Reed's Ruminations: A Blog by Dan Reed

From Broadcast to Narrowcast: Finding Signal in the Noise

The arc of the 20^th century is interesting for many reasons, not the least of which is how it was shaped by dramatic and traumatic events, including the Great Depression and two world wars. However, the arc of its communication mechanisms is equally striking, though less discussed outside computing and business circles.  It began with Marconi and “wireless,” transitioned through commercial radio and broadcast television, and ended with the Internet and streaming media.

For millennials and those younger, it may now seem almost inconceivable, but there was a time when almost everyone in the United States heard the news from the same three television channels, watched the same television shows, and listened to the same music on a popular local radio station. Most cities had both morning and evening daily newspapers, filled with both the minutia of daily life – crimes, weddings, and funerals – with a smattering of national and international news, and local investigative journalism by the fourth estate, shining a bit of light into the darkness.  These were shared cultural experiences, woven throughout the fabric of American society.

All that has changed, some for the better, and arguably, some for the worse.

The Golden Age of Broadcast Television

In the first half of the 20^th century, radio was the primary mechanism for disseminating entertainment and news. Beginning in the 1950s, analog (NTSC) broadcast television on the VHF and UHF bands – the big three (CBS, NBC, and ABC) -- began dominating the airwaves, with PBS as a public television latecomer.  Led by CBS News and Walter Cronkite, the nightly news broadcasts from the big three defined the national conversation on U.S. and global events, albeit mostly from a white, middle American perspective.

Unlike today’s extended social commentaries on 24x7 cable news channels, the nightly news was largely delivered in a staccato “just the facts, ma’am” format.  As Cronkite put it at the end of each broadcast, “And that's the way it is.” Although the broadcast standards supported color, the high cost of color television meant broadcasts were mostly in black-and-white until the 1960s.

Nor were there live standups from international locations or from across the studio, rather international reports were often recorded on film, then shipped to news bureaus for subsequent development and editing; remote satellite broadcasts were yet to come. Breaking news interrupted normal network programming, as this iconic photograph of Walter Cronkite informing the nation of President Kennedy’s assassination shows. 

At thirty minutes, including commercials, the network news reports also offered little time for pontification and social commentary. That made Cronkite’s February 27, 1968 special report on the Vietnam War all the more telling, when after returning from Vietnam following the Tet Offensive, he concluded,

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Such was the trust in Uncle Walter that unsubstantiated stories have long said President Johnson then remarked, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

However, I did not see that, because for most of my grade school years, our aging black-and-white console TV worked only sporadically. When it did, to change channels, my father had to climb on the roof and manually rotate the antenna, while my mother leaned out the window to give him updates on the TV signal quality.  Needless to say, we picked a channel and stuck with it, in our case, the Springfield, Missouri NBC affiliate (KYTV), which aired the Huntley-Brinkley Report.

Consequently, I distinctly remember Huntley and Brinkley making their own antiwar statement in 1969 by playing Kenny Rogers’ version of Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town. While Rogers sang haunting words about a “crazy Asian war,” a camera panned through various footage, highlighting the sacrifices of U.S. draftees and their families.  Huntley and Brinkley then ended the news with their distinctive signoff, “Good night, Chet. Good night, David. And good night, for NBC News.”  (Huntley broadcast from New York and Brinkley from Washington, D.C.)

When I was in the fifth grade, my parents bought a new Sears Silvertone black-and-white TV and splurged for a new cable TV connection, and for the first time, we received all four channels.  In later years, this gave me access to Star Trek reruns (See Star Trek@50: Inspiring Discovery and Innovation) and The Dick Cavett Show, which featured an interesting and eclectic set of guests unknown to a small town boy. (See Eudora, You Got the Love?)

Until the 1980s, the four channel cultural gestalt of broadcast television extended far beyond news.  In those days, people remembered where they were and those around them when they learned about the birth of Little Ricky, Who Shot J.R., and the ending of M*A*S*H. (For the latter, I was sitting on a hotel room bed in Madison, Wisconsin.) The morning-after water cooler bonding from discussing I Love Lucy, Bonanza, M*A*S*H. Dallas, and hundreds of other hit television shows has now disappeared.

