Reed's Ruminations: A Blog by Dan Reed

Lessons from Childhood: Fishing for Justice and Wisdom

I was five years old when I learned an important moral lesson in the red clay hills of the Arkansas Ozarks. That hot Sunday I learned the difference between rules and laws and their realization as mercy and justice. The lesson came not from the pulpit of the Sunday morning fire and brimstone preacher, but – as it should be – from the thoughtful interactions of two honest men. It was a different take on fishing for souls.

Warm, Powerful Warm

It was a sweltering southern Sunday afternoon. It was, as my grandpa Sidney Fraizer liked to say, “warm, powerful warm.” While the box fan roared vainly in the kitchen’s open door, blowing hot air into the even hotter house, outside, even the tree leaves hung limply, seeking respite from the heat.

As we sat in the shade, slowly marinating in our own sweat, watching condensation languidly trace a path down the side of our icy glasses of (sweet) tea and Kool-Aid, my dad suddenly announced we were going fishing.  Mind you, it was Sunday afternoon, and the evening church services were just a few hours away.

Hard church pews beckoned, where elderly women would desperately and futilely wave funeral home fans in the stifling heat, while the preacher thundered about sin and the hope of redemption. (I later thought hell could not be much hotter than a southern tent revival meeting.)

That we were going fishing was a big surprise to both my mother and me; my dad was not one to fish or hunt. However, when his mind was made up, my dad was rarely dissuaded, and my mother knew better than to try. She just turned to the practical and important task, making sure we all had something cool to drink while he fished.

Having announced that we were going fishing, my dad walked next door to my grandpa Frazier’s house and soon returned with an old Folgers coffee can (the ones with the key winder) filled with dirt and red wigglers, both dug from my grandpa’s worm bed. 

Unlike my dad, my grandpa Frazier was a fishing fiend, willing to drop a line in anything bigger than a mud puddle.  In later years, he and I were inseparable, as he told me stories about life and we fished the nearby creeks and rivers of his own childhood. We caught crawdads in the shallow creeks, seined for minnows, tended a worm bed, and rolled balls of Wheaties, all for bait we used to fish for perch, bluegills, bass, catfish, and rainbow trout. 

Along the way, we dangled from the railroad bridge trestle over Warm Fork, shivered in hip waders standing in Spring River, sat by the Baker and Lassiter fords, and cast lines from the Cold Springs bridge just off U.S. 63.  These are among the best memories of my young life. (See What Really Matters.)

Worms, Cars, and Fishing Holes

Now provisioned with worms and pitchers of sweet tea and Kool-Aid, we got in our old car, though I cannot remember if it were the aging Dodge with the worn out engine, the one my mom said, “wouldn’t pull the hat off your head,” or the balky Chevy with the broken transmission that made each shift into drive an uncertain experience, as we waited expectantly and uncertainly to see if we would lurch in the direction of the headlights or the taillights.  

The very phrase “old car” speaks to a certain Southern ethos and economic stratum, “old” being an unnecessary and superfluous adjective, occasionally explicit but most often implicit and unspoken. To cleave “old” from “car” would have been a grievous insult to an aging object that sat under our mulberry tree, gathering berry splatters and bird droppings. 

With rare exceptions, all the poor, rural and urban alike, drive an old car, differing only in vintage, decrepitude, scrapes, dents, rust, and visible applications of duct tape. They know bright and visceral fears, ones unknown to those better off. Will the old car start and run? Will it break down unexpectedly, leaving the driver stranded with no practical or financial recourse? Last but not least, will the gas in the tank, as evinced by that dashboard needle, always edging ominously toward empty, last until the next far-too-limited paycheck? 

Old cars create a life of quiet desperation among the poor, one my family knew all too well for multiple generations. Throughout my childhood, I never knew my dad to put more than $2 of gas in any of our old cars; a dollar in his pocket was always more valuable than a bit more gas in the tank. (See Livin’ Large on Three Cents a Bale.)

With the car windows down, we headed south from Mammoth Spring on Arkansas state road 289. I knew without asking that we were headed for a fishing hole my dad knew well – a shady spot near the Pilot Church on the Myatt – a creek that ran along the farm where he’d grown up, the son of a sharecropper.

To go fishing, my dad went home, to the place where he’d been born. (As a babe in arms, I’d cried for water during a long and hot Sunday sermon on water baptism at that same Pilot Church, but that is a story for another day.)

A Great Depression Childhood

Born in 1927, my dad often later said that rather than being raised, he’d been “jerked up,” more often working as free farm labor than being a child to be educated and nurtured. He received the equivalent of fifth grade education in a one room school house, and when his two older brothers went off to World War II, he was the oldest son left to help on the farm, before being drafted himself.  (My dad is in the back left in this World War II family photograph.) My dad spent the rest of his life trying to make up for what he missed, always reading and learning, a passion he passed on to me. (See Libraries: Arms Too Short to Feed the Mind and My Balm in Gilead.)

All this was nobody’s fault, just the reality of difficult times. With six children – my dad was the fourth – a blind wife (my grandmother Nora), and the Great Depression, my grandpa Richard “Rich” Reed and his family, like so many others, struggled to survive, raising row crops for cash near the creek bottom, where small slivers of better soil were the meager exceptions to the surrounding red clay of the northern Arkansas hills.  In such circumstances, sharecropping is at best a subsistence proposition, a few tens of acres, a mule drawn plow, and sunrise to sundown labor. Betwixt that, one grew garden edibles to feed the family. (See Low Hanging Fruit: Memories of Childhood.) 

My dad often told a story, one now burned in my memory, of a rare childhood joy.  On July 4^th, his father would head into town, the thriving metropolis of Saddle, Arkansas. There, he would buy lemons, a bag of sugar, and fifty pounds of ice, before heading home to make lemonade. It was a small thing, but it was a rare joy in an otherwise difficult childhood.

In retrospect, I think my dad found little pleasure in hunting and fishing because it reminded him so much of his difficult childhood, when hunting squirrels and rabbits and catching fish were survival actions rather than recreation or organic produce.  Nor was my mother’s family – my grandpa and grandma Frazier – in much better shape.  Throughout their lives, money was scarce, and times were hard.

The Law Arrives

At the Myatt, we pulled the old car off the gravel road into the shade, grabbed the fishing pole, the red wigglers, and cold drinks from the back seat, and settled down by the bank of the creek. Seated next to my mother, who was wearing a faded cotton sun dress with a cloth belt, I knew my job was simple – keep quiet, stay out of trouble, and watch. Little did I know how quickly that was to become important.

No sooner had my dad cast his baited hook into the water and settled down on the ground, than another car eased off the road and pulled up next to ours.  It was Orville, the local game warden, in his Arkansas Game and Fish Commission car. A rarity in town, the car was new and official looking, light green with a state logo on the side.

Seeing the car approach, my dad handed the fishing pole to me without a word. I looked at my mother with surprise; this was not part of the plan.  However, I was nothing if not an obedient and thoughtful child, an adult in a small body. If you explained what you wanted me to do and why it was the right and rational thing to do, I would quietly and unhesitatingly comply. Knowing this, my mother simply told me the truth, “You dad does not have a fishing license.  Hold the pole and be quiet.”  With big eyes, I did as I was told, uncertain but fearful.

Orville slipped out of the car, put on his Smoky Bear hat, and walked over to us.  This being a small town – a very small town of 825 according to the 1960 U.S. census – Orville knew both my mom and my dad, as well as our families. He and his wife lived just a few blocks from us, in a small house near main street in Mammoth Spring. His wife had been one of my mom’s school teachers, and a few years later she would be one of mine as well, kind and thoughtful.

Small talk ensued – how hot it was, how was the garden doing, were the fish biting. Gesturing to me, now holding the fishing pole tightly in both hands, my dad allowed that we had come out to the Myatt so he could teach me – the boy – how to fish.  This was patently false, a polite fiction, one even I recognized as such.  However, some story, any story, was necessary to justify us sitting on the creek bank with a fishing pole in the water. (For those of you who are city slickers, fishing and hunting licenses are not required for those younger than sixteen.)

Now, Orville knew my dad did not have a fishing license, and my dad knew Orville knew this. Orville knew several other things as well. Among them were the fact that my parents were in difficult financial straits. The ugly truth was simple.  My dad was unemployed, he had been for months, and the paltry unemployment checks were now gone.

Like many others, we depended on our garden for fresh and preserved produce, and canning tomatoes, beans, okra, corn, pickles, polk greens was my mother’s hot summer job. We were also grateful for the occasional government commodity my grandpa Frazier passed along. (I was partial to the government cheese; the canned meat left a lot to be desired. Perhaps that’s why I have always detested Spam.) 

Orville knew all this, and I knew it too, for I distinctly remember my parents’ furtive conversations about being down to their last five dollars. It is hard to hide the reality of being poor from a child; one learns certain things early, the most important of which is not to embarrass your parents by asking for things they cannot afford. (See A Taste of Sherbet.)

A Wise Decision

My dad was not an intentional scofflaw. He was an honest man, one I had already seen honor a promise, even when it was not in his best interests; a promise was a bond. The truth was, a fishing license was simply an expense that paled in importance to the weekly necessities, gasoline for the old car, and a few groceries to complement what we grew in our garden. We simply did not have money to spare, certainly not the small amount that a would be a $10 or $15 fine for fishing without a license. Orville knew this too.

Equally importantly, Orville knew my mother was the daughter of the only Justice of the Peace in town – the same Sidney Frazier who had given my dad the fishing worms, well aware that he had no fishing license. As Justice of the Peace, my grandpa Frazier adjudicated all petty crimes and misdemeanors, including all the hunting and fishing violations that were Orville’s responsibility. 

My grandpa would not look kindly on having his hardworking and law abiding, albeit unemployed, son-in-law ticketed. It was even more unlikely that any conviction would ensue – there were no fish on the stringer. In the improbable event my grandpa sided with Orville, the $10 fine would be back in my dad’s pocket before Orville’s car disappeared from site of the hearing, my grandpa’s living room.  My grandpa knew my parents needed the money more than the State of Arkansas.

Orville knew all this, my dad knew this, and my mom knew this too. Being respectful of small town realities – economic, social, and legal – and wisely understanding that the law, justice, and mercy were quite different things, Orville wished me good luck fishing, nodded to my parents, moseyed back to his car, and drove away.

After Orville disappeared, my dad sighed, then laughed, reclaimed the fishing pole, and asked my mom to pour him a sweet tea.  He proceeded to drown the rest of the worms, with nary a bite.

Honest lawbreakers, we drove home empty handed, with no fish on the stringer. In addition to mercy and kindness, perhaps there was justice – at least cosmic justice – after all.

Coda

That hot Sunday afternoon, I learned an important lesson from two good men, each trying to do the right thing. During a difficult time, my dad sought comfort in fishing and the memories of his childhood home.  Orville respected that, even if it did not exactly comport with the letter of the law. Even more importantly, he was wise enough not to embarrass a proud and honest man in front of his family.

What’s the moral? Laws are rules intended to ensure fairness and safety, albeit with context limited by history and generalizations. Justice and mercy are humane applications of those rules, tempered by specific circumstances and human wisdom. 

Yes, the law matters, but compassion, wisdom, and justice matter even more. At five years old, I first learned this important truth, not from the Sunday preacher, but from two good men doing what was right.

On WSPRs, Geeks, and Luftballons

A few weeks ago, a large, high altitude balloon carrying a large payload of Chinese surveillance equipment was shot down by a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor using an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile.  The F-22 was scrambled from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, the downed balloon landed offshore in South Carolina, and an intensive intelligence salvage operation began immediately.  This was a large, likely multiple ton, balloon with a substantial array of solar cells, navigational and directional capability, and electronic packages. Because my wife and I own a beach house in North Carolina, near the South Carolina border, I received local warnings to report and deliver any floating debris to the authorities.

In response, Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, canceled his planned trip to Beijing, and Sino-American geopolitical relations, already strained, sank even further, with public accusations and recriminations flying fast and furiously. The resulting consternation ignited political posturing by pundits across the political spectrum, which, in turn, led to strident calls for a public statement from the U.S. President.

How could this happen?  Why wasn’t the balloon detected earlier?  Why was it allowed to drift across the continental United States before being shot down? Members of the U.S. Congress wanted answers, and they got them via classified national security briefings. Meanwhile, NORAD increased its aerial and near-space surveillance, given heightened national awareness and concern about other objects in the sky. 

International law is clear that satellite overflights of a country (i.e., from space) are allowed.  Conversely, countries have the complete right to control the airspace over their territory, though international law is a bit uncertain about the rules at very high altitudes. As a practical matter, might makes right; if you can shoot it down over your territory, you have the right to do so. (Remember the history of the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and note that the aerial photograph of the balloon above was taken from a U-2.) Relatedly, radio transmissions are controlled by International Telecommunications Union (ITU) treaty, as part of the United Nations.

