Two recent Information Week articles are of interest. The first article discusses the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technologys newly released report regarding the IT workforce and the need to increase the representation of women and minorities to keep America competitive. This was a theme at the recent conferences in Florida, the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Information Technology. The report is free and available at the CPST web site but you do have to register to access it.
The second article is about the National Research Council report encouraging open exchange of science and technology research on the international stage. The article states the Councils understanding that there are matters of national security that the United States is trying to protect by classifying research but that the possibility that the United States might lose its edge in technology and research represents one of the greatest risks to national security. Again the report is available online and is worth reading.
Computerworld has fantastic coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch (Oct. 4th, 1957) and why, in a sense, we can thank the Soviets for helping create the conditions that led the U.S. to become the technological superpower we’ve become.
Computerworld’s Gary Anthes’ piece “Happy Birthday Sputnik! (Thanks for the Internet)” does a great job of chronicling how the federal government’s reaction to the surprising Soviet launch created an agency and a research funding culture that proved so extraordinarily productive that nearly every billion-dollar sub-sector of the IT economy today bears its stamp. In the process, he checks in with a number of important figures from computer science who note that the productive culture within DARPA responsible for much of that early innovation seems to have waned — and perhaps isn’t even possible today.
Rather than quote snippets from the piece, I’d just encourage you to read all of it — it’s the piece I would’ve tried to write in honor of Sputnik’s 50th if Anthens hadn’t (I’m glad he did…it’s assuredly better than anything I would’ve come up with).
Two other portions of the coverage are worth checking out, too. Computerworld did a pretty good job of simplifying the CSTB’s “tire tracks” chart that shows the development of technologies from the initial research in university or industry labs to the time the products that resulted became billion-dollar industries.
And there’s a good interview with former (D)ARPA director Charles M. Herzfeld on the state of IT research now.
It’s all definitely worth a read.
Recognizing that the Pentagon’s science and technology investment “may be inadequate to meet the imposing security threats that challenge our Nation and may not be adequately robust to take advantage of key scientific and technological opportunities that offer breakthrough advantages to our warfighters,” John Young, the current Director of Defense Research and Engineering, has written a pretty remarkable memo to the Secretary of Defense asking for a substantial increase in funding. In his request, he singles out several “priority science and technology areas,” along with about $9.5 billion in suggested increases. IT R&D figures prominently in his “straw man” proposal:
Foundational Sciences (including computing sciences) — $300 – $500 M a year increase (he notes that DOD has been “coasting on the basic science investments of the last century” and writes what we’ve been saying for quite a while: “The DOD must dramatically re-energize and re-invigorate the nation’s foremost scientific minds, especially those in early and mid-career, to focus on discovery, innovation, and synthesis in the physical and analytical sciences most crucial to our Nation’s security.”)
Information Warfare — $100-200 M per year increase
Information Assurance – $100-200 M per year increase
Networking Technologies — $40-70 M per year increase
Organiziation, Fusion, and Mining Large Data Sets — $40-60M per year increase
Software Development Technology — $40-70M per year increase
Autonomous Operation of Networks of Unmanned Vehicles in Complex Environments — $100 M per year
Disparate Sensors, Communication and Spectrum Management — $500 M per year
The memo containing the complete list of priorities is available from InsideDefense.com (subscription required). Overall, Young is proposing about $9.5 billion in increases from FY09-FY13 that would get DOD S&T spending close to 3 percent of the agency’s budget (it’s at about 2.2 percent right now). While there’s no guarantee that the comptroller or the SecDef will give him anywhere close to that amount (though the current SecDef is perhaps more sympathetic to S&T than his predecessor), this sort of stage-setting from the DDR&E is pretty remarkable.
InsideDefense also has an article (sub. req’d) detailing the memo with some reaction from think-tanky-types, which is also worth reading if you’ve got a subscription.
From the CCC Blog
- A Retrospective on Alan Turing’s Influence Erwin Gianchandani
- Microsoft Research Names 2012 Faculty Fellows Erwin Gianchandani
- Revisiting “Where the jobs are…” Erwin Gianchandani
- “Troves of Personal Data, Forbidden to Researchers” Erwin Gianchandani