Top 40 Radio

Top 40 AM radio had a similar cultural reach, where being in heavy rotation was a clear sign that a song was a national hit, known to most teenagers and adults.  Then each Saturday, Casey Kasem’s American Top 40, counted down “the biggest hits in the U.S.A.” and American Bandstand, with the ageless Dick Clark, highlighted a popular singer or band.  I heard and saw little of that, as I had neither a radio nor a television in my bedroom. Nor did I buy and play 45 RPM singles or 33 and 1/3 RPM albums. All of these were far beyond my financial reach.

My parents owned a small kitchen radio, which we only turned on as we prepared for work and school.  Lacking an external antenna, we received only clear channel AM stations and a few nearby FM stations. Like the television, it was an aging vacuum tube radio, which took a while to warm up after it was turned on.  When it failed, we would take the failing tube, which no longer lit up, to the local drugstore, use the tube tester, and buy a compatible replacement tube.

Tuned to the local AM station (KALM), we received news read from the Associated Press wires and a healthy dose of country music.  I became well acquainted with Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, and a variety of other country singers, but I didn’t like the affected twang and the frequent stories of pickup trucks and lost love, all in search of what David Allan Coe jokingly sang about as the perfect country song:

Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got run over by a damned old train

The exception was Johnny Cash; I loved Cash from the very first time I heard him.  As a poet and a fellow Arkansas boy, he spoke to deeper things – social inequities, the war, and personal loss. There are few things more melancholy than his rendition of Sunday Morning Coming Down or more haunting than his late life cover of Hurt, a song by Nine Inch Nails. (Never underestimate the power of a great singer to make another’s song their own. Heart’s Kennedy Center Honors cover of Stairway to Heaven brought Led Zeppelin to tears.)

Surprisingly, we did have the radio on one afternoon on New Year’s Eve, when the local DJ cum newscaster said, with some mocking mirth, that he was going to play the most popular song in the country for that year, the implication being that this music was drug-crazed rock and roll. With that sardonic introduction, Don Mclean’s American Pie began to play, and I was immediately transfixed with wonder.  Here was another poet, as evocative as Cash, speaking to a different generation about sadness and loss.

Given our household’s one radio and shared TV, other than a few TV variety shows like The Hollywood Palace, my access to rock and roll was largely limited to our car, but only after I learned to drive in 1973 and could pick up a Memphis rock station.  As a result, I missed the British Invasion and almost all of the music of the 1960s and early 1970s. I do remember one of the older girls who lived nearby being devastated when the Beatles broke up, though I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal. 

Digital Transformation

The uniformity of radio and television content in the post-World War II era created common cultural referents, but they largely targeted white, middle class families. If you were black, Hispanic, Asian, immigrant, poor, rural, or in any other way not part of the white middle class, you were rarely heard or seen, except in caricature or stereotype. (For the record, the Clampetts on The Beverly Hillbillies were unlike anyone I knew in my small Ozarks town.)

Slowly and haltingly, things began to change for the better, as radio and television began to reflect the population’s social and economic diversity and its wide range of interests more accurately. Antiwar demonstrations and civil rights protests forced broadcast news to begin presenting important social issues in a more nuanced way, highlighting previously marginalized voices, and television shows began doing the same (e.g., see All in the Family).

Concurrently, legal and financial battles over cable television must carry rules, the rise of cable superstations such as WGN and WTBS, the emergence of FOX as a fourth television network, new pay-per-view services, movie networks such as HBO, and expanded cable capacity all diluted and diffused the market dominance of the big three commercial broadcast networks.  Suddenly, everyone could get their MTV.

In the midst of this, the transition to high definition, digital television began, which changed wireless spectrum needs.  Notably, as analog television stations vacated parts of the VHF and UHF bands, portions of this spectrum were repurposed.  While at Microsoft, I served as a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Technical Advisory Committee and worked with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on the use of the TV white spaces for unlicensed “super Wi-Fi” to address rural and underserved communities and regions in the U.S. and broadband access across the world. (See White Spaces: Celebrating the Cambridge Trial.)  Remember, analog broadcast television originally chose the VHF and UHF bands due to their long distance propagation characteristics, making them idea for communication across long distances.

Today, only live sporting events can deliver the viewership, advertising revenues, and shared experiences once common on broadcast television.  It’s why the bidding for U.S. television rights to the Olympics, the NFL and Super Bowl, and March Madness (NCAA men’s basketball) is now so intense.