Putting aside the very real and important national security questions behind the Chinese balloon and the calculations and mis-calculations that led to its path over the United States, the public hysteria and political ennui brought to mind the West German band Nena’s song, Neunundneunzig Luftballons (99 Air Balloons), which became an international hit in 1983 as an anti-war protest. It’s a poignant and melancholy Cold War story of a group of air balloons accidently triggering a 99-year global war, leaving only devastation in its wake.  (You can find it on YouTube, and the German lyrics are just as haunting today as they were forty years ago.)

            Original German                                          English Translation
            Neunundneunzig Jahre Krieg                        Ninety-nine Years of War
            Ließen keinen Platz für Sieger                       Left no room for winners
            Kriegsminister gibt's nicht mehr                    There is no longer a Minister of War
            Und auch keine Düsenflieger                        And also no jet planes
            Heute zieh' ich meine Runden                      Today I'm doing my rounds
            Seh' die Welt in Trümmern liegen                 See the world in ruins
            Hab' 'n Luftballon gefunden                          Found a balloon
            Denk' an dich und lass' ihn fliegen               Think of yourself and let him fly

An English version of the song, entitled 99 Red Balloons, was released shortly thereafter, with somewhat different lyrics, changed to scan with the original melody, and with a more American-centric story. However, many felt it lacked the punch and ennui of the German original, and it failed to achieve the same chart success. My always limited German language skills have atrophied with time, but I am inclined to agree.

But Wait, There Are More!

In the wake of the balloon shootdown, questions were asked; fingers were pointed; answers were demanded. Were there other, heretofore undetected, balloons floating over the United States and Canada? It turned out the answer was yes, and UFOs, literally – unidentified, flying objects – were back in the news. Soon, an unidentified balloon was reported to be drifting over Alaska and heading into the Canadian Yukon, followed by another over Lake Huron, the latter described as “small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it.”

After diplomatic consultations between the U.S. and Canada, both were shot also down by the U.S. Air Force. (Technical aside:  One should be impressed at NORAD’s surveillance capability, which can identify extremely small objects in the large airspace over North America.)

Were aliens in flying saucers involved?  Was North America under threat?  Was there a new Cold War “balloon gap,” analogous to the infamous “missile gap?” Inquiring minds wanted to know.

In a “you can’t make this stuff up” farce, a comedic mashup of fiction and reality – Dr. Strangelove (“You can’t fight in here.  This is the War Room!”), Neunundneunzig Luftballons, and national security fears – the news was soon filled with speculation that the United States may have used a $100M advanced fighter jet and $500K missile to shoot down a $250 amateur science project, a pico-balloon carrying a ~10 gram, extremely low power amateur “ham” radio transmitter. (See Hobby Club’s Missing Balloon Feared Shot Down By USAF.) 

The group potentially responsible for a balloon traversing America’s airspace is – wait for it – the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB), a group of pico-balloon amateur radio  and science enthusiasts whose club was named in homage to the 2009 animated movie Up. If you are thinking these people hardly look like a threat, you would be right; the NIBBB notes that the club’s youngest member is only eleven years old.

One of their balloons, with amateur radio call sign K9YO-15 (balloons use the FCC call sign of the owner and a distinguishing number), was launched from Libertyville, Illinois on October 10^th, 2022 and had circumnavigated the Earth multiple times before the club lost contact with it.  The balloon’s last reported position was at 38,910 feet off the coast of Alaska on February 10^th, 2023.  The NOAA HYSPLIT wind model projected the balloon to be over the Yukon on February 11, 2023.

On that same day, NORAD downed an unidentified airborne object in the Yukon. The Pentagon issued a press release, and the Canadians searched briefly for the downed fragments but found nothing. 

However, given the small size of the balloon and the remote environment, it is unlikely that any debris will ever be found, leaving it uncertain if K9YO-15 was indeed the object shot down.  The NIBBB responded with equanimity as well, noting:

As has been widely reported, no part of the object shot down by the US Air Force jet over the Yukon territory has been recovered. Until that happens and that object is confirmed to be an identifiable pico-balloon, any assertions or claims that our balloon was involved in that incident are not supported by facts.

Even as the klieg lights of sudden and unexpected fame can be harsh and unforgiving, the NIBBB website shares the group’s passion for pico-balloons and amateur radio, including detailed construction details and a bill of materials.

That’s quite the story, with lots of jargon.  Let’s deconstruct this just a bit, starting with pico-balloons.

That’s My Science Project

What’s a pico-balloon, you say?  As the name suggests, it is a very small balloon, such as the Mylar kind filled with helium one might purchase from a hobby store or a florist shop. As anyone who has brought one to a birthday or graduation party knows, they can be purchased for a few tens of dollars, and are at most a few feet in diameter.

Most such balloons are soon discarded, though a few escape, intentionally or unintentionally, and float into the sky, never to be seen again. How high can they go?  The answer depends on the characteristics of the balloon material, gravity, and the Archimedes principle.  Scientifically, a balloon rises until it reaches neutral buoyancy (i.e., the balloon’s average density equals that of the surrounding air and the buoyant force balances gravity).

Simple Mylar party balloons are unlikely to rise to altitudes beyond 6-9 kilometers (20,000-30,000 feet), limited by either helium leakage or material stresses. In contrast, hardier balloons made of polyethylene or latex are neutrally buoyant up to fifteen kilometers (~50,000 feet). Bear in mind that these pico-balloons are much, much smaller than weather balloons ,and are often less than one meter in diameter. As such, their payload is also quite small, only 10+ grams (0.02 pounds for those of us in non-metric countries), and they are easily affected by weather, even frost.  For this reason, experienced pico-balloon aficionados prefer balloons that can rise to higher altitudes above most weather.

Under Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) 14 CFR Part 101, such small balloons can be launched by anyone, anywhere in the United States, without the need for FAA approval or reporting.  The only requirements are that the balloon’s payload weighs less than six pounds, and the balloon is launched in an unrestricted area. Given the low weight of pico-balloons, the jet stream can easily carry a balloon around the world, and there are many tracked and reported cases of such circumnavigation.

Why might anyone want to do this?

The truth is that people do such things because they are possible and they are cool. After all, humans did not build the Gossamer Albatross to usher in a new era of human powered aviation. They did it because building a human powered airplane that could cross the English Channel was the union of technological prowess and human inspiration; it was the epitome of cool. (See Science: It’s About the Wide-Eyed Wonder.)

Amateur radio pico-balloon enthusiasts are no different. Yes, the technical answer is that amateur “ham” radio enthusiasts often use pico-balloons to study the atmosphere and radio propagation characteristics, but the joy is in the construction and the operation. In such cases, the payload consists of a GPS tracker for location, a WSPR or APRS radio transmitter, an inexpensive micro-controller such as an Arduino to manage the transmitter, and a few solar cells to power everything. A complete package, including the balloon, can be assembled for at most a few hundred dollars.

What’s WSPR, you say?  It’s an acronym for Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR). The protocol was designed by Nobel Laureate and avid ham radio operator, Joe Taylor, and is intended to test propagation paths on the medium frequency (MF) and high frequency (HF) amateur radio bands using very low (and I do mean very low) power transmissions. A typical WSPR message contains the licensed amateur radio operator’s call sign, the Maidenhead grid locator of their rough location, and the transmitter power in dBm.  The entire message fits in 50 bits. Transmitting such a 50-bit WSPR message takes 110 seconds at 1.46 baud.

Okay, let’s now reconstruct the phrase “pico-balloon carrying an extremely low power amateur ham radio transmitter.”  There are several design options of varying price and sophistication, but here are the elements of a globe-circling amateur balloon, all within the expertise of amateurs and even (with supervision) high school science enthusiasts

• One small balloon (~$50 from Yokohama Balloon or ~$150 for a slightly more expensive research version from Scientific Balloons)
• Helium canister for balloon charging (~$75)
• Lightweight (~10 gram) payload, custom designed or purchased (e.g., ~$90 ZachTek WSPR controller or ~$130 QRPLabs LightAPRS-W tracker) h containing
  • GPS tracker
  • Microcontroller (e.g., Atmel 8-bit AVR microcontroller)
  • WSPR and/or ARPS transmitter
  • Solar cells for electrical power
• Dangling 0.005-inch wire dipole antenna of resonant length for the desired frequency (~33 feet for the 20m radio band)
• Open source software
  • Microcontroller configuration (call sign, Maidenhead locator, …)
  • Flight path prediction (e.g., NOAA HYSPLIT model or com)
  • Pico-balloon tracking collaborations (e.g., https://amateur.sondehub.org/ or http://lu7aa.org/wsprset.asp)

I would have been thrilled beyond measure to have had the opportunity to participate in such an activity as a student. Such projects are precisely the kind of experiential science education that can excite students, filling them with the realization that science is not a desiccated recitation of facts, but rather is an endeavor filled with passion and excitement. We need many more such experiences if we are to attract the millions of additional STEM workers this country needs to remain globally competitive. (See For Science and Society, The Future Begins with Better Dreams.)

My Geek Bona Fides

During the COVID-19 pandemic, my days (and often my nights) were consumed with managing the evolving crisis and ensuring the academic enterprise of the University of Utah continued with as few disruptions as possible.  Given the stress and uncertainty, I regularly counseled others to spend some time away from work doing something fulfilling and emotionally satisfying, lest they be overwhelmed by uncertain and rapidly changing events. (See The Simple Things Matter, Most of All Now.)  Knowing I should heed my own advice, I sought solace and distraction in my own happy place – science and technology. 

My first stop was my digital astrophotography hobby, which though always rewarding, proved uncertain, given the vagaries of Utah weather.  More practically, the late nights were incompatible with my day job due to sleep deprivation. After that, I turned to writing (See My Balm in Gilead) and, finally, to my tried and true friend, computing technology.

First, I developed an end-to-end suite of software for low-power, wireless sensors, using an inexpensive ESP32 microcontroller, LoRaWAN low power wireless transceivers, environmental sensors, and open source software tools.  All of this served as a citizen science complement to the larger SAGE project of which I am a part. (See Cyberinfrastructure: Lots of Room at the Edge.)

With the sensor suite complete, I studied for and passed the three FCC-mandated examinations – technician, general, and amateur extra – to become a fully licensed amateur radio operator.  The study materials gave me an opportunity to refresh my memories of electricity and magnetism (E&M) from undergraduate physics and also to delve more deeply into antenna and radio transceiver design.  The geek in me wished the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) examination materials had been a bit more mathematical, as many of the concepts are best understood via their roots in Maxwell’s equations.

All of which brings me back to pico-balloons and the “because we can” excitement.

First, armed with an ICOM-7300 radio and a trusty PC, I fired up WSJT-X and transmitted WSPR messages (radio callsign KK7EUJ, maidenhead grid locator DP40cp) at one milliwatt on the 20M HF band (14.0956 MHz) using my house’s gutter as an end-fed-random-wire (EFRW) antenna. Reflecting the effectiveness of WSPR encoding in a high noise, low power environment, these WSPR messages have been received by amateur stations across the entire continental United States, as shown at the right.

Second, I have written extensive code for the ESP32 and its smaller, 8 and 16 bit cousins, the ESP8266 and Arduino, the latter based on the Atmel 8-bit AVR microcontroller. Just as the proliferation of powerful, open source software has enabled construction of complex toolkits, so too have open source libraries of hardware components and powerful, open source design tools (e.g., KiCAD) facilitated design of inexpensive, custom hardware boards. As a complement to the wireless sensor library, I have also specified the design of custom printed circuit boards (PCBs), with GPS, sensors, and ESP32, which have been inexpensively fabricated in varying quantities by one of many fabrication firms.

Put another way, I realized I had followed the same path as my pico-balloon compatriots, using open source software and easily designed open source hardware to build new and interesting projects, ones that in the past would have been only within the reach of nation-states.

Coda

Sino-American relations remain deeply strained, and not just because of the surveillance balloon. The global battle for 21^st century geopolitical hegemony is underway, waged via economic competition, trade sanctions, diplomacy and political rhetoric, and military posturing. There seems little doubt that we are entering a new political era, one fraught with uncertainty.

In the midst of all this, I was on Capitol Hill just days after the downing of the Chinese balloon, discussing the importance of greater U.S. research investments and developing the domestic STEM workforce. I have been working with the National Science Board (NSB) on the intersection of dual use technologies, basic scientific research, economic competitiveness, and national security. In addition to a variety of meetings on Capitol Hill, I have invited the White House National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, to join the NSB in discussions.

Meanwhile, no alien UFOs have been confirmed, unless the definition of alien includes a loose affiliation of geeks (young and old), all fascinated by the combination of electronics, software development, atmospheric sciences, mathematics and coding theory, ionospheric electromagnetic propagation, and small balloons, and all wishing to share their scientific passion with others.  Could they be?  They might be. The signs and omens are all there. Yes, they are.  I am proud to say those are my people.

