Reed's Ruminations: A Blog by Dan Reed

A Taste of Sherbet

As we face a global economic crisis that rivals or exceeds anything most of us have ever experienced, the western world's traditional holiday season is in flight. In the U.S., we are teetering in that interregnum between the Presidential election and the Inauguration, between the celebrations of Thanksgiving and the New Year, between economic security and economic desolation. All of which reminds me yet again how important – how absolutely critical – opportunity really is, as the nourishment of dreams imagined and unimagined.

Herewith is a modest story from my own past, recreated as best I can from my memory as a boy in a small southern town. I wasn't special, I was just fortunate; someone gave me an unexpected opportunity, a chance when none seemed possible. It was just a taste of sherbet, but it was a glimpse of a world unknown.

Each of us bears generational debts that can only be paid forward. It is especially important to pay those debts now, in these perilous economic times. I am still trying to pay mine, grateful debtor that I am.

Ozark Poor

It was a small Arkansas town like thousands of others scattered across the American South, where poor people gathered to hear fundamentalist preachers rail against the evils of sin and threaten eternal damnation for all who strayed from the straight and narrow way. I was ten years old, wearing my Sunday best, sitting on a hard church bench as the preacher opened the doors to hell and showed us the fiery punishment that awaited pool sharks, pinball wizards, card players, dancers of all kinds, and beer drinkers too. If Cotton Mather had not already cornered the market on sinners in the hands of an angry God, Meredith Wilson's The Music Man would have covered the rest (though we couldn't dance). If it was fun, we eyed it warily; odds were it was a sin.

We walked out of church on that muggy Sunday night in the Ozark foothills, and to my stunned surprise, my daddy said we were going to the town's only restaurant for coffee. This was so extraordinary that the event is burned indelibly in my memory after over forty years. We were poor; not lower middle class, not blue collar, not economically challenged, just backwoods, red clay poor. We weren't the only ones who knew what it was like to eat Saltines and Mason jars of tomato juice and be thankful for government commodities – surplus food distributed to the poor. Nor were we the poorest of the poor either; the parents of the little girl up the road couldn't afford to buy her a writing tablet for school. We just happened to be the Arkansas hillbilly clan (but outsiders called us that at the risk of a fistfight) of the southern poor Rick Bragg later chronicled so poignantly in All Over But The Shoutin'

Lessons Learned Early

I was just a kid, but I knew all of this without being told. When you lead a hardscrabble life, you learn certain things early. Life is not fair. Don't expect things you can't possibly have, even if others do. Don't ever shame your parents in public – the hurt in their eyes is punishment enough. Above all, don't dream things that can't come true. New blue jeans from the seconds store always trumped fantasies from the Sears Christmas Wishbook.

I knew money was precious, and it wasn't to be wasted. Going to the diner was a truly profligate expense, a Beluga caviar and Dom Pérignon event for a family that ate home canned green beans and hand-picked polk salad. It was not something we did often.

I realized later that my dad, despite working for the princely sum of $40/week (less than the federal minimum wage at the time), was a proud man. He wanted to socialize, to see and be seen, despite the fact that a dollar cost him an hour of labor in the hot sun. Off to the restaurant we went, the expense be damned. (Of course, I wouldn't have dreamt of saying damned; that would have been a sin.)

A Small Town Diner

Let's talk backwoods culture for a moment. The word restaurant conjures unwarranted images of grandeur. It was a small town diner -- a truck stop diner – built from cinder blocks with a flat roof and a tile floor. I can still close my eyes and see the worn Formica on each table and the cracked naugahyde that covered the booths. There were two big, semi-circular booths in the front corners, three standard booths on each side, a counter along the back and 4-5 tired looking tables in the middle. An old Wurlitzer jukebox and that work of the devil -- a pinball machine – stood guard on each side of the screened front door.

My parents and I walked into the diner, and my daddy spied two families from church sitting in the corner booth, next to the pinball machine. Spira mirabilis! These people were, by my family's standards, as rich as John D. Rockefeller. The mothers were dressed in new, store-bought clothes with real costume jewelry, and the fathers were wearing real suits with ties.

I was afraid, not just because we might not be able to afford to be there, but because we were mighty close to sin and damnation. I knew both the jukebox and the pinball machines were works of the devil, only one step removed from that true den of iniquity down the road – the pool hall – and I could see them both from where I stood.

Nevertheless, I'd been in the diner before with my parents, and I had watched in awe as some teenager placed a quarter in the jukebox. Imagine, having a quarter to spend on music! The jukebox arm moved, picked up and played 45 RPM records one by one, three of them for a quarter. The pinball machine was even worse, though, 'cause it had gaudy images designed to lure tired truckers into spilling a few coins on a game of chance. The diner's air conditioner was running, itself a wonderful experience compared to the box fan at home, but I could feel the heat from Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace.