Just as these brave new worlds of cable and digital television were reshaping mass media, the Internet and the World Wide Web appeared, something I was privileged to witness firsthand at the University of Illinois when the Mosaic web browser appeared.  As broadband availability and speeds increased, new access modes appeared, and creative market destruction soon followed.  (As the COVID-19 pandemic has again exposed, broadband inequity in the United States – availability, cost, and bandwidth – remains a serious problem. See Broadband: Oxygen for a Digital World.)

Although there were effective Internet search engines before Google search appeared (e.g., AltaVista), Google found a successful revenue model based on targeted advertising. After all, if you are searching for left-handed scissors, you might want to buy a pair. Combining this information with search history and web cookies could delivered a prospective customer hit rate rarely matched by the blanket advertising from newspapers, radio, and television. This devastated the traditional revenue models of daily newspapers, forcing some to merge with rivals and many others to close. Sadly, this has meant many towns and cities now lack local, independent investigative journalism.

Similarly, the convenience of Netflix movie streaming, with thousands of movies just a click away, destroyed the VHS and DVD rental market. Although Netflix initially distributed rental DVDs by mail, it was created in anticipation of higher broadband speeds that would enable streaming. Co-founder Reed Hastings once said this was why they didn’t name the company DVDflix. Coupled with inexpensive, large screen high-definition televisions, the locus of money and power soon shifted from the traditional movie studies, though few would have then imagined that Amazon would someday buy MGM to feed its Amazon Prime Video streaming service.

Paradoxically, Internet broadband gave birth to narrowcasting – websites, channels, and streaming media targeting very specific demographics. Enamored with reruns of The Gong Show (“We’ll be right back with more – stuff!”), The Lawrence Welk Show (my parents loved it) or The Midnight Special? Interested in collimating your Ritchey–Chrétien telescope, folding a paper airplane, or collecting vintage salt and pepper shakers?  Fear not, YouTube is there for you.  Love reggae/zydeco fusion or KISS tribute bands?  There’s a streaming music service for just your interests. Meanwhile, music CD sales (and even downloads) continue to plummet, following the same path to extinction as DVDs and Blu-ray discs.

The Triumph of Narrowcasting

In the early 21^st century, digital narrowcasting has clearly triumphed – whatever the interest, there’s now an app or a targeted steam for it. Every other form of media distribution, from print news organizations through movie studios to broadcast television networks, is now scrambling to adapt, with varying success.  Not surprisingly, any such change brings both new opportunities and associated challenges.

On the one hand, digital narrowcasting has been hugely democratizing, freeing individuals and organizations to communicate directly with their target demographic. This blog is an example, allowing me to ruminate on any topic of my choosing, then share my ideas using social media, something only possible because instant, global communication is now effectively free. Similarly, websites, streaming media, and other tools mean individuals and shared interest groups can quickly find likeminded partners and collaborators, however narrow or arcane their interests.

Historically, the small number of broadcast platforms – newspapers, radio, and television – each had a large audience. Today, a plethora of platforms compete for a much smaller slice of the global audience, some by choice and others by necessity. Although everyone can be a social media content creator, with a potentially global audience, in practice, only a few achieve any significant influence or visibility. As the late Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon astutely noted, “… a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

The insatiable maw of digital channels must be filled, even if with endless and mind-numbing repetition. Just how many home renovation knockoffs of PBS’s This Old House can HGTV make? How many reruns of the Law and Order franchise can competing cable channels show simultaneously? Can the hosts of the cable news channels talk any more while saying even less, filling the minutes with personal opinions and creating venues that attract only the likeminded?

Digital Echo Chambers

As I look to Claude Shannon, the geek’s patron saint of information theory, I fear not all is well in the 21^st century world of digital narrowcasting; the signal-to-noise ratio of digital discourse is now near de minimis, with a cacophony of discordant voices vying for finite mindshare. Is it possible for us to imagine and create a digital world where we more clearly distinguish information (facts) from opinion, persuasion, and social consensus? Each has a role, when clearly demarcated and delineated, but they are not the same.