I am a geek, albeit an aging (and balding) left-handed, myopic one, some of those adjectives necessarily being implied by the geek nom de guerre.  I will try not to trigger an international incident by launching any pico-balloons of my own, but I will not rest in encouraging the passion of discovery in young minds.

Nena WSPRed rightly about the Luftballons:

        Man, who would have thought
        That it will come to this
        Because of ninety-nine balloons

Holiday Explanations: So, What Do You Do?

Any young researcher, whether in academia or a government laboratory, who spends time with childhood friends and extended family over the holidays, will undoubtedly be asked, “What do you do?” Red Alert! Shields Up! Brace for Impact!

This is not an academic question, posed by a colleague and potential collaborator, where an extended, deeply technical answer is both expected and desired.   No, this is a potential social trap, one that has ensnared more than one naïve academic in its steely jaws. With the exception of your parents, and maybe your therapist, the putative interlocutor does not really want to know; they are simply feigning interest to stimulate social discourse.

The Social Conundrum

Yes, you are excited and passionate about what you are doing, and you should be.  After all, the scientific process may be the most successful intellectual endeavor in human history, demonstrably capable of illuminating the three big and enduring questions:  matter and the universe, life and its processes, and the human condition.  It has been and always will be about the age-old desire to explore and to understand, and in doing so, make life better for those around us.

Alas, you are fighting ingrained stereotypes and misinformation.  Everyone knows what a plumber does, but few people understand how science is really conducted.  Their models are usually the (sadly) boring experiences of primary and secondary school science, which often made after-school detention look attractive by comparison.  Class, what are the steps of the scientific method?  What is DNA? What causes it to snow?  These are important and interesting questions, but they are desiccated recitations, lacking all the joy of curiosity and the excitement of discovery that motivate every intellectual explorer, whether aged 8 or 50, who doggedly and persistently keeps asking “Why?” and “How?” (Editorial comment: We must stop ingraining scientific disdain and dislike in generations of students. See The Epistemology of Science and For Science and Society, the Future Begins with Better Dreams.)

Alternatively, the scientific understanding of your family and friends may be shaped by the Hollywood stereotypes perpetuated on television and the movies.  You know the ones I mean.  There’s the hacker tapping on the keyboard for a few seconds, then exclaiming, “I’m in.” (Brute force attacks on public key cryptography systems are exceedingly time consuming and difficult. Oh, and there are fascinating mathematical topics at the intersection of quantum computing and homomorphic encryption. Stand down; your spidey-sense tingling – the social trap is near.) Then there’s Spock or Scotty conjuring a scientific miracle to save the Enterprise before the next commercial break. Or, and this one beggars the imagination, the crime laboratory that does precise facial recognition using nine pixels from a VHS video tape recovered from a convenience store’s ancient, analog surveillance system.

You know the reality is far different. Science involves long hours of toil, filled with dead ends – experiments that do not work, which can be even more frustrating than failing, and elegant theories that are crushed by contradictory data – confounded with balky instruments, uncooperative specimens, and buggy code – and often fueled by hot coffee and cold pizza. Conversely, the reward is something transcendent, unraveling a mystery older than history and being the first person to ever understand the answer to a vexing scientific question.  At its best, science is child-like wonder as a lifelong passion.  Why wouldn’t you be excited? After all, you are doing Cool Stuff^TM that solves nature’s mysteries and might change the world! (See Science: It’s About the Wide-Eyed Wonder.)

Yes, you are fighting stereotypes as you sit at the holiday dinner table. Among them is the hoary cliché, one every scholar resignedly learns at some point in their career:

You learn more and more about less and less, until you know everything about nothing.  Then, we give you a Ph.D.

The positive interpretation speaks to the specialization and depth required to truly understand a topic and extend, even marginally, the boundaries of human knowledge. The explosive growth of knowledge means it is now impossible – and even laughable – for even the most gifted, determined, and learned to make any credible claim to know all that is worth knowing, even in a narrow academic field. These are the days of Renaissance teams, not Renaissance individuals. (See Renaissance Teams: Reifying the School at Athens.) You are an expert, but in a necessarily limited area. You learned a lot, but experience, wisdom, and humility also taught you that compared to what there is to know, you know almost nothing.

The negative interpretation – that you are filled with knowledge but lacking in practical “smarts” – is the one you seek to avoid at all costs. There’s an even more colorful, though less polite version of the everything about nothing aphorism that has one learning B.S., then M.S., and until finally, it’s Piled Higher and Deeper.

If you are still a graduate student, it can be even worse, when you may be asked “the question.”  It’s the one that bedevils every Ph.D. student, “When are you going to finish?” (See Doctoral Comedy: Which Way Is The Door?) Few understand that completing a Ph.D. is a qualitatively different process, involving open-ended, original research, not just completing additional classes. Consequently, the question stirs angst and ennui in even the most accomplished Ph.D. student.  Will I finish and if so, when?  Or, will I die homeless and alone, an ABD? (That’s All But Dissertation (ABD) for those of you playing the game at home.)

Explaining What You Do

Despite your well-justified passions, resist all temptation to open your laptop and walk your uncle through the brilliant presentation on early galaxy formation you just gave at the departmental seminar.  Do not fetch the 3-D prototype you just built (still in your backpack) and explain additive manufacturing and laser sintering to your cousin. Avoid explaining the innovative laboratory protocol you are using to screen for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine resistance to your mother – she’s already proud of you. 

Do not ask your nieces and nephews if they have an opinion on the P=NP problem, and if you foolishly do, thank your precocious eight-year-old niece who delightedly tells you that they are equal when N = 1. (Note to self: while the other adults are telling stories about their lives, make sure to talk to her about the joy of science and mathematics. Encouragement really matters!)

Finally, whatever you do, do not expound on Tomasulo’s algorithm and pipelined microprocessor design at a holiday party.  (I am personally guilty of the latter. Trust me; it’s rarely an effective ice breaker. If it is, you are in a safe place, with “your people.” See The Magic behind the Curtain: Hardware and Software for why I was (and still am) so excited.)

When asked what you do, pause, take a deep breath, and think. Few in your family really want to know all the details, and certainly not at the depth and breadth with which you are tempted to reply. This is your time to shine, by channeling your inner Mr. Wizard or Richard Feynman, by being clear, thoughtful, and memorable, but most of all, funny, self-deprecating, and brief.  (See Understanding and Explaining: The Feynman Technique.)

Keep your inner Sheldon Cooper in check, and whatever you do, do not engage in an argument, especially if some of your family members think COVID-19 vaccines were a government conspiracy, the Apollo moon landings were fake, or that humans and dinosaurs were temporally co-resident. Do not bring a knife (logical arguments) to a gunfight (emotional belief). Even if you win (and you won’t), you lose. (See Just the Facts, Ma’am: Reasoning is Not Dead, Jim.)

If asked by family members what I do, I have learned to check my propellor beanie at the door and focus on the potential impact of what I am doing – designing and building cheaper and faster computers -- and how those faster computers help create new medicines or enable better weather forecasts.  How research improves lives is something people generally understand and appreciate; the technical details are rarely important to them.  If they ask and clearly want to know, I will explain but try to do so in ways connected with their experience.

This is my most important piece of advice to young scientists and would-be science advocates.  Do not try to impress people with your erudition, and do not use obscure, though technically accurate nomenclature.  Speak clearly and in ways everyone can understand. It’s about the societal outcomes, not the personal quest for academic success or even expanding the human knowledge base. (See Simplifying Communication and Research, Education, Engagement and Bovine Transport.)

Above all, do not be flippant.  I learned this from painful experience. When asked if I were going to teach during the summer, I explained that I did not teach during the summertime because the federal government paid me to think. Though vacuously true, this response was met with stunned silence, especially after I unhelpfully added that if I had a good idea, I was supposed to write it down, omitting all discussion of research proposal submissions and peer review. The facial expressions alone confirmed my extended family member’s worst fears about my lack of common sense and wasteful government spending! (See Research Summers.)

Trust me, few people really want to hear an extended holiday discourse on exascale algorithmic efficiency, deep learning models, decidability and Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, CRISPR DNA editing, or Lambda-CDM cosmology models – endlessly fascinating though they all are.  Even when enlivened with wild gesticulations and impromptu diagrams drawn in the mashed potatoes and gravy, in-depth science explanations are enough to make even your beloved grandmother look longingly at the holiday sherry, and they will confirm everyone’s unstated but deeply held belief that you are a “special child.”

Eschew the obscurity; chew the turkey. Stick to football if you can, opine on religion or politics if you must, but try to avoid the treacherous intellectual waters of scientific explanations over the holiday cranberry sauce and sliced turkey.  If they really want to know, they will pull you aside during the football game with specific questions. Only then should you unleash a small glimpse of your inner geek.

SenseCam Experiences: What I Really Do

As an academic researcher, what do I spend my time? Sometimes I wonder myself. To find out, while at RENCI, I once spent several weeks wearing a Microsoft SenseCam on a lanyard around my neck, and the University of North Carolina even wrote a story about my experiences.

A SenseCam takes periodic, still photographs, triggered either by elapsed time (roughly a minute) or by motion.  The resulting images then form a stop motion movie of the wearer’s day. The technology has also found use in assisting patients with memory loss, by replaying their experiences to strengthen memory pathways.

The Microsoft SenseCam was an early example of wearable computing, part of the Microsoft MyLifeBits life-logging project, long before smartphones with digital cameras were available. In turn, MyLifeBits was an attempt to realize Vannevar Bush’s 1940s vision of a Memex, which he described in a seminal essay, As We May Think:

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

My friend and future colleague, Gordon Bell, then at Microsoft, popularized the SenseCam for personal recording of his life experiences. Gordon is, of course, best known as a parallel computing pioneer, creator of the eponymously named Gordon Bell Prize, and the father of the Digital Equipment Corporation VAX 11/780, one of the first superminicomputers.

The New Yorker has a great 2007 article, entitled Remember This? about Gordon and his digital knowledge experiences with MyLifeBits. About the same time, I wrote about the coming library revolution, with digital archives and portable devices as potentially transformative educational forces, something I still believe, particularly when coupled with adaptive artificial intelligence.

The first sight of me wearing a SenseCam (see the photograph of a younger me above) triggered expressions of shock and concern for my health, as my colleagues initially feared I had suffered a near fatal heart attack and had been outfitted with an external pacemaker. After assuaging those fears, I explained the SenseCam’s functions, and I offered to put it in my pocket if they were concerned about being recorded during our meeting.  Some were, but most were simply amused by yet another manifestation of my geek disposition. Years later, the response was the same when I donned both a Narrative Clip and a Google Glass.  (See Though a Google Glass, Darkly.)

For a few months, I wore the SenseCam literally all over the world, from Australia to many trips across the United States.  Without exception, it prompted questions about the technology and operation (most common) and about privacy and intended uses (second most common).

So, what did I learn from my SenseCam experience?  Perhaps unsurprisingly, my professional life largely consists of three things: drinking prodigious amounts of coffee, reading a deluge of email, and participating in meetings. In this regard, the broad outlines of my professional life – and that of most other academics – differed little from that of most office workers. However, betwixt these prosaic activities were the distinguishing attributes of my professional life, the all too brief periods of thinking and writing – research papers, conference presentations, and that bane of all researchers, project reports and funding proposals.

Coda: A Safe Harbor

There is, of course, one safe harbor, where being a geek is valued at the holidays. I speak, of course, about the assembling, installing, configuring, and/or testing of any electronic devices the family received as gifts.  Here, family members will temporarily put aside their skepticism of your life choices and dubious assessment of your practical skills if you can connect the Wi-Fi or produce a needed USB hub from your backpack. If they are wondering why you have – at a minimum – a spare USB hub, as well as a set of HDMI and DisplayPort adapters, USB keys of varying capacity, and a microphone headset, then they’ve never been a road warrior. Bask in your momentary glory, then ask for a second helping of pecan pie.

Signing Up, Making A Difference: Shackleton, Musk, and Computing

Deep in the soul of each human lurks an often unsated and unspoken desire – to be remembered. This is the blessing – and the curse – of sentience, awareness of our own mortality and an unquenched fear that our life will be little more than a flickering shadow, here, gone, and quickly forgotten.  We all ache to be part of something greater than ourselves, to be remembered for having done something – anything – good and memorable, best of all, as part of a likeminded and committed group.  Shakespeare eloquently captured that hope in the St. Crispin’s Day speech in Henry V:

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

The opportunity for immortality is unexpectedly thrust upon some, though a few remarkable individuals seize it themselves. Sometimes the moment makes you; sometimes you make the moment.

