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few really good managers of researchers Bob Taylor has been generally praised as a great manager, and I believe them of course. But when I heard stories of his

few really good managers of researchers Bob Taylor has been generally praised as a great manager, and I believe them of course. But when I heard stories of his management style, it seemed to go against every instinct we have on how to foster creativity. Could you comment on that? Also, in terms of funding, I wonder -- haven't things changed? Wasn't funding more important in, say, the 1960's and 70's due to the cost of computer time, especially at the processing level that would let you "see the future." A $1000 computer today is not so different, in terms of power, from a similar machine 5 years ago, right? Things have happened in the past when passionate and confident people with chops have decided to do something. But wasn't the past more open? When a field is just forming, everything is crazy, so nothing is. It's only when it has solidified (and in exactly the wrong direction) that you would more expect to find a "crazy professor" having more of an impact, right?

mmiller 10y ago
As Alan has said, the importance of funding is more about finding the problem. There's a lot of wandering and false leads involved (though, finding out the false leads is nevertheless valuable. It's still new knowledge). In terms of hardware, the thing to anticipate is what computing power will be necessary for accomplishing things decades from now, and paying the bill for that, not considering what one can buy from a computer retailer today, because that doesn't create the excuse to think of what computers will be able to do.
- david927 10y ago
  Using funding to find the problem is inefficient; side projects are a much more distributed and efficient method and they don't need funding. As for hardware, you're repeating what's clear. What I'm saying is that you used to have to purchase the future but now you can mimic those coming changes and, while slower, offer perfectly acceptable performance. I guess I'm trying to lead Alan to say something to the effect that the next PARC can be groups, working together, on their own time, over Skype. I'm not sure he believes that but I do.
alankay1 10y ago
Tell me the stories, and I'll comment on them. If you are computing on a $1000 computer, you are computing in the past. Part of the idea here is that you want to do research and development on supercomputers of the present that will give you the resources that will be available at lower prices in the future. With salaries as they are today -- and real estate much worse -- it is actually more expensive to fund the same kinds of research today. The past was similar to today in that most people in computing back then were orbiting around some local vendor's and local fads notions of computing. And it was a lot harder to make computers and other tools back then. It wasn't a crazy professor having an impact back then, but a whole research community that was required to make an impact.
- david927 10y ago
  The stories I know came from Dealers of Lightning and what I remember (correctly I hope) is that the weekly meetings were quite contentious and that he would even encourage haranguing the presenter. Is that true? Did the people there feel it as healthy constructive criticism? I would worry that this would more likely stifle creative thought than encourage it. If you are computing on a $1000 computer, you are computing in the past. I know that this was true in the past but it's my contention that hardware has had Moore's Law where software has stagnated, and that the passing of time has meant that now current software doesn't often take full advantage of the hardware available. If you did architect based on where the puck is going (optimized for multi-core, no main memory) current hardware wouldn't slow you down the same way as it did before and sometimes you would even see a performance gain. By the way, thanks for doing this.
  - alankay1 10y ago
    The research community was "an arguing community", and knew how to argue "in good ways" (i.e. no personal attacks, only trying to illuminate the issues, etc.) This worked pretty well almost always ... (The weekly meetings were not for being creative, but for discussion ...) Let me respectfully disagree with your contention. The point that is missed is not what the hardware could do, but what can you do without optimizing. It is very very hard to put on the optimization hat without removing the design hat, and once you've removed the latter you are lost. The key to the Parc approach was to be able to do many experiments in the future without having to optimize. (There was a second part to this "key" but I'll omit it here)

mmiller 10y ago

As Alan has said, the importance of funding is more about finding the problem. There's a lot of wandering and false leads involved (though, finding out the false leads is nevertheless valuable. It's still new knowledge). In terms of hardware, the thing to anticipate is what computing power will be necessary for accomplishing things decades from now, and paying the bill for that, not considering what one can buy from a computer retailer today, because that doesn't create the excuse to think of what computers will be able to do.

david927 10y ago
Using funding to find the problem is inefficient; side projects are a much more distributed and efficient method and they don't need funding. As for hardware, you're repeating what's clear. What I'm saying is that you used to have to purchase the future but now you can mimic those coming changes and, while slower, offer perfectly acceptable performance. I guess I'm trying to lead Alan to say something to the effect that the next PARC can be groups, working together, on their own time, over Skype. I'm not sure he believes that but I do.

alankay1 10y ago

Tell me the stories, and I'll comment on them. If you are computing on a $1000 computer, you are computing in the past. Part of the idea here is that you want to do research and development on supercomputers of the present that will give you the resources that will be available at lower prices in the future. With salaries as they are today -- and real estate much worse -- it is actually more expensive to fund the same kinds of research today. The past was similar to today in that most people in computing back then were orbiting around some local vendor's and local fads notions of computing. And it was a lot harder to make computers and other tools back then. It wasn't a crazy professor having an impact back then, but a whole research community that was required to make an impact.

david927 10y ago
The stories I know came from Dealers of Lightning and what I remember (correctly I hope) is that the weekly meetings were quite contentious and that he would even encourage haranguing the presenter. Is that true? Did the people there feel it as healthy constructive criticism? I would worry that this would more likely stifle creative thought than encourage it. If you are computing on a $1000 computer, you are computing in the past. I know that this was true in the past but it's my contention that hardware has had Moore's Law where software has stagnated, and that the passing of time has meant that now current software doesn't often take full advantage of the hardware available. If you did architect based on where the puck is going (optimized for multi-core, no main memory) current hardware wouldn't slow you down the same way as it did before and sometimes you would even see a performance gain. By the way, thanks for doing this.
- alankay1 10y ago
  The research community was "an arguing community", and knew how to argue "in good ways" (i.e. no personal attacks, only trying to illuminate the issues, etc.) This worked pretty well almost always ... (The weekly meetings were not for being creative, but for discussion ...) Let me respectfully disagree with your contention. The point that is missed is not what the hardware could do, but what can you do without optimizing. It is very very hard to put on the optimization hat without removing the design hat, and once you've removed the latter you are lost. The key to the Parc approach was to be able to do many experiments in the future without having to optimize. (There was a second part to this "key" but I'll omit it here)