Facts are independently testable and verifiable, with truth independent of one’s own opinions or beliefs. It is raining at this place and this time is a testable statement, provably true or false. An opinion is not a fact. “I think it is raining” is an opinion; it may or may not be accurate. Fact-based persuasion is convincing someone else it is raining using clear, verifiable evidence that it is, in fact, raining; demagoguery is not. Social consensus is a widely held perspective, best supported by history and evidence.  It is bad if it rains on an outdoor baseball game is social consensus. (See Just the Facts, Ma’am: Reasoning is Not Dead, Jim.)

With that backdrop, the goal of any reputable information source should not be to tell you how to think; it should be to provide you with facts that allow you to develop your own hypotheses, test them against evidence, then revise them accordingly. Unbiased information – the facts – is the prelude to evidence-based reasoning and informed discourse. Such informed national discourse requires shared intellectual context, something in danger of being lost in a narrowcasting world.

All too often, the explosion of tailored communications and personal preferences can trap any one of us in a self-reinforcing echo chamber that separates and potentially demonizes those unlike us, confusing facts with opinions and beliefs. Put another way, if you have been sitting in your underwear for multiple days, binging on potato chips and beer, watching endless reruns of The Big Bang Theory, surfing the dark web, and reading extremist social media (either from the far right or the far left), it’s time to get dressed, open the curtains, seek information, and expose yourself to other perspectives, especially those that differ from your own. Fact-based understanding and multilateral communication are a messy, participatory process – one must listen, talk, and think – but from it, mutual understanding and shared perspectives, both grounded in facts, can emerge.

In higher education today, there is great focus on imparting knowledge and inculcating skills, and they are important, because employers prize them.  However, knowledge transmission pales in importance relative to teaching critical thinking – the ability to analyze evidence, test ideas, adjust one’s perspective, and form rational, thoughtful and nuanced insights. Critical thinking is the upgraded brain software that operates on the data we call knowledge. It is the hallmark of an educated citizenry.

To appreciate nuance, to understand discord, to feel empathy, one must glean the facts and also listen to diverse perspectives.  Read multiple newspapers, domestic and international; consider multiple websites from around the world; listen to news channels from the left, the middle, and the right; talk to people from different backgrounds.  Above all, think critically about what you learn; ask questions; seek your answers supported by facts.  Remember, not everyone who disagrees with you is ipso facto wrong; nor are you necessarily right if all your friends agree with you.

Cronkite knew that, as did Huntley and Brinkley. Each night, they and their compatriots did their best to bring the audience some unvarnished facts to ponder. They reserved editorial comment for rare and extraordinary occasions, and they labeled it explicitly as such, which gave it great power.  Today, the best news organizations and high-quality information sources strive to do the same.

Yes, broadcast news stories were and are filtered by mainstream cultural bias, but they are the mainstream. Though not always right, the mainstream, then and now, is more than a neologism.  It is a shared and evolving Weltanschauung created by the interplay of contrasting and often divergent perspectives, itself derived from broad communication and critical thinking. (See Shaping the Message, Using the Medium and Contemplative Reflection and Instantaneous Communication.)

And that’s the way it is, March 29^th, 2022.  Goodbye, Chet. Goodbye, David. And goodnight from HPCDan.

Just the Facts, Ma’am: Reasoning is Not Dead, Jim

As a kid, I watched Dragnet on an aging, black-and-white TV, back in the day when changing the channel required getting up and actually rotating the TV's channel selector. I still recall the dum, de, DUM, DUM Dragnet theme and Jack Webb's monotonic voiceover advising us that the stories we were about to see were true, a meme continued from its radio antecedents. In one ironic twist, the intrepid Joe Friday's catchphrase "Just the facts, ma'am" soon entered the popular lexicon, even though Joe never uttered exactly that phrase, merely several related variants.

In contrast, Star Trek's iconic, "He's dead, Jim" phrase, was actually uttered by Dr. McCoy. Woe be unto any "red shirt" extras who joined the away team, only to die, just before the first commercial break, as Bones looked up at Jim and began to speak those fateful words. So publicly imprinted was the phrase that DeForest Kelley later expressed some concern that "He's dead, Jim" might be the epitaph on his own tombstone. It was not, but at least one obituary opened with the phrase.