An extraordinary few create it for those around them. (See On the Etiology of Heroes.) Who are these people? What makes them the subject of story and myth? More than masterful storytellers, they are the weavers of dreams, theirs and ours, into something connected, alluring, and compelling, making the rest of us believe in the seemingly impossible, so much so that we astound ourselves by joining them in making the impossible a reality.

Apple’s Steve Jobs was a master of the reality distortion field, with his insanely great ethos, but he was by no means the first nor the last. (As Jobs said when recruiting John Sculley from Pepsi, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?” Microsoft’s leaders made a similar pitch when recruiting me.) Shackleton, West (so wonderfully described in the Soul of a New Machine), Musk, they all knew the power of signing up.

The Naked Soul

The story of Ernest Shackleton’s famous 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, an attempt to make the first land crossing of Antarctica, is of mythic proportions, memorialized in stories and in Frank Hurley’s extraordinary photographs.

Shackleton’s wooden ship, the Endurance, and his crew became trapped in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea. Eventually, the relentless ice pressure crushed the Endurance, forcing Shackleton and his men to abandon ship, then later, drag their lifeboats over the melting springtime ice to open water. Only then could the crew set sail for the desolate and uninhabited Elephant Island.  (Explorers recently found the Endurance, intact except for the ice damage, resting nearly two miles deep on the frigid ocean floor.)  This overland crossing was itself extraordinary, but it was but a prelude to what lay ahead.

Then, in a journey never before attempted, Shackleton and five others, took the sturdiest of their lifeboats, the James Caird, and set sail into almost certain death, hoping to cross 800 miles of treacherous waters in search of help for the remainder of the crew, who waited fearfully on South Georgia island.  Fortune smiled upon them only a bit.

After seventeen torturous days at sea, Shackleton and the other five made landfall, albeit on the wrong side of the island. Leaving the weakest to wait, Shackleton and two others had no choice but to attempt the first land crossing of the South Georgia interior, crossing both a mountain range and a glacier. Only upon reaching a whaling station on the other side, was Shackleton able to mount a rescue for his remaining crew on Elephant Island. 

With failure and death lurking at every turn, Shackleton’s 1914 expedition and the subsequent rescue of his men is one of the most extraordinary tales in exploration history.  Lost in Antarctica for almost two years, fighting for their very survival, all were saved by their belief in one another and the undaunted determination of the expedition’s leader.  As Shackleton put it, “Not a life lost, and we have been through hell.”

Since then, the story of Shackleton’s heroism, courage, perseverance, and an unwavering commitment to the rescue of his men has become the stuff of modern legend, de rigueur for any leadership or management training. Yet like all great stories, it reveals as much about us as it does the protagonists.

In the decades thereafter, stories began circulating about a London newspaper advertisement, where Shackleton had first sought the twenty-seven volunteers for his expedition. The advertisement is succinct in both its warning and its allure:

Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.

It was soon reported that five thousand men had responded to Shackleton’s call, and this pithy statement has been hailed as one of the greatest advertisements of all time.

Several groups have since offered rewards to the first person who found the advertisement in the newspaper archives. All these searches failed for a very simple reason; Shackleton never placed such an advertisement.  That we so desire the story to be true speaks worlds about our own hopes and dreams and our deep desire to sign up and be part of something greater than ourselves.

As Shackleton himself later wrote in his book, South:

We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had 'suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole.' We'd seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.

Grasping at glory. Shackleton knew that the most arduous and rewarding journey was in finding one’s own self.

Signing Up

In his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder tells the story of Data General’s desperate bid to build a viable competitor to Digital Equipment Corporation’s (DEC) 32-bit superminicomputer, the VAX 11/780.  (If you haven’t read Kidder’s book, stop reading this meandering essay immediately, order a copy, and savor the insights of a proper writer!) 

I was a graduate student when Kidder came to Purdue to talk about his recently published book. Mind you, this was when computing was still viewed as arcane art, practiced by an obscure priesthood with its own rituals and incantations.  Microcomputers were still mostly a hobbyist item, workstations were still birthing, and the IBM PC had yet to be announced. At the time, I was using a VAX 11/780 (and a CDC 6600) to complete my Ph.D. thesis, working on the then crazy idea of building supercomputers from lots of interconnected microprocessors.

During his presentation, Kidder discussed the Eclipse MV/8000 and the late-to-market challenges facing Data General, but more than that, he told a tale of extraordinary adventure, personal sacrifice, and shared dedication to an upstart cause. As the “Hardy Boys” built the hardware, the “Microkids” fused the microcode with the software to create a working machine; these were people like me!  By the end of Kidder’s lecture, I knew I was part of something bigger than myself; the desire to build a beautiful machine was a secular, though holy thing.

The most compelling aspect of Kidder’s book, one Shackleton would have recognized instantly, was the notion of “signing up.” As Kidder explained it,

West [the team leader] invented the term, not the practice— “signing up.” By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever was necessary for success. 

I have signed up a few times myself, dedicating long nights, sleep-deprived days, and countless weekends to a cause and a team (e.g., the first NCSA Linux clusters and the TeraGrid, and most recently, to ensure the University of Utah continued to function and flourish during the COVID-19 pandemic).  I suspect most of you reading this essay have signed up for something yourselves. (See Memos, Janitors, Teams, and Innovation.)

Stories from Microsoft's early days were legion of developers and team leaders  taking a sleeping bag to work as the crunch time of product shipment neared. Eat, code, sleep a little, repeat. When the code pirouetted before you, embodying the logic of your imagination, and then the product shipped – that was the true reward.  (See A Feeling for the Code.) The stock and the money were nice, but they weren’t why you did it.  Money was just how you kept score; it was the idea, the adventure, and the team that mattered.

I am not suggesting that one must sacrifice one’s personal life for work; balance is critical for personal well-being ad family partnerships.  There are times and circumstances, however, that require one's all.

Mars Beckons

Although the Age of Heroic Antarctic Exploration ended abruptly with the brutality of World War I, the desire still burns bright across the intervening century.  It is perhaps evident no place more than in the ambitions of Elon Musk to make humans an interplanetary society.

Outspoken and controversial, but unquestionably committed to this vision, Musk has transformed the global space industry by attracting a team of talented engineers who believe passionately in that vision. All of them “signed up” for a high stakes’ disruption of space exploration.

Musk put his money where his mouth was, remarking,

My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.

That’s called “all in.”

Against great odds and on its final attempt before likely bankruptcy, SpaceX became the first private company to reach low Earth orbit (LEO), with its two-stage-to-orbit Falcon 1 rocket. Successive iterations of the Falcon 9 have made much lower cost launches commonplace via reusable rockets, and for the first time since the space shuttle was retired, given the U.S. a human-rated launch vehicle with the Dragon 2.

The Falcon Heavy now has the largest payload capacity of any operating launch vehicle, trailing only the mighty Saturn V and Soviet Energia. All that, however, has been but a prelude to the future launch of Starship. Designed as a fully reusable, super heavy-lift launch vehicle, Starship is powered by new Raptor engines, and is the system designed by SpaceX to take humans back to the moon and to Mars.

Whatever one thinks of Musk, there is no doubt that he has transformed the thinking of all national space agencies, including NASA, about lower launch costs, rapid reusability, and the timelines of aspirational goals.  Embodying a fail fast, iterative design process, failure IS an option, one from which you learn and continue innovating, even if you do sometimes experience what is euphemistically known as “rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD).” It has also exposed the fallacy of the cost-plus Artemis program to return to the moon using expendable launch vehicles.

Equally importantly, Musk has rekindled the passion for spaceflight that galvanized the world in the 1960s and created new possibilities for what might be. That’s what dreamers do.  (See That’s One Small Step for {a} Man.)  Who can help but marvel at the Falcon Heavy side boosters landing at Cape Canaveral or the regular cadence of landings on SpaceX’s offshore barges.

As Musk put it once, “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”  Shackleton knew that, as does anyone who has “signed up.” It’s all about being part of something bigger than yourself and your personal risk-reward quotient, something I discussed in an essay entitled, A Question to Ponder.

The question I posed there was simple but revealing, “What probability of successful return would you accept to be the first human to set foot on Mars?” It’s the modern-day version of the opportunity posed by Shackleton’s apocryphal advertisement.  There’s only one wrong answer, guaranteed success, for all adventures and explorations entail risk.  Shackleton knew this well, and Musk does too.

As for me, I want to go.

Personal Connections

As a member of the National Science Board, I have been privileged to visit Antarctica, and I recorded a few of my experiences in a video here. I have stood in the very places where Shackleton and Scott once looked out at the forbidding glaciers, the frozen ocean, and the windswept landscape.  I have marveled at the still-preserved provisions in both Shackleton’s Nimrod Expedition Hut on Cape Royds (that’s it below) and Scott’s Discovery Hut on Ross Island. I have also felt the howling winds at the South Pole.

Even under its most benign conditions, Antarctica is a brutal and unforgiving place, still largely cut off from the world.  It is easy to forget that Shackleton’s expedition also lacked both electricity and any means of long-distance communication, Marconi’s first transatlantic radio transmission having been less than fifteen years before. Even now, communication bandwidth at McMurdo Station is limited, as most satellites are low on the horizon, barely accessible at all. 

A few years ago, I re-read the Soul of a New Machine. The technology has changed (RISC rather than CISC, CMOS rather than bipolar, microprocessors rather than multi-board designs), but the stories and the people remain deeply familiar. Although none of the protagonists risked life or limb as did Shackleton and his team, every one of the Data General designers felt the same call, to make a difference, to do something memorable, to be dissolved into something truly great.

Forty years ago, I had no idea that multiple characters in Kidder’s tale, notably Craig Mundie and Steve Wallach, would become deeply intertwined with my own life. At the University of Illinois, I worked on the Cedar project, led by David Kuck, which designed a shared memory multiprocessor. The hardware building blocks of the Cedar prototype were based on the Alliant FX/8, developed by a company co-founded by Mundie.  Years later, our lives intersected again when I joined Microsoft and worked with Craig on a variety of multicore and cloud computing projects.

My connections with Steve Wallach are equally deep, as I used the Convex C1, a mini-supercomputer developed by a company co-founded by Steve.  Later, we discussed the OSF/1 operating system performance challenges for the Exemplar, Convex’s shared memory multiprocessor, and while I was at Microsoft, we explored the potential cloud hardware applications of Steve’s later company, Convey. In between, we have served on more high-performance computing and government panels than I can count. I still have my first edition of Kidder’s book, and a few years ago I reached out to Steve, who graciously signed my copy one night at the SC conference.

Coda

Though the ravages of time inevitably bend our backs and palsy our hands, each of us yearns for a late life requiem, when even as we stare at the rheumy-eyed reflection of age, we can, just for a moment, stand tall, hold our head high, and say with confidence and pride, “My life mattered!”

Find your passion; sign up; take some risks; make a difference. Even if never lauded in the history books, you will know, and that is the most important knowledge of all. Your future self will thank you.

Stored Program Computing: Ideas and Individuals Do Change the World

Johnny von Neumann is a name often spoken with considerable reverence in scientific circles. The epitomy of prodigy and polymath – and even those words fail to do him justice – von Neumann had the kind of mind that made even the world’s most brilliant stare in slack jawed awe.  In idle musings on new topics, he often offered insights that would have been the crowning achievement and life’s work of other, lesser talents.

Indeed, based on his seminal contributions to mathematics, physics, economics, statistics, and yes, computing, one can make a rather compelling case that Johnny may well have been the smartest human being on the planet during his lifetime.  (Well, assuming he wasn’t a Martian, as Leo Szilard sometimes joked about the group of Hungarian expats.) As Edward Teller once put it, “von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us.” 

The “von Neumann” Design

Given von Neumann’s involvement in the Manhattan Project and its associated computing needs,  as well his deep familiarity with the work of Gödel and Turing, it is no surprise that he turned his attention to digital computing, writing the 101-page, “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC,” while commuting by train from Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) to Los Alamos.  Released on June 30^th, 1945, the draft contained the first published description of the stored-program concept, now often called a von Neumann architecture, where both instructions and data were contained in the same memory, central arithmetic and control units coordinated instruction execution, and input/output devices serviced the computing infrastructure. It is no exaggeration to say the draft report transformed and codified modern digital computing. 

The report originated from von Neumann’s role as a consultant to the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) design, and on its publication, the report generated some controversy. The EDVAC team, notably Mauchly and Eckert, felt von Neumann had simply summarized their design without listing them as authors, and via publication, prevented patents on the stored program ideas.  (In March 1946, both Eckert and Mauchly left the University of Pennsylvania over intellectual property disputes and formed the company that developed UNIVAC.)

