.

    But we need to do more, and at various levels (middle/high schools, to other research disciplines, the public sphere, etc)

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