When innocuous, these cultural memes are an intellectual and social shorthand, framing a larger social context, quickly and concisely. "Just the facts, ma'am" became a caricature of deadpan delivery and dispassionate situational analysis, whereas "He's dead, Jim" poked fun at Star Trek's often formulaic storylines. In an extended riff, John Scalzi later wrote an entire novel, entitled Red Shirts, on the dangers of self-aware characters trapped and under the influence of badly written television script.

The more sinister variants of cultural catchphrases can label and ostracize, reinforcing inaccurate stereotypes and disenfranchising entire social, ethnic, or cultural groups. Simply put, such memes can become an intellectual crutch, a way to avoid rational and thoughtful discourse and ignore the timeless importance of fact-based reasoning. A line often attributed to the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan captures the essence of such fact-based discourse, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

Of course, purported facts are not themselves facts; establishing actual facts (a neologism, for sure) is the essential prerequisite for fact-based reasoning. If one source claims it is raining and another says it is not, the wise person does not report both as opinions. Rather, he or she looks outside and ascertains the existence, as well as the time, type, location, and geographic dispersion of the purported precipitation. As Lincoln once said, "Calling a tail a leg does not make it so."

Nor does saying something loudly and repeatedly make it a fact, even if the source is both respected and authoritative. Indeed, appealing to authority is one of the biggest risks and fallacies in common, public discourse. It ranks right up there with strawman arguments and false dichotomies among the informal fallacies. (I will return to these informal fallacies as well as some of the formal ones discussed in elementary propositional logic, as found in introductory philosophy classes.)

An appeal to authority is especially pernicious in scientific disciplines. Richard Feynman reinforced the magnitude and the danger of this risk in describing the scientific method, "It doesn't make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn't matter how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is… If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. That's all there is to it." (See The Epistemology of Science for a few musings on the interplay of scientific discourse and a lay audience.)

In a world of social memes, tweetstorms, fake news (real and otherwise), and alternative facts, it is especially important to think, analyze, and verify, and do so with careful deliberation. (See Contemplative Reflection and Instantaneous Communication for some thoughts on the dangers of speaking before thinking.)

What science fiction writer Bruce Sterling once called the major consensus narrative, a perhaps more erudite version of truthiness, is just that, a social construct, a shared belief. It may (or may not) be sophistry, fully grounded in the facts. (See A Conversation on Designing the Future, where Bruce and I riff on the interplay of technology and social behavior.)

In that spirit, it is worth remembering and holding dear some classic rules and frequent fallacies of logical reasoning. Many valued logics, higher order logics, measure theory, incompleteness theorems, the Chomsky hierarchy, Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, and decidability are fascinating and worthy topics, ones I have spent many a day and night pondering, building constructive and non-constructive proofs, but they, like how Gödel struck down Hilbert's dream, are topics for another day.

Just a few basics of propositional logic and a bit of first order predicate logic, along with recognition of informal fallacies, cover most everyday needs. Here are just a few of the more common fallacies to remember and avoid:

• Ad hominem fallacy – discrediting an idea by attacking an individual or group
  • "Dan is uneducated, so climate change cannot be happening."
• Appeal to authority fallacy – adopting a position because of those who support it
  • "Your father said you could run fast; it must be true."
• Circular logic fallacy -- A is true because B is true; B is true because A is true
  • "You must save money to retire because it takes money to retire."
• Affirming a disjunct – A or B; A, therefore not B (both can be true simultaneously)
  • "The sun is up or it is springtime."
• Affirming the consequent – P implies Q; Q, therefore P (Q can be true even if P is not)
  • "Dan is tall implies he is a basketball player. He is a basketball player. Therefore, he is tall." (There are short basketball players)
• Denying the antecedent – P implies Q; therefore, if not P then not Q (again, Q can still be true)
  • "Dan is tall implies he is a basketball player. If Dan is not tall, then he is not a basketball player." (Again, there are short basketball players.)

These fallacies are everywhere if one reads the news critically or listens carefully to many public statements, and one must be diligent and vigilant to avoid being lured unaware by these seductive Sirens. Remember, given an inconsistent set of axioms (i.e. contradictory "facts"), any statement can be "proven" to be true or false.