Given his prodigious talent and contributions in other areas, one cannot help but believe that von Neumann generalized and codified several ideas he heard during the EDVAC conversations, but we are unlikely to ever know for sure. Regardless of the controversy, von Neumann’s report had a major influence on computer design and construction for the next decade, when each machine was a bespoke design.

Illinois Innovations

My first intellectual home, the University of Illinois, built two machines based on von Neumann’s IAS design, driven by Illinois faculty who were previously associated with the IAS. The first, ORDVAC, was delivered to the U.S Army Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1951.  As part of that contract, Illinois was given funds to build a second copy in 1952, which became ILLIAC I (Illinois Automatic Computer), the first computer built and owned entirely by a U.S. educational institution.

It was the beginning of a long, illustrious, and continuing history of advanced computing innovation at Illinois, with the ILLIAC II (ECL, core memory, and pipelined operations), ILLIAC III (fine-grained SIMD pattern matching), ILLIAC IV (parallel processing), and Cedar (hierarchical shared memory) computing systems, as well as PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) computer-aided instruction, the Eudora e-mail client, and the Mosaic web browser, itself the progeny of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) ecosystem.

As an aside, just a few years before I arrived, the four color theorem, unresolved for nearly one hundred years, had been proven by Illinois mathematicians Appel and Haken, using a theoretical framework to test a provably finite number of cases by computer.  For many years, mail from the University of Illinois was embossed with the simple phrase “Four colors suffice.”  I loved that quiet and understated academic trash talking, a way of communicating, as Dizzy Dean once did, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.”

Personal Reflections

I have written about several of these Illinois experiences over the years and how they have shaped my professional life, including the formation of the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), application of high-performance computing ideas to energy efficient cloud data center design while at Microsoft, and my work as an academic leader:

• Luck Is a Fickle Friend (lessons from ILLIAC IV)
• Eudora, You Got the Love? (why passion matters)
• Mind to Mind: Building Innovation (reflections on PLATO and human empowerment)
• NCSA@30: Reflections on the Revolution (musings on rapid technological change)
• Renaissance Teams: Reifying the School at Athens (interdisciplinary collaboration insights)
• The Magic Behind the Curtain: Hardware and Software (the joy of teaching computing)

I have said elsewhere, and I will say again here, that I went to Illinois as a young assistant professor because it was as close to heaven as a young high-performance computing researcher could find here on Earth.  I was not disappointed!  I loved my time at Illinois because of the incredible people (Bardeen, Bitzer, Cox, Holonyak, Kuck, Lawrie, Smarr, Robertson, Slotnick, and so many others) and their repeated proof-by-demonstration that one should not just dream about the future, but that one can and must build it! (See Predicting Potentialities, Reifying Futures.)

I am proud to have had a role in adding a few small pieces to that rich history via my own work on distributed memory parallel computing, leadership of the Illinois’ Department of Computer Science, recruitment of new faculty, construction of Siebel Center, and the conception, design, and construction of the NSF TeraGrid (later XSEDE) while NCSA director. In between, we also had some fun, playing with gigabit testbeds and I-WIRE (thanks, Charlie Catlett), building parallel computing clusters from Sony PlayStations (See the New York Times article), and visualizing web traffic in the CAVE, when NCSA’s webserver was the busiest in the world.

Coda

At a time when some question our continuing will and ability to mount big, audacious initiatives, it is worth pausing to draw a few intellectual lessons from the pioneers of digital computing, and remember the transformative power of dedicated individuals and compelling ideas.  (See On the Etiology of Heroes and That’s One Small Step for {a} Man.)  It has always been important to imagine the future, not as a dream, but as reality to be realized.

As the legendary Chicago architect, Daniel Burnham remarked,

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir mens’ blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.

The logical diagram of the ”von Neumann” architecture has lived on and continued to transform our world. Today’s supercomputers, smartphones, and the Internet of Things (IoT) all rely on variants of the von Neumann idea.

Yet, like all great ideas, the “von Neumann” architecture has its limitations. (See Nothing Lasts Forever.) The bandwidth and latency bottlenecks of the separated execution and storage units continue to drive architectural and technological innovation, in the pursuit of higher performance via end-to-end co-design.  (See Advanced Computing: Integrative Thinking for the Future.) The end of Dennard scaling has led to renewed focus on parallelism, architectural specialization, and energy efficiency.  If he were alive today, I am confident Johnny would still be excited about computing and would be deeply involved in work on quantum computing and approximate computations.

Ask the deepest questions.  Run with the big dogs.  The company, the journey, and the destinations all matter.  It has always been and always will be where the action is. On that, Johnny would wholeheartedly agree!

Higher Education in the 21st Century

N.B. In rapidly changing, global knowledge economy, social, cultural, and economic advantage accrues to those societies that cultivate, nurture, and empower all of their citizens via advanced education, freeing each person to pursue their individual dreams, to the mutual betterment of all. 

On May 12, 1780, John Adams, then in France as part of a diplomatic delegation for the still nascent United States, penned a poignant letter to his wife, Abigail, in which he described the manifold and beguiling beauties of Paris.  Anyone who has strolled down the Champs-Élysées or visited the Palace of Versailles knows instinctively and immediately why Adams was so impressed.  (Mind you, that other modern wonder, the Louvre Museum, did not open until 1793, long after Adams had sailed home.) 

In a forward nod to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Adams resignedly acknowledges that his duty and commitment to an aborning country then struggling for its very existence must take precedence over his personal interests and desires. No matter how much he might yearn for different circumstances, immediate necessity must triumph over the desired:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.

Across more than two centuries, Adams’ lament still rings true, albeit with amendments to embrace equity for all. The luxuries of time and resources, made possible by the successes of previous generations, afford their blessed progeny to pursue intellectually and emotionally rewarding endeavors of all kinds – art, music, literature, science, engineering, medicine, business – beyond those dedicated to immediate sustenance and survival.

Adams elegant characterization of the seeming dichotomy between present exigencies and an imagined, better future is now manifestly and explicitly visible in our debates about higher education as a public good accessible to all or a private benefit to only those willing and able to pay, as a birthing place for thoughtful and discriminating citizens of a democratic society or a workforce training and skills delivery system in a globally competitive world.

In a perfect world, each child would be educationally empowered and free to live a life defined by the content of their character, the scope of their talent, the reach of their dreams, and their willingness to work. Sadly, we do not live in that perfect world.  We must do better and do so now.

The circumstances of birth, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and a host of other factors all too often circumscribe a child’s future, with opportunity crushed and dreams stillborn. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.  We must do better and do so now.

Life’s Challenges and Exigencies

The students of our public research universities are neither socioeconomically, culturally, nor ethnically homogeneous. In that diversity lies both our strength – we all better when we both learn from others and respect and value our differences – and our educational challenge, for not all begin their educational journey on an equal footing.

For the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful, college is a place for maturation, exploration, and education. They have the freedom to stumble and recover, secure in the safety that societal status and money provide. The path for others is more narrow and difficult, even for the increasingly financially challenged middle class. Whether first generation, immigrant, underrepresented, or poor, college can be both a rare chance and a desperate struggle. As poor, first generation college student, on this I speak from some personal experience. (See Transforming Lives Via Public Higher Education and A Taste of Sherbet.)

Far greater than my own, students of color face compounded challenges alien to most and unimaginable to many. Biases – implicit and explicit – can and do make them feel marginalized and unwelcome, carrying social and cultural burdens that majority students neither see nor feel but sometimes themselves foster, whether intentionally or unintentionally. First generation students, regardless of background, often experience imposter syndrome and lack the social support networks common in families for whom college has been a multigenerational experience, with no familiar place to seek counsel and support when challenges arise.

Finally, life has a way of intruding in expected and unexpected ways. Despite our national angst over student debt and graduation rates, many students who fervently hope to finish a college degree never do, and an even larger fraction lack the opportunity to try. The reasons are myriad and diverse, including poor educational preparation from underfunded primary and secondary schools, lack of finances to pay tuition and housing, a multigenerational family needing support, feeling unwelcome and out of place, or simply not seeing curricular relevance to their personal objectives and needs. 

The American Dream was built on the shared principles of economic opportunity and upward mobility. The idea that everyone deserves a fair shot – not a guarantee, but a fair shot – to better their socioeconomic circumstances through hard work and determination is a central tenet of the American social contract.  Today, the lifeline of higher education and successful pursuit of the American Dream is increasingly out of reach for a growing fraction of the U.S. population.

Recognition of higher education’s importance to our nation’s future is not a partisan issue.  Multiple U.S. President’s from both parties have repeatedly convened august bodies to recommend ways to improve K-12 and post-secondary education, beginning with the 1946 Commission on Higher Education for American Democracy, commonly known as the Truman Report.  That report recommended expansion of federal financial aid for college students and the creation of a community college system, noting

If college opportunities are restricted to those in the higher income brackets, the way is open to the creation and perpetuation of a class society which has no place in the American way of life.

Despite these stentorian calls for action, a large fraction of children born in poverty still remain there, and less than 15 percent of students from the lowest socioeconomic bracket earn a bachelor’s degree by age twenty-four. No euphemistic intellectual legerdemain can hide the ugly truth of our current situation. It is neither unfortunate nor regrettable; it is morally and ethically wrong. Beyond educational opportunity as an ethical imperative, it has deep and profound justifications on economic and competitiveness grounds.  (See The Hopes of Parents and the Dreams of Children on the importance of giving every child a chance.)

Change in the Wind

Public research universities are in the business of helping people. This is especially true in times of accelerating and disruptive change.  Compounded by the consilience of globalization, each year now brings disruptions that once defined generations. In an earlier time of rapid change, the land-grant universities, authorized by the 1862 Morrill Act, were created to spread new agricultural and mechanical knowledge and “promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.”  In modern parlance, the objective was to educate an underserved population, one whom extant higher education neither welcomed nor served.

Similarly, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 – the G.I. Bill – brought millions of veterans to college and university campuses, and it firmly rooted the graduates in the expanding middle class when many feared a post-war slide into recession. The G.I. Bill, along with post-World War II government investment in academic research, further expanded during the Cold War via the National Defense Education Act of 1958, reshaped academia and created the modern research university. Finally, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Higher Education Act of 1965, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 broke down further legal and economic barriers to educational access, though we have by no means eliminated those impediments.

Today, urbanization, global communications, artificial intelligence, talent mobility, and the global knowledge economy are reshaping social expectations. These changes are disrupting the historical web of interconnected economic sectors, while rendering some professions superfluous and creating demands for new skills in others.  A recent McKinsey report, The Future of Work in America, discusses regional economic stratification and the anticipated changes in workforce needs in the next decades.

The National Science Board, of which I am a member, recently issued two reports raising similar concerns.  The first of these, on The Skilled Technical Workforce, emphasizes the need for greater investment in community college technical training. The second, on The State of U.S. Science and Engineering, paints a worrisome picture of the position of the United States relative to its international competitors.

Our world is changing rapidly, and public higher education must adapt and engage as active and honest participants in renegotiating the societal compact.  Any compact reification begins with identifying the irreducible core – the essential values that define public research universities. Quite clearly, these are unfettered discovery (original scholarship and research), transference (student education and training) and fulfillment (societal engagement and services). Put another way, public research universities create new knowledge, transfer insights and ideas, and deliver solutions to societal problems. 

How universities do those things and in what measure are the subject of debate and negotiation. After all, the practices of a modern public research university span less than a single human lifetime. Some of the options will be new, and some will undoubtedly be philosophically challenging. (Remember that many feared the G.I. Bill would destroy U.S. higher education by bringing battle hardened veterans into academe.)

While protecting the irreducible core – the defining verities of academia – I believe we must be more organizationally nimble and flexible, more financially accountable and economically savvy, more societally engaged and responsive, more collaborative and transdisciplinary, and more team oriented. 

We face deep societal challenges – poverty, inequality, injustice, health and wellness, environmental sustainability, and economic uncertainty – and it is tempting to embrace a psychology of diminished expectations. But we also have unprecedented opportunities to unleash the creativity and talent of our citizens.  A university frees successive generations of human minds to realize their potential. We must not waiver in our commitment to the future of our students and our society.

Educational Futures: Beyond Degrees

The intellectual dichotomy between lifelong knowledge and near term skills is a canard, patently and demonstrably false, but the economic and social dilemma is very real. Our students arrive with manifestly different constraints and needs, and we must meet each of them where they are and respond accordingly. Put another way, one educational model and approach does not fit all.

I believe we must move beyond undergraduate degree completion as the sole, simplistic, and arbitrary metric of educational success. Degrees matter, but all education is valuable. It is neither a simple, linear process with a single terminus nor is it synonymous with an immediate continuation beyond secondary school. Degrees matter, but only insofar as they are talismans – social currency and indicators of our true objective, which is bettering the lives of our students.