Without a word, I slipped into a nearby booth with the other kids. In due time, the waitress came to take orders from my parents (coffee and a Coke), then stopped to see what I wanted. I knew better than to order anything without my daddy's permission, so I looked up and saw him watching me. He nodded slightly, and I ordered what I knew that meant – a ten cent Coke, a rare treat.

While I savored that cool goodness, the six year old boy sitting across from me was toying with something wondrous and amazing, something I had never seen. The concoction nestled cold, orange and creamy in the bowl, and moisture glistened like rough cut diamonds on the chilled surface. I watched transfixed as he poked idly at that creamy deliciousness, bored and sated. It was orange sherbet; it was a world beyond my reach.

To my surprise, the boy pushed the bowl across the table, said he wasn't hungry and asked if I'd like a taste. Did I ever! Boys like me didn't eat sherbet; we'd never seen sherbet; we'd never even heard of it. Orange Nehi was more our speed, in a world circumscribed by fried okra and cucumber salad.

I didn't need to be asked twice. I grabbed the bowl and spoon before he changed his mind. It was the creamiest thing I had ever tasted, orange, cold and delicious. It was just a taste of sherbet, but it was a glimpse into a world unseen, one where dreams were possible, where they might even come true. It was just a taste of sherbet, but it changed my life. I can still taste it even now.

Realizing Dreams

For years, I studied and dreamed. At the sawmill where my daddy worked and for a time I did too, the tourists stopped to take pictures, because they thought it was a scene right out of Deliverance. They didn't understand how hard people struggled day to day.

I was lucky; I escaped via the kindness of teachers who arranged the National Merit examination and a scholarship funded by the Winthrop Rockefeller foundation. I am thankful to this day.

My dreams have come true. I've traveled the world, seen amazing things, communed with the rich and powerful, studied with the wise and knowledgeable. I even own a pool table, though I can't play pinball for the life of me without hearing the preacher's voice warning of sin and eternal damnation.

Still, it's the sherbet I remember. Each time I see dreams deferred, hope abandoned and opportunity denied, my thoughts turn back to that Arkansas diner and that hot summer night. I wish I could offer everyone a taste of sherbet and the chance I have had at a life not yet unimagined.

Make no mistake, the sherbet really matters. It is the hope and the dream of the future. Share the sherbet, share the opportunity. Repay the generational debt. It matters -- now more than ever.

Where There Is No Vision, the People Perish

I write a regular column for the Computing Research Association (CRA)'s newsletter, Computing Research News (CRN). The following is a preview of my upcoming column, which will appear in the December 2008 issue.

The hearing room for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology is as formal and imposing as the name suggests. Each time I have testified there on aspects of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program, I have paused to reflect on the two quotations inscribed there. The quotations command attention because they are inscribed on the paneled wall behind the seats of the committee members – and all witnesses face the committee and that wall.

The first inscription, a line from the poet Alfred Tennyson, captures the rapturous joy that is birthed by scientific discovery:

For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see

Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be

After all, this is why we were first attracted to research in general and computing in particular. It satisfies some of our oldest and deepest yearnings, to understand what and how and why.

The second inscription, from Proverbs, is a sobering warning to those who do not feel the siren call of intellectual curiosity, marshaled by strategy and tactics:

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

In simple, yet haunting lines, these two Janus-like invocations capture the rewards that accrue to those who both articulate and – equally critically – act on visions, and they warn of the dire consequences for those do not. I pause and ponder both each time I enter the House hearing room.

Enabling Innovation

I have often reflected on the critical ingredient to discovery and innovation. Is it knowledge? Without doubt, for each discovery builds on the vast and interconnected web of previous discoveries. Is it talent? Certainly, as anyone who has ever taught a class knows and understands. Is it persistence? Absolutely, for Edison was right; discovery is 99 percent perspiration.

Above all, I believe the most precious and rare element is vision. It is the ability to imagine what could be, to see what is invisible to most and obvious to only a few. It is that ineffable notion of taste, where one must choose compelling problems from among a plethora of seemingly equally inviting ones. More generally, vision is navigating the shoals between the treacherous rocks of the truly impossible and the placid waters of the purely pedestrian.

Computing at the Crossroads

Over the last sixty years, computing has profoundly affected commerce, science and society. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, we find ourselves at an intellectual and emotional crossroads, facing a metaphorical midlife crisis. We are debating the nature of computing education – what are the essential elements of computing writ large – and the compelling intra- and interdisciplinary research visions for the future.

I believe we must dream big and articulate visions for the future that inspire and attracts. Much as physics asks deep and powerful questions about the origins of the universe and the principles via which it operates, and biology asks equally deep questions about the nature of life and its processes, computing can and must ask profound questions about the nature of computability, information, communication, intelligence, perception and their manifestations in technology. Simply put, we need compelling visions for the future and the wonders that would be.

We face perilous economic times, and our research and education institutions are under enormous financial strain. I cannot imagine a more important time to articulate a shared vision for the future of computing and mount the initiatives needed to make those wonders a 21^st century reality. The consequences of the alternative are unimaginable.