Other fallacies abound in first order logic via misuse of existential and universal quantifiers (e.g., the existence of an instance does not imply universality); hasty generalizations are one instance of such. Likewise, here are two simple logic rules that everyone should remember; they are valued, everyday friends:

• Modus tollens – P implies Q; not Q, therefore not P"
  • "It is raining implies the ground is wet. The ground is not wet, therefore it is not raining."
• Modus ponens – P implies Q; P, therefore Q
  • "The sun has set implies it is dark. The sun has set, therefore it is dark."

Notice how similar modus tollens and modus ponens look to affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent; it is crucial to understand the difference.

Remember, it all begins with "Just the facts," rigorously tested and verified. This solid detective work would make old Joe Friday proud. From there, logical reasoning – establishing cause and effect – will lead to other testable hypotheses. It's about following the clues.

Make no mistake, logical reasoning is definitely not dead, Jim, though it seems to have been punched in the gut and beaten bloody by a gang of angry naysayers. Fortunately, it is a bit hardier than Star Trek's red shirts. As long as we pursue just the facts logic will both live and flourish.

Star Trek@50: Inspiring Discovery and Innovation

N.B.  I also write for the Communications of the ACM (CACM).  The following essay recently appeared on the CACM blog.

On September 8, 1966, fifty years ago, Star Trek premiered in the U.S. on the NBC television network. By the broadcast television standards of the day, it was not a great success.  The ratings were mediocre, the reviews were mixed, and it was canceled after three seasons, despite a fan-driven letter writing campaign.  Defying this inauspicious beginning, Star Trek has become an international cultural phenomenon, with multiple series, movies and casts since the original television premiere.

Much has been written about why Star Trek has lived long and prospered.  I suspect much of its enduring appeal lies in the intertwined personal relations of the three original starring characters (Kirk, Spock and McCoy), along with technological optimism and the ethical questions and conundrums posed.

Star Trek has also entered the cultural lexicon in deep ways. “Beam me up, Scotty!” and “Set phasers to stun” being just two of many examples.  The small town of Riverside, Iowa, near where I now live, even has a commemorative monument to the “future birthplace” of James T. Kirk. (Yes, Captain Kirk was born in Iowa.) More importantly, Star Trek has inspired generations to pursue science and technology careers, not a few of whom have transformed part of that television science fiction into technological and commercial fact.

Through a B&W Broadcast, Darkly

Alas, I missed the premiere and the entire original run of the Star Trek broadcasts because my family did not own a television. Today that seems incredible, given television’s nearly universal market penetration, the plethora of cable channels, and ubiquitous streaming media services. At the time, however, there were only three broadcast television networks in the U.S., and cable service was not available in many rural areas. In the 1960s, channel surfing often involved climbing on the roof to rotate the antenna while responding to guidance from an open window. Instead, it was best to pick one of the three broadcast networks and stick with the choice, particularly in winter.

When Star Trek entered syndication a few years later, I was able to watch it in B&W, and when I saw it later on color television, I was amazed by the bright, garish colors.  Whether in gray scale or color, the series immediately engaged both my teenage angst and my scientific aspirations. Mr. Spock’s stoicism and logic comforted many who felt the pain and loneliness of cultural isolation, including this geek. The series also gave hope that a better world was possible, one where we could celebrate our differences as strengths, while embracing the common core of our shared humanity. During the height of the Vietnam War and our ongoing struggle for civil rights, this was and is a powerful message of hope.

From Fiction to Reality and Back

Though one might also rightly argue convergent evolution, cellphones (communicators) and tablet computers both owe some elements of their form and function to Star Trek’s vision of ubiquitous computing and communications. The tricorder X Prize competition, to create a portable, wireless health monitoring device, is a direct homage to Star Trek. (No, he’s not dead, Jim.)

My former colleagues at Microsoft Research frequently reference the Star Trek universal translator as an inspiration for their work on real-time language translation. (Thank you, Rick Rashid.) More generally, our community’s work on deep learning and intelligent assistants is inspired not only by technical goals but by a motivating vision of artificial intelligence that runs deeply through Star Trek and the science fiction world. From weak AI to ambitions of strong AI, we yearn to build a machine that will be proud of us.

Across computing, we ponder issues of AI ethics and their instantiation in autonomous vehicles, consider the limits of silicon-based computing and quantum alternatives, and debate the future of ubiquitous sensors and digital privacy. These and hundreds of other technical challenges also inform our imaginations and our dreams of the future. This virtuous cycle of invention and imagination drives us forward.