If a student completes a single course and comes away with a deeper perspective on our world, we have added value to their life.  If another completes a certificate, gains a demonstrated competence, and achieves meaningful new employment, we have changed their economic circumstances for the better.  If we have informed and enlightened a community group, we have enriched our society, even if it were just a weekend seminar and discussion.

I believe we in academia must step back, and live up to our intellectual principals and ideals, remembering that no matter how high the academic ivory tower, its foundation and that of all public higher education, rest on a repeatedly renegotiated societal compact. The history of U.S. higher education is one of punctuated equilibria, with long periods of stability separated by brief interregna of extraordinary change, each coincident with shifting societal norms and expectations for broader access.

We must be more flexible in responding to the heterogeneity of student expectations and needs, while concurrently disintermediating knowledge delivery, certification of completion, and socialization across time and space. (See Pinball, War Games, and Universities.) I believe this means offering a smorgasbord of educational delivery modalities, content packages, and success models, each tailored to differing needs and constraints:

• Traditional degrees. The traditional undergraduate degree is the sine qua non of higher education, tested and proven, but adapting and adaptable to a rapidly changing world, preparing students for careers that do not yet exist, and educating them as critical thinkers and thoughtful communicators steeped in knowledge and wisdom.

• Stackable certificates. Not all students learn the same way, nor do they have similar motivations and objectives. Certificates, both credit and non-credit, organize a coherent body of knowledge with a demonstrable applicability and outcome, ranging from perspective on one of the liberal arts to concrete technical skills. If organized wisely, a combination of credit-bearing certificates can lead to a degree, though the certificates need not be completed sequentially, and they may be delivered either online or via traditional classroom modalities.

• Credit, non-credit, and convertible credit. The goal of educational delivery is the transfer of knowledge and recognized certification of that knowledge. Traditional credit with a transcript grade, earned on completion of an academic course, is the internationally recognized metric of accomplishment. It need not be and increasingly is not the only one. What matters is trusted validation of knowledge and competence. Non-credit certificates and badges are rising in importance as alternative validations.  Today, non-credit programs are often viewed as ancillary, second class activities on most campus; this must change. More importantly, students who acquire skills via non-credit mechanisms and later decide to pursue certificates or degrees may want to convert those accomplishments into academic credit.  We need more flexible mechanisms to establish knowledge and recognize that knowledge as credit.

• Competency certification. Not all knowledge is acquired in the virtual or physical classroom, nor is course completion fully synonymous with demonstrated competence. Life and work are themselves valued teachers. There are a variety of ways to prove and accept competence in lieu of course credit, ranging from academic and professional service testing through probationary credit to work experience

• Mixed online and placed-based education. Synchronous cohort learning on academic campuses will remain part of the educational ecosystem, both for student socialization and access to specific facilities and instrumentation, but it will be complemented by and in some cases replaced by online content delivery that is asynchronous from academic calendars. Online, asynchronous content delivery both allows students to participate based on personal schedules and also allows them to begin classes when the need arises. (See Online Higher Education for some lessons from the history of technology mediated education.)

• Lifelong/lifewide and just-in-time education. The time has long past when the knowledge and skills acquired before age twenty-five could serve one for a lifetime. Today’s worker can expect technological and economic shifts to render many of their skills obsolete every few years. The persistent skills are reasoning and communication, coupled with a desire to learn and relearn throughout life. We must move from a model of “education then life” to lifelong and just-in-time education that delivers new knowledge and skills as needed, via a variety of modalities and mechanisms, recognizing that many will be unable study in situ on an academic campus. For a few, this education will result in new degrees, but for most it will be by securing new credentials, badges, and certificates.

Some might say many of these educational roles and responsibilities are the proper function of community colleges and comprehensive universities.  That is true, in part.  Higher education is a system, with differentiated and overlapping, but complementary roles for community and technical colleges, comprehensive universities, and public research universities. 

However, in a rapidly changing world, public research universities are the critical incubators of intellectual discovery and translation, with national and international stature and partnerships.  They also attract a faculty and student talent base in part distinct from all others. As such, they bear unique responsibility as educational thought leaders and innovators, with the resources and capability to conduct educational experiments at scale. They are also charged with ensuring the economic competitiveness of our citizens and industry in a global knowledge economy.

University of Utah Analysis and Actions

As a flagship public research university and a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), the University of Utah is a leader in basic research, knowledge creation, and scholarship.  It is also unwaveringly committed to educational access, broad-based liberal arts education, workforce skills training, and economic development.  

A University of Utah Student Success and Educational Futures Taskforce, composed of seventy five students, faculty, and staff members, assessed the current state and future needs of higher education in Utah, based on a charge to consider our changing world and the needs of Utah’s citizens.  Composed of six working groups – facilities and infrastructure; financial analysis; enrollment management, marketing and communications; student success and services; educational delivery and partnerships; and graduate student success – the taskforce outlined a series of recommendations intended to reduce student costs, expand educational access, and deliver targeted, just-in-time training. Common themes from the recommendations include:

• Diversifying pathways to student success by developing alternative credentialing options, improved pathways for transfer students, expanding undergraduate student experience roadmaps, improving support for graduate students and programs, and developing strategic partnerships with employers.
• Expanding online offerings and, where appropriate, using technology to increase educational accessibility, affordability, and inclusiveness.
• Utilizing the University’s physical infrastructure to its fullest by increasing student and mixed-use housing, improving transportation options, and optimizing the allocation of classrooms and teaching facilities.
• Ensuring students have a sense of belonging through individualized attention and support, deeply engaged learning experiences, a robust and inclusive campus community, on-campus career opportunities, and coordinated health and wellness programs.
• Continually revising and adapting initiatives to ensure consistency with the University’s core values: student success and engagement, research and teaching excellence, diversity, sustainability, global vision and strategy, community, and leadership.

In response to the taskforce recommendations, the University is launching several initiatives, including:

• For Utah The For Utah Scholarship creates a fully funded path to a University of Utah degree by covering four years of tuition and fees for Pell Grant-eligible Utah residents. As a result, the fall 2020 entering class was the most diverse in the University’s history, though we still have far to go to ensure broad access.

• Inexpensive all online degree completion. The University of Utah offers lower cost tuition for students taking all classes online as part of a qualifying online undergraduate degree program. This special all-online tuition rate help students who have started college finish their degrees and graduate, even if they cannot return to the campus. (Sadly, we were forced to temporarily defer this program during the COVID-19 pandemic.)

• Expanded credit and non-credit certificates. The University is rapidly expanding its suite of both non-credit and for credit certificates, targeting domains with where there are critical job shortages across Utah. Examples include software development, data science, and entrepreneurship.

• Integrating continuing education and online learning. Reflecting the continuum of learning objectives and the need for fluid transition between non-credit and for credit learning processes, this integration is enabling coordinated management of all aspects of non-traditional education, under the supervision of an Assistant Vice President/Dean.

• Predictive intervention and support. The best time to help students is before they fail, allowing time for recovery from early academic missteps. While protecting and respecting privacy, data can support powerful analytic and predictive interventions, allowing advisors and instructors to work with students while there is still time to recover, both in individual courses and in certificates and majors. This will rely on a combination of commercial software (e.g., Civitas) and local software and data.

• Storefront and electronic services. A large and growing fraction of students are “non-traditional” – they have lives, jobs, and families outside academe, and many lack the flexibility to visit academic support offices during normal business officers. Moreover, the born digital generation expects anywhere, anytime access.  The University of Utah plans to offer advising and consulting services at multiple sites.

• Skill and aptitude assessment. Accurate assessment of student knowledge and skills, via leading edge measurement tools can help students understand their aptitudes and preparations for study emphases and reduce the time needed to complete degrees and certificates by validating extant competencies. The University seeks to adopt and adapt assessment tools that can maximize student success.

• Enhanced student support. A sense of community and belonging is key to student success, enabling students persevere in the face the inevitable challenges students face.  Among many other programs, the University of Utah has created Student Ambassadors who share their experiences with prospective students and parents, Student Success Advocates who serve as peer mentors and advisors, Living Learning and Theme Communities where students share common courses and deeply engaged learning experiences that offer practical and collaborative opportunities to engage communities and the world.

• Faculty mentoring and inclusion. Expanded faculty onboarding and training are essential to preparing new faculty and new administrators to respond effectively to shifting student needs.  These services include (a) training search committees in best practices for recruiting and hiring a diverse faculty, (b) sharing best practices for student mentoring and advising, (c) and support and training for new faculty and new administrators in culture and processes – leadership, education, research and scholarship, and service.

• Corporate and business partnerships. Regularly upgrading the skills and degrees of employees is in the best interests of employers, as it provides the insights, training, and perspectives that allows employees to grow and adapt to changing business circumstances. The University seeks to partner with Utah and national companies on certificate and degree programs for employee and corporate benefit.

Coda

In the Christian tradition, the New Testament (Acts 16:9-10) says a vision appeared to the Apostle Paul  in the night, “A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.”

The world gospel is an Old English translation of the original Greek word, εὐαγγέλιον, meaning “good news.” The preservation, creation, and transmission of knowledge are defining attributes of our civilization, and our educational system is an embodiment of the ever-expanding 21^st century “good news.” Education transforms lives, lifts generations out of poverty, nurtures our democracy, fuels innovation, and creates our future.

Our citizens are pleading; we must come help them, without judgment and in partnership. All education, regardless of scale or scope, is valuable. There is no dichotomy between knowledge and skills, but the guilt of our dilemma and our failure to act are very real.

My Balm in Gilead

COVID-19 has disrupted our lives in so many ways – commerce and trade, personal livelihoods and economic vitality, family and social interactions, health and wellness (obviously), mobility and travel, and education, to name just a few. This global pandemic has also exposed deep social inequities in new ways, convolved with political disarray and often dysfunctional government processes.  (See On the Etiology of Heroes for a few thoughts on a way forward that calls on our best to address the challenges before us.)

Meanwhile, cue theme music over a video montage of transformed academia – grassy quadrangles devoid of human activity, sparsely populated classrooms denuded of desks, and research laboratories accessible only by those in personal protective equipment (PPE).  As the music fades, the final cut shows me sitting in my home office, dressed in stereotypical Zoom attire – a business shirt and tie, visible on camera, complemented by off-camera sweatpants and slippers.

In this morality play, my character is a balding, myopic, astigmatic university provost navigating the ship of academe through the iceberg filled waters of these uncertain times, seeking to ensure fair and equal access, facilitate student academic success, promote faculty research and scholarship productivity, and safeguard staff wellness. It’s not an easy thing, and I have lain awake many nights, agonizing over decisions and their unexpected consequences.

About that balding thing; it’s neither an appellation nor a sobriquet, simply an attribute. A few years ago, I sent a saliva sample to 23andMe, curious what I might learn from my SNPs and the company’s database of expressed traits. Like Captain Renault, I was shocked, shocked, I say, when the report showed there was some ever so slightly elevated probability that my genetic profile might be consistent with male pattern baldness.  LOL, who knew?  It’s a cogent warning to consider carefully insights a modern GWAS can sometimes reveal. But I digress, lest I also pontificate on my childhood surprise, when glasses first let me see leaves on trees, rather than just a green blur atop a gray one.  Now back to the scene of the balding provost …

In my provost role, I regularly counsel faculty, staff, and students that successfully navigating this pandemic requires constant vigilance, determined collaboration, committed partnerships, and mutual support. A yearlong pandemic is an emotional and logistical marathon, not a sprint, and in the midst of unremitting stress, each of us must allocate some time and space to focus on our individual mental health and engage in activities that bring happiness and serenity.  In the spirit of “physician, heal thyself” where have I sought my own balm in Gilead?

So Many Books, So Little Time

In differing times and places, I have, unlike Poe, found books to provide a surcease for sorrow. Books can teleport one into the mind of another’s memories and knowledge (non-fiction) or imagination and fancy (fiction). That a string of stylized symbols can record the thoughts of another, sometimes long dead, whose insights and ideas reach across time and space to illuminate and inspire, is itself an extraordinary thing, one that still fills me with unabashed wonder.

Arguably among humanity’s greatest inventions, these things we call language and writing are perhaps rivaled only by fire, agriculture, and science in their importance. In their embodiment via books and libraries, ideas and knowledge accumulate and set ready for transmission and uptake by successive generations of willing and malleable minds.

It’s no surprise then, that books were one of my first and most joyous childhood discoveries, a precursor to that other abiding love, science. (See Libraries: Arms Too Short to Feed the Mind.) With a good book, I could, then and now, sit transfixed for six, twelve, or even eighteen hours, oblivious to my surroundings, transported into worlds unknown and challenged by ideas beyond the reach of my experience and current understanding, each page crackling with enlightenment.