To Boldly Go or Go Boldly: The Frontier Awaits

The original Star Trek series opened with Captain Kirk intoning that the Enterprise would “boldly go where no man has gone before.” It was powerful and inspiring message of exploratory optimism, though I have to admit that the split infinitive has always bothered me.  But, the gender-specific pronoun was the wrong message, one Captain Picard rightly corrected.

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Both versions echo the enduring words of Vannevar Bush in his seminal essay, “Science: The Endless Frontier” and speak to something deep in our nature:

… without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.

We yearn to discover. Engage. Make it so.

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Lessons from Winnie the Pooh: Sustainable Cyberinfrastructure

I also write for the Communications of the ACM (CACM). I recently posted an essay with this title on the CACM blog. The essay, located here, discusses the challenges of sustaining cyberinfrastructure for scientific discovery.

As I noted in the essay, the longitudinal value of research data often accrues to disciplines other than those where it was created. We need a new model that judiciously balances investment between the "next big thing" and sustainable cyberinfrastructure, for the latter is itself a crucial enabler of discovery.

White Spaces and Adaptive Communication

I have been spending quite a bit of time on approaches to address the spectrum crisis – the seemingly insatiable demand for more wireless communication as the number of Internet-connected devices continues to grow. We are working with a consortium in the UK to host a major white spaces trial. Details can be found on the Microsoft blog, along with a video explaining the challenges and opportunities.

Smart Grids: Getting Personal

N.B. I also write for the Communications of the ACM (CACM). The following essay recently appeared on the CACM blog.

How many electronic devices do you own? It is tempting to answer, "Just a handful," but the truth is much more nuanced. Here's a simple experiment that will (quite literally) illuminate the truth. Some evening, after darkness has fallen, turn off all the lights in your house, walk from room to room and count the number of lighted power indicators, blinking LEDs and glowing screens. I suspect you will be surprised.

Each of us owns and operates a diverse array of electronic devices, almost all of which draw power whether they are fully active or being used. From your flat screen television and its infrared (IR) sensor, which awaits commands from the remote, to wireless access points, computers and game consoles on standby, and even electronic thermostats, our wired world consumes an increasing amount of energy.

Isn't it time we began to make the smart grid personal? Imagine coupling predictive models of individual and family behavior with real-time measurement and control of home and office environments to minimize energy consumption and carbon footprints. Such a vision depends on broad deployment of inexpensive energy sensors and device actuators, intelligent energy adaptation and appropriate regulatory policies, as well as consumer education and awareness. Many companies and groups are exploring the space, including Microsoft via its Holm initiative.

There are challenging cyberphysical systems research issues, complex systems integration challenges, and economic and policy decisions. We can make a difference – and we must.

Electronic CACM Is Now Live

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the Communications of the ACM (CACM) was about to "go live," together with a series of blogs, including one written by yours truly. CACM is now live, and the blog (Blog@CACM) is live as well. My first two blog entries are entitled Pipelining, Computing Innovation and Economic Growth and Connecting the Two Ends: Mobile Clouds.

I will be writing for CACM roughly every two weeks.

The Long Race for Innovation

Recently, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) met at the National Academy of Sciences to discuss and approve our most recent draft report on research and innovation, entitled, University-Private Sector Research Partnerships in the Innovation Ecosystem. Quoting from the executive summary (note that the final wording may change slightly), the goal of the study was to

… examine approaches to stimulate interactions between the private sector and universities, including new R&D business models that are scalable to a national level. As part of its study, PCAST also considered policies to incentivize interactions and to address potential barriers, such as intellectual property, tax policies, and organizational challenges. The study is aimed at improving the effectiveness of public and private sector research through cooperative investments, expanding interactions among personnel, and increasing opportunities for technology transfer in its broadest sense.

Perhaps coincidently, but more likely because the meme is both pervasive and compelling, this coupling of ecosystem and competitiveness mirrors that in the earlier study (Leadership Under Challenge: Information Technology R&D in a Competitive World) of the U.S. Networking, Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program, which I had the privilege to co-chair.

Although the findings and recommendations of the study are manifold, I took two major ideas away from the presentations and the report. The first is based on a funny but pointed remark from Norm Augustine. The second relates to prizes and their ability to inspire our imaginations.

Norm Said the Stock Dived …

I've always enjoyed the fact that the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) staff members rearrange our seating at each PCAST meeting. It gives me a chance to have sidebar conversations with different people during each meeting. At our most recent meeting, I happened to be sitting next to Norm Augustine, the former head of Lockheed-Martin.

Norm is a fascinating guy, with wonderful stories and a piercing belief in the importance of research as the critical enabler of the long-term, global competitiveness of the United States. You may remember that Norm led the group which produced the seminal report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Future, which in turn led to the America COMPETES Act. (Despite bipartisan support, the COMPETES Act, which would double federal funding for physical science research, remains unfunded.) But I digress from my story …

During the comment period after the public presentation of the draft PCAST report on the innovation ecosystem, Norm told a wonderful but sad story that could be a parable for our economic times. (Any inaccuracies or errors in the story are mine.) During his time as Lockheed-Martin CEO, Norm said they had identified a set of promising applied research directions that could yield long-term competitive advantage to company, after the requisite time and investment. Pleased and excited by this possibility, he dispatched one of his senior people (a group president, as I remember) to brief the Wall Street financial analysts.

Norm went on to say that the analysts nearly ran from the room at the end of the briefing to sell their Lockheed-Martin stock, which then dropped precipitously on the markets. He noted ruefully that it was nearly two years before the stock recovered to its price before the briefing. Chagrined by this experience, Norm said he asked the analysts at the next briefing why the company had been so punished for its planned R&D investment and for seeking to assure its long-term competitive position. The answer came back clearly and pointedly. Most investors held the stock less than eighteen months, and corporate investment beyond this horizon was viewed as a drain on the corporate coffers.

A Parable for Our Time

Norm told his story to highlight the dangers of short-term thinking and the risk to our competitive future, a point he also made recently in a Science editorial (Vol. 321, No. 5896, p. 1605
September 19, 2008), from which I cannot help but quote an excerpt:

Much has been accomplished since The Gathering Storm was published. A new research university was established, with an opening endowment equal to what the Massachusetts Institute of Technology amassed after 142 years. Next year, over 200,000 students will study abroad, mostly pursing science or engineering degrees, often under government scholarships. Government investment in R&D is set to increase by 25%. An initiative is under way to create a global nanotechnology hub. An additional $10 billion dollars is being devoted to K-12 education, with emphasis on math and science. And a $3 billion dollar add-on to the nation's research budget is in process. Of course, these actions are taking place in Saudi Arabia, China, the United Kingdom, India, Brazil, and Russia, respectively. What about in the United States?

The laurel in the race to the future sometimes goes to the sprinter, but more often the reward goes to those who have the vision, foresight and persistence to run the long and sometimes enervating marathon that is education, intellectual innovation and technology commercialization.

Perhaps more pointedly, Norm was quite literally telling his story as the U.S. government was desperately seeking to develop a rescue plan during the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Call it coincidence if you like; I view it as a warning.

Prizes: Powering the Imagination

During the PCAST meetings we heard from a variety of academic, government, industry and non-profit groups. One of the clear messages concerned the power of prizes to catalyze competition and innovation, with the sub-orbital space flight X Prize being the most visible and recent example. PCAST member Fred Kavli's foundation has also offered prizes for scientific innovation.

The incentive for such prizes is rarely the direct financial reward to the winner, but rather the collateral opportunities that accrue to the winner. For example, Paul Allen undoubtedly spent far more on Burt Rutan's Spaceship One than the $10M X Prize, but the international publicity was enormous, and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has booked revenue-paying passengers for future flights.

Even more important than the economic incentives is the power of prizes to focus the imagination and intellectual talent of a community on accomplishing something both difficult and audacious. In that spirit, in 2006 the U.S. Congress directed the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish a prize program. Also, the National Academy of Sciences recently released a report outlining a series of detailed recommendations for how to conduct a prize program.

Eudora, You Got the Love?

As I was unpacking boxes of books recently, as part of my move to Microsoft, I opened my copy of the collected stories of Eudora Welty. This awakened memories of my southern childhood and two anecdotes about Ms. Welty, one technical and another cultural.