Emboldened, seeking meaning in an oft-confusing world, I sometimes try my own, feeble hand at the mystic art of writing, finding comfort and refuge in the feel of words and their juxtaposition to ruminate and communicate ideas. (Yes, I was a geeky kid who read dictionaries for pleasure, savoring both the etymology and the denotation. No surprise – myopia and astigmatism came early; baldness reared its sunburned head somewhat later.)

In a world of eight second sound bites and enervating ad hominem social media attacks, when Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame seems like the imprimatur of immortality, meditative reflection and long-form written discourse now seem like lost arts. (See Contemplative Reflection and Instantaneous Communication and Just the Facts, Ma’am: Reasoning is Not Dead, Jim.)

At its best, writing is a contemplative Zen state where words and phrases spring unbidden from the recesses of your mind, bound by a set of unspoken rules and imagined mores and shaped by a lifetime of intellectual and emotional milieu. Part puppeteer, part curious observer, you are a transcriber of events in real and imagined worlds seen only through the uncertain lens of your mind. It is an exhilarating and sometimes frustrating art, at its best, informed by experience, wisdom, and passions. (See Eudora, You Got the Love?)

Some of my writing samples are archived on this website (www.hpcdan.org), and some others are shared only with select friends. You now hold one such weak musing in your digital hands. Those writers with the greatest gifts can touch our naked souls, but none of us can ever truly master the form. I know I never will, though I continue to try, and perhaps that is, in the end, enough. 

Pure Thought Stuff

Of late, I have returned to one of my other teenaged and lasting loves, the art of software.  (See A Feeling for the Code.)  As in any creative medium, there are hacks, artisans, and artists of the highest gift. Hence, I use the word art with thoughtful intent, for well-written software has an austere and ethereal beauty all its own, and like writing, it can bring joys unknown to all but the most committed and talented acolytes.

In his wonderful book, The Mythical Man Month, my friend and former colleague, Fred Brooks, writes elegantly of the joy of software and why it is so enthralling:

The Programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. ... The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.

When fully immersed in the code, you hold in your mind an abstract world of your own creation, defined by the rules of logic, but mutable and capable of evolving in complex and unexpected ways, just as an author’s fully formed characters can take on lives of their own, sometimes surprising even their creator. In these moments, pure thought-stuff becomes incarnate and nested causal chains glisten with beauty like raindrops on a spring flower.

Reconciling the perfect world as imagined and the inevitably flawed creation then becomes an exhilarating and encompassing quest. Why did this happen?  How can that be true?  Inspired and chagrined by unexpected behaviors and sometimes subtle clues, the creator becomes detective, seeking insights and remediations that return the code to a state of grace.  The magic of myth and legend, indeed.

It can take hours to load one’s working memory with such a virtual world of software, and doing so necessarily pushes all other concerns from one’s mind. As Morpheus tells Neo in The Matrix, you must “free your mind” from all other thoughts, perspectives, and assumptions and follow the code. During that oneness, there are no other actors, no other concerns, and one can abide in the bliss of total immersion.  It is intellectual joy that unexpectedly changed our world. (See Reluctant Revolutionaries, the Trolley Paradox, and Ender’s Game.)

Such creativity and full cognitive loading brooks no exceptions and tolerates no distractions.  It can be broken by such mundane events as an unexpected telephone call, a colleague’s doorway interrogative, or an unwelcomed text message. In that momentary interruption, connections can disappear, insights can fade, and perspectives can be lost. That too is a fall from grace. (See On Cognitive Loading and Intellectual Hierophany.)

In the past few months, I have sought solace in the beauty and logic of such software, incarnated as the end-to-end development of a wireless environmental sensor network. As a potential extension to the SAGE research project of which I am a part, it offers a path to citizen science empowerment and real-time response to environmental change. The terms of art – ESP32, Raspberry Pi, Jetson, JSON, MQTT, InfluxDB, Grafana, LoRaWAN, TensorFlow – matter only to those in the discipline.  For me, the beauty and the cognitive load can, for just a few hours of the nights and weekends, free my mind, and in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, that too brings me peace.

Coda

Our culture and our future rest on mutual respect, sharing insights, ideas, and knowledge, and the empowerment of human minds and their ingenuity.  In the crucible of the pandemic, we must support and draw strength from one another. As I have noted before, these simple things matter most of all. (See The Simple Things Matter, Most of All Now.) Ultimately, that is humanity’s sustainable balm in Gilead.

Geek Gifts for the Holidays

The holiday season is here, with lights and festive celebrations of all kinds. Normally, I am loathe to offer holiday product endorsements, perhaps because, like you, I’ve been jaded by too many marketing campaigns and late night infomercials. (See The Ghosts of Holiday Shopping: Past, Present and Future.) Other than filing my taxes on time, acting before midnight tonight has never changed my life.  However, in a spirit of beneficence, I do make one exception to aid two connected, but suffering groups. I speak of course of geeks and their gift giving friends and family.

Let’s be honest; it’s hard to buy for geeks. Few would know that a signed copy of The Art of Computer Programming is a rare and precious thing, perhaps exceeded in value only by a Knuth reward check.  A copy of a Big Bang Theory DVD or a word of the day calendar just isn’t the same, though it helps if it is Klingon. 

So what’s a friend or family member to do when your geek smiles wanly and says thank you – for the socks? Fear not; even though the holidays are here, it’s not too late to trade those socks for a gift that will bring a delighted grin to your geek’s face, whatever their age.

Turing Tumble: Logic Is Child’s Play

Maybe you have a young geek, one interested in all things science related, and computing in particular. They may be too young for “the talk,” where you explain the dangers of unprotected ports, the subtleties of functors and futures, or the central dogma of the Church-Turing thesis, but they are still old enough to avoid specious logic, develop algorithms, and create working code.  (See Just the Facts, Ma’am: Reasoning is Not Dead, Jim.)

Turing Tumble ($69.95, ages 8+) is a game where players can build mechanical computers powered by marbles to solve logic puzzles.  In the spirit of LEGO-powered Turing machines, Turing Tumble exposes the logic of computers in a tangible way.  Developed by University of Minnesota professor and backed by a Kickstarter campaign, Turing Tumble is the real deal, combining marbles, levers, gears, and bits to teach logic and algorithms in an accessible way.  Just don’t let the adults play with it, or your child geek may never get it back.  And yes, I’m playing with mine over the holidays.

AWS DeepRacer: Start Your Engines

If you have an adult geek, particularly one who writes code for a living, this is the gift for you. AWS DeepRacer is a bit pricey at $399, but it’s the only gift your adult geek will want or need. AWS DeepRacer is a 1/18^th scale model car and Amazon Web Services (AWS) reinforcement learning toolkit to train your car for competition in either a real or a virtual racing league.

The DeepRacer can be also be driven manually via a joystick, and with an Intel Atom processor, HDMI port, and Ubuntu Linux, it can double as a serviceable, albeit somewhat slow, desktop computer. (Pro tip: Your GPU-accelerated Jetson Nano ($89 from Nvidia) is a great offline reinforcement learning training tool.)

If your geek is throwing around words and phrases like TensorFlow and generative adversarial network, while railing about deep fakes and social responsibility, relax.  Even if you think Sagemaker is the nom de plume of the family matriarch and her secret stuffing recipe, your geek knows that a reward function is more than a second helping of gravy and stuffing.  I will be racing mine in the living room tomorrow.

PDP-11 Emulator: When Nostalgia Reigns

If your geek’s native language is FORTRAN and they speak wistfully of the days when toggling absolute binary into the computer front panel was a rite of passage, you have an aging geek. They are likely to grow pensive when someone mentions the Great Editor War, modality, and meta keys. Viva Emacs; viva vi; those were heady and difficult days, when friends were forced to choose sides, and flames filled the nascent Internet. (See You Might Be a Computing Old Timer If …)

The PIDP-11 ($250) is a Raspberry Pi emulation of the iconic PDP-11/70, complete with hardware front panel lights and switches. If you want to impress your geek friends, comment on the orthogonality and beauty of the PDP-11 instruction set and smile knowingly. Even better, tell them the simh software supports all the old PDP-11 operating systems your geek knew and loved – RT-11, RSTS/E (my favorite), and UNIX V5, V6, and V7.

With the PIDP-11, you can toggle in code, or boot your operating system of choice, play with all the old system software tools, and even write or run old code. TECO lives!  (Warning: Some soldering is required to assemble the front panel, or you can skip the kit and do everything in software, albeit without that heady joy of blinking lights and toggle switches.)  Mine is on order.

Save the Detritus

Now it is possible you live in one of those increasingly rare places where the gray fog of nothingness lurks in the distance and same day or overnight package delivery is not possible. However, you still have the raw materials in your possession needed to satiate the emotional and intellectual yearnings of a nascent Time Lord, Dungeons and Dragons role player, Skywalker acolyte, or wannabe Gandalf.

Wired’s 2011 review of the All Time Best Toy Ideas ($0) exposes the truth: the detritus of your gift wrapping, along with some yard debris, holds the key to happiness.  Stick (Glamdring), box (TARDIS), string, cardboard tube (lightsaber), and dirt, these are the enduring toys for geeks and the rest of you, though the purist might insist on the addition of rock, hole, and mud puddle.

I’d explain more, but a launch window has been posted for my LEGO Saturn V.  I need to finish the LEGO launch gantry before the Mobile Launcher Platform can roll out of the Vehicle Assembly Building to pad 39A. If you were a geek you would understand why that is important.

Predicting Potentialities, Reifying Futures

N.B.  This is a rather long post, motivated by my recent discussions about the art of predicting the future.

Baseball player and everyman philosopher, Yogi Berra, is justifiably famous for his malapropisms (e.g., “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”), some actual, some simply attributed.  Now enshrined in the popular vernacular is his amusingly true and philosophically vacuous observation, “It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Alas, navigating the darkling plain of history is as murky as predicting the pristine future, for variants of Yogi’s bon mot on the uncertain future have been attributed to such diverse figures as physicist and Nobel Laureate, Niels Bohr, and filmmaker, Samuel Goldwyn.  I speak from personal experience on uncertain exegesis.

At various times, in op-eds, columns, articles, interviews, debates, and speeches, I have pontificated on the murky future, speculating on possible and likely outcomes in education, innovation, science, medicine, technology, and society. While doing so, I have also been privileged to serve on a diverse set of advisory groups, among them, the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the FCC’s Technical Advisory Council, the Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee, and the National Science Board (NSB). I have also participated in or led various World Economic Forum and B20 events.  

None of these experiences made me an oracle, far from it, but they have given me a sense that, as Morpheus promised in The Matrix, the rabbit hole of the future goes very deep indeed. Have a cookie and free your mind.

From musings on Jevon’s paradox though innovation friction and educational futures to the effects of accelerating change, I have plunged in fearlessly – and some might say foolishly – to reflect on the future, with the uncertain chronicle of my dubious musings documented at http://www.hpcdan.org.

In one memorable exchange, I once debated the European Union’s science adviser, Anne Glover, before EU policymakers. It quickly became clear that she (a biologist) and I (a computer geek) were in complete agreement, though both of us puzzled at the audience’s repeated and insistent questioning about slowing the pace of change in microbiology and computing.  Whether concerning digital privacy, genetically modified organisms, cloud computing, or genetic engineering, we emphasized that scientific insights could only be managed wisely, not forestalled. 

I remain convinced this was and is the correct answer, but it was not the desired one. It is also why I believe passionately that an educated populace is an essential prerequisite to thoughtful and informed debate on the appropriate use of new technologies. Absent that, we are but on a darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight.

In a less serious but equally thoughtful vein, I interviewed and debated futurist and science fiction writer, Bruce Sterling. To the amusement of our live audience, we sought to establish the major consensus narrative (aka the truth) about future technology and society, as we rambled across post-genomic biology and medicine, nanotechnology and personalized manufacturing, cognitive radio and the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles and grand AI, and privacy and information flow in the digital age, while discussing the cultural aspects of Clayton Christensen's innovator's dilemma.  (See A Conversation on Designing the Future.)

Several times, I have been mostly right (e.g., the criticality of digital privacy) about the future.  Other times, I have been right about the technology and wrong about the socioeconomics (e.g., online higher education and MOOCs) or wrong about the technology but right about the socioeconomics.  In many cases, I have just been unambiguously and laughably wrong.  (Bought any Itanium computers lately?) However, embarrassment has never stopped me from thinking or asking others what the future might become.  As writer Neal Stephenson provocatively noted, “… if we want to create a better future, we need to start with better dreams.”

Those waking dreams begin by identifying which aspects of the present are malleable – and the associated costs (economic, political, social, and technical) and timescales (months, years, or decades) – as well as those aspects that are truly immutable.  The goal, however, is not just to understand and adapt to the future, but to shape and reify it, for dreams without plans are simply illusions.

Recognize, though, that each envisioned change must be pursued thoughtfully and wisely, for change has both expected and unexpected benefits and consequences.  Foresight is always uncertain, as Ursula K. Le Guin so poignantly portrayed in the Lathe of Heaven.

Futurist Imagining

Technical innovation – predicting the qualitative effects of quantitative change – is often easier than social and legal/policy change, though I recognize my geek bias may be evident in so saying. Even within a specific technical domain, the locus of innovation can shift with time and technology. Consider commercial aviation as one salutatory illustration.

Though the cruising speed of commercial aircraft rose throughout the first half of the 20^th century, today’s Boeing and Airbus commercial airplanes fly no faster than the vaunted Boeing 707 of the late 1950s. Higher speeds were and are technically possible, as military aircraft and the Concorde demonstrated, but supersonic commercial transport remains economically non-viable. Nevertheless, aircraft innovation continues apace, with more reliable, fuel efficient jet engines, carbon fiber designs, glass cockpits and fly by wire. (See Nothing Lasts Forever.)

For those playing the futurist game at home, consider just a few other disruptive examples, past and present. What if long distance communications were effectively free, rather than costing dollars per minute as in the days of Ma Bell? (Answer: the Internet, the web, and e-commerce). What if computers were small and cheap and could store the digital equivalent of the Library of Congress in the palm of your hand, rather than costing millions of dollars and filling massive rooms?  (Answer: laptops, smartphones, and the Internet of Things)

What if the DNA you inherited at birth were just a starting blueprint, rather than a lifelong constant? (Answer: CRISPR and personalized medicine). What if each decade the summers got just a little hotter and the winters got just a little colder? (Answer: climate change, economic loss, and global migration) What if autonomous AI systems were empowered to identify individuals and make life and death decisions? (Answer: stay tuned, this experiment is still underway)

Now slip on your futurist goggles and engage in a brief, though humorous, gedanken experiment.  Might the triumvirate of 5G cellular, talking shoes (no, not the ones with flapping soles), and drone pizza delivery be in our near future? (Stop, right now! How dare you laugh at talking shoes; they’re just a lateral from talking thermostats. Where’s your George Jetson ethos?) In a world where a dystopian Max Headroom is a quaint memory, all three depend on advanced computing, deep learning, and edge AI, but each has divergent social and economic drivers and probabilities. (See Come to the Supercomputing Big Data Edge.)

Despite trade wars, deployment costs now measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and massive picocell requirements, the early rollout of 5G cellular – or at least its marketing twin – is already underway, driven by revenue-salivating carriers and insatiable consumer demand for wireless connectivity and cat videos.  Conversely, marketing talking shoes would be cheap, a dubious fashion statement realizable by any wannabe teenaged designer of chic couture, no more or less likely than any of a dozen other bizarre trends.  Finally, pizza delivery by autonomous drone is now technically feasible, and Dominos has already delivered pizza by drone in New Zealand. Drone delivery is currently illegal in the United States, though legislation to satisfy a national craving for pepperoni might be in our future.

Multivariate Uncertainty

Make no mistake, predicting the future is not for the faint of heart, even with a 5G smartphone, a full belly, and talking shoes; the future is not a simple convolution of linearly independent possibilities. Each possibility depends on a host of uncertainties, with different constraints and interdependences – some are technical, others are cultural; some are economic, others are social; and still others are legal or ethical. More tellingly, each of these uncertainties evolves with varying speeds and scales.  The future is many things, but it is not an unconstrained n-dimensional random walk; even if it does occasionally feel like a Wiener process; it is far more Bayesian, as any inveterate Let’s Make a Deal knows all too well. (The Monty Hall problem is a classic veridical paradox; choose wisely lest you lose the Big Deal behind door number three.)

A few of my geekier friends might say the future is explained by Everett’s many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where all possible outcomes attain, and we live in but one of many possible universes. Yes, this might mean there is a world where polyester leisure suits and platform shoes are part of a man’s professional wardrobe, disco reigns as a national art form, Inktomi dominates web search and digital advertising, high-speed maglev trains crisscross the U.S. hourly, and adult obesity and diabetes are rare.  This is not our world, though I might reluctantly accept disco, but not leisure suits, in exchange for high-speed trains and diabetes’ elimination.

Despair not, there is hope in understanding the Copenhagen interpretation of the wave function’s collapse – when the superposition of eigenstates reduces to a single state consistent with observation.  Put another way, observation tells us the status of Schrödinger's cat, the future of flying cars, and talking shoes.  Flying cars, though technically possible, are economically and statistically unlikely. However, the jury is still out on talking shoes. (For an anecdote about uncertainty and faculty recruiting, see Schrödinger’s Gershwin.)

Lessons for Futurists

Enough philosophy and raconteuring – herewith are five things I have learned about predicting and shaping the future.

1. n the near term, we tend to overestimate change, but in the long term, we underestimate it.

The Gartner hype cycle is real.  Shiny objects readily capture our attention, mesmerizing and beguiling us with pregnant possibilities.  We see a world of inflated options, infected with go fever, ignoring the challenges posed by a still nascent idea. After the trough of disillusionment, most ideas descend quickly into the valley of death.  In a few cases, after innovation and much hard work, the slope of enlightenment appears, with subsequent success.  By then, we have forgotten how much change the innovation has wrought, now comfortable in an Orwellian sense that the past is invariant, as we willingly and enthusiastically embrace double think. Yes, we have always had smartphones, and Google has always been the go to source for homework questions.

2. Linear extrapolation is easy; exponential extrapolation is extraordinarily difficult.

Tomorrow is generally an incremental variant of today, and small changes rarely have dramatic effects.  Yet there are situations where change truly is exponential.  The cadence of transistor shrinkage, popularly known as Moore’s law, along with its more subtle technical enabler, Dennard scaling, has birthed exponentially more powerful and inexpensive computing systems over the past thirty years. That cadence is now ending, with profound implications for a future where an exponential has reached its fuzzy terminus. The cost of whole genome sequencing has plunged similarly, with concomitant disruptions in the science and finances of health care. (DNA sequencing at near consumer prices is here, albeit for smaller sequences – look at the nanopore-based SmidgION.)  Neither of these exponential changes was guaranteed; rather, they were the product of continued, incremental innovation.

3. Quantitative change leads to qualitative change, but this but one type of disruptive change.

Sufficient change in speed, size, capacity, capability, and price almost always lead to qualitative change. If unit prices drop dramatically and volumes rise commensurately, new opportunities and markets arise. Contrarily, continuing design improvements in gas lamps would have never led to the electric light bulb, whose disruptive technical innovation triggered an ecosystem revolution, as did the automobile and the airplane. Anticipating these disruptive innovations is by definition, difficult, but understanding context and tipping points can lessen surprise; these are the trigger points of the hype cycle.

4. Disciplinary experts are often blinded by knowledge of certain constraints; outsiders see differently.

If you have ever worked on any new idea or approach, you are intimately aware of its limitations and the associated risks, and occasionally terrified when others embrace it with blithe obliviousness.  At one level, this cautionary awareness is a critical damper on unbridled enthusiasm.  (After all, few things really are better than sliced bread, though some might opine that canned beer has been a close competitor.) Building an inclusive and thoughtful circle can lessen surprise; non-domain experts, including many science fiction writers, often better anticipate the broader implications and uptake (or rejection) of new ideas.

5. The interplay of technology evolution and social dynamics is both complex and subtle.

Predicting social reaction to technical change is challenging.  I have personally seen a single technical idea met with unbridled enthusiasm and unqualified horror when applied to slightly different human domains. None of the scientists and technologists, and I count myself among that community, would have predicted that response divergence. Again, diverse teams with disparate experiences and knowledge can lessen surprise and increase predictive accuracy.

Coda

The future is a tabula rasa, albeit with social, economic, political, and technical constraints.  We are not simply passive voyagers on an uncertain sea; we can and should shape our future. Doing so requires both contextual awareness and thoughtful shaping of alternatives. 

Remember, the best way to predict the future is to create it.

Yogi was right; the futurist mantra is pity and cautionary.

Predict, reify; rinse, repeat.

The Endless Frontier and the National Science Board

N.B. I am pleased that the White House has announced that I am being appointed to the National Science Board (NSB), which provides advice and oversight for the National Science Foundation (NSF). In recognition of this honor and responsibility, I have been reflecting on how much the NSF has shaped my career over the past thirty-five years, and how much I owe the Foundation in return.

Anxious Proposal Writing

As a new, assistant professor in the fall of 1983, armed with a thin NSF proposal guide, I labored to write my first proposal. Like all young and inexperienced proposal writers, I struggled, searching for a lede that was both novel and compelling.  I wrote and rewrote, agonizing over each paragraph, late into the nights.  Sleep deprived, with the submission window at hand, I decamped to the local post office with a postage meter, where I mailed a set of proposal copies to NSF’s old Washington, DC. address at 1800 G St. NW, near the International Monetary Fund. 

Mind you, this was before electronic proposal routing, with far fewer certifications and checklists.  Paper forms were simply duplicated and stapled for mailing. The World Wide Web did not exist, the NSF supercomputer centers (including the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)) had not been created, and NCSA’s Mosaic web browser not yet been released.  It was a time when a daily dialup CSNET connection was the state of the art among most computer science departments, and I knew a non-trivial percentage of the electronic world’s denizens blessed with an email address. (See Remembering Internet Dogs.) 

My first NSF proposal was about a then radical idea, one I had explored in my Purdue Ph.D. thesis, that supercomputers could and should be built from large collections of microprocessors. When I began that work, the Intel 8086 was still a new and novel product, and the IBM PC had not been released. Doubling down on this crazy idea, my friend and colleague, Richard Fujimoto, and I later wrote an MIT Press book about this approach. Fortunately, time has shown that we – and others – were right about microprocessor clusters.

A few months after submitting my first proposal, I mustered my courage and called the NSF program officer, hoping for good news. To my great joy, he kindly related that the proposal, entitled Performance Directed Design of Multimicrocomputer Systems, would be funded in the fall of 1984, with the munificent sum of $55,825. Although many tens of millions of research dollars have since followed, I will always be grateful for NSF’s initial investment in my future.

A Lifetime of NSF Connections

At the time of that first NSF proposal, I had no idea what arc my career might follow, nor how intimately I would be involved in computing’s future and its myriad connections to NSF.  These have included serving as computer science department head at Illinois, as NCSA director, as founding director of the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) at North Carolina, and as the leader of the eXtreme Computing Group (XCG) at Microsoft. Throughout, I have been fortunate to be involved in building advanced computing infrastructure for scientific research (clusters, GPUs, and the NSF TeraGrid, now XSEDE), advancing high-speed networking, ensuring access to cloud services for science, and engaging in research collaborations of many forms.

When I wrote that first proposal, neither could I have then foreseen how much the world would change due to computing’s now ubiquitous influence. For a few musings on these effects, see NCSA@30: The Revolution Continues, Microsoft/NSF Cloud Research Partnership, and Reluctant Revolutionaries, the Trolley Paradox, and Ender’s Game. 

The one constant in all of my experiences has been the National Science Foundation. Over the years, I have been fortunate to engage NSF on many levels:

• As a researcher and an early Presidential Young Investigator (PYI) awardee, which made possible long-standing industry collaborations with Intel, IBM, and other companies
• As a member of many multi-institution research projects (e.g., on scalable I/O, virtual grids, and mesoscale weather forecasting)
• As a member of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) advisory committee
• As a proposal reviewer, workshop organizer, report writer, informal advisor, distinguished lecturer, member of National Academy studies, and member of both the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) and the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST)
• As a witness in Congressional hearings about computing, science, and technology futures (e.g., this House Science Committee hearing)
• As a leader of a Major Research Equipment and Facility Construction (MREFC) project – the Distributed Terascale Facility (DTF) and Extended Terascale Facility (ETF) that were the TeraGrid
• As an industry partner – the Microsoft/NSF Cloud Research Partnership

All of that built on a long legacy of NSF innovation.

The Endless Frontier: Looking Forward

In July 1945, Vannevar Bush responded to a request from President Roosevelt with a prescient and insightful report, one whose significance and import echo across the decades.  In that report, entitled, Science: The Endless Frontier, Bush noted, “…without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.” He further notes, 

… since health, well-being, and security are proper concerns of Government, scientific progress is, and must be, of vital 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 increased number of jobs for our citizens; and without scientific progress we could not have maintained our liberties against tyranny.

Bush’s seminal report, still worth reading, resulted in what we now know as the National Science Foundation, charged to both develop new knowledge and to train new generations of scholars.

I, along with many of you, have been blessed beneficiaries of that wisdom and foresight. I have also been fortunate to count many CISE leaders and NSF directors as friends and advisers.   It is in that spirit, that I am now pleased that I am being appointed to the National Science Board, where I hope to help the NSF continue to support and sustain scholars – young and old – and to advance scientific research and ensure national competitiveness.