4 ms·

What academics (eg Microsoft Research) mean by "innovation" is "what lets us publish papers". What ordinary people mean by "innovation" is "what cool new thing

by ucee054 14y ago

What academics (eg Microsoft Research) mean by "innovation" is "what lets us publish papers". What ordinary people mean by "innovation" is "what cool new things can be made available that noticeably change Grandma's life". Most academic work is USELESS for this because it ignores too many constraints, making the market hostile to it. Richard Gabriel did a piece on this, called "Money through innovation reconsidered". Don't buy academic hype.

stinos 14y ago
So what is your actual point here? Research is useless? Academics are only about publishing and nothing more? Doesn't make sense. How do you expect eg low-level brain research to be useful for your grandma? It can't, but that does not mean at all it cannot be innovative or that the researchers only care about the next paper.
- ucee054 14y ago
  I have two points. Point1: Nothing that Microsoft ever does will blaze a new trail of products, they are not an original sort of company. They will always be playing catchup. EG Kinect to WiiMote Point2: Nothing that CS conferences or journals ever publish will blaze a new trail. They too will always be playing catchup. EG first came Facebook, and only afterwards the whole social networking research craze in academia. I exaggerate Point2 a little. There are 1 or 2 Academics who actually make stuff, like Michael Stonebraker. But overall the record is pathetic. Don't buy the hype.
  - pm90 14y ago
    >Point2: Nothing that CS conferences or journals ever publish will blaze a new trail. They too will always be playing catchup. Actually, it was a lot of this published work that resulted in: Internet, Networks, Filesystems, OS(Unix), Compilers(LLVM) etcetc. Granted, a lot of research does not result in any useful product, but that isn't what research is all about. Its about exploring the boundaries of our knowledge. Trying wild ideas that you couldn't do within the time and budget limits of a company... because some of those wild ideas do work spectacularly in the end
    - ucee054 14y ago
      Please get your facts straight. If the papers had never existed we would still have the Internet, Networks, Filesystems, OS and Compilers. Those things are not exactly difficult to do at a basic level (the 0to1 level) although at an advanced level (1toN) they might be. So you will find that how those things got onto the market was by some engineer figuring out how to do it and hacking it together, not the work of some professor. The two examples I am familiar with are filesystems and OS. Our filesystems today are the result of descent from FAT12, which came from discussion between Marc McDonald and Bill Gates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table Our operating systems are the result of descent from CPM, which came from Gray Kildall deciding to write a RAM tester. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M And that applies to 90% of the market. "Look ma no research!" I can find you similar examples for compilers and networks as well, though in those fields the examples will not be so outright embarrassing to academia. What research is about is mostly chasing trends in conferences and funding bodies. Don't buy academic hype.
      - pm90 14y ago
        >Please get your facts straight. If the papers had never existed we would still have the Internet, Networks, Filesystems, OS and Compilers. That is a question without an answer. Probably, they would have been invented, probably not. The ideas themselves were played around and worked on by academics though. You can't deny that they helped to usher in the technologies much quicker than otherwise. >So you will find that how those things got onto the market was by some engineer figuring out how to do it and hacking it together, not the work of some professor Professors don't (usually) sit down and write code, they hire others to do it for them. As I said before, the point of research isn't to produce a product, ready for use. It is to try out ideas that wouldn't be tried by the industry. Its good that Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina were hired to code what later turned out to be the Mosaic web browser. >Our operating systems are the result of descent from CPM, which came from Gray Kildall deciding to write a RAM tester. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M MSDOS, true. Unix, false. Unix descended from MULTICS[0] which started much before CP/M[1] >I can find you similar examples for compilers and networks as well, though in those fields the examples will not be so outright embarrassing to academia. I wince at your choice of words. "Embarrassing"? Why? If the industry produces an idea or technique that solves a research problem, academics have no trouble accepting it. See for instance: how quickly AWS, CUDA etc are being adopted by academics for their research. So, in total, you have given one "fact" which turns out to be untrue. And you say you can give more examples in networks and compilers. Please do. I am genuinely interested to see what it is that has so tarnished your views on the work of academia. >And that applies to 90% of the market. "Look ma no research!" Clearly. Here, take another famous example: relational databases originated in a paper by an academic, E.F. Codd[2]. I see that you are hell-bent on showing that academic research has made no contribution at all to the development of modern computer science. I haven't got the time or inclination to argue, so this will be my last comment on this matter [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database

by ucee054 14y ago

stinos 14y ago

So what is your actual point here? Research is useless? Academics are only about publishing and nothing more? Doesn't make sense. How do you expect eg low-level brain research to be useful for your grandma? It can't, but that does not mean at all it cannot be innovative or that the researchers only care about the next paper.

ucee054 14y ago
I have two points. Point1: Nothing that Microsoft ever does will blaze a new trail of products, they are not an original sort of company. They will always be playing catchup. EG Kinect to WiiMote Point2: Nothing that CS conferences or journals ever publish will blaze a new trail. They too will always be playing catchup. EG first came Facebook, and only afterwards the whole social networking research craze in academia. I exaggerate Point2 a little. There are 1 or 2 Academics who actually make stuff, like Michael Stonebraker. But overall the record is pathetic. Don't buy the hype.
- pm90 14y ago
  >Point2: Nothing that CS conferences or journals ever publish will blaze a new trail. They too will always be playing catchup. Actually, it was a lot of this published work that resulted in: Internet, Networks, Filesystems, OS(Unix), Compilers(LLVM) etcetc. Granted, a lot of research does not result in any useful product, but that isn't what research is all about. Its about exploring the boundaries of our knowledge. Trying wild ideas that you couldn't do within the time and budget limits of a company... because some of those wild ideas do work spectacularly in the end
  - ucee054 14y ago
    Please get your facts straight. If the papers had never existed we would still have the Internet, Networks, Filesystems, OS and Compilers. Those things are not exactly difficult to do at a basic level (the 0to1 level) although at an advanced level (1toN) they might be. So you will find that how those things got onto the market was by some engineer figuring out how to do it and hacking it together, not the work of some professor. The two examples I am familiar with are filesystems and OS. Our filesystems today are the result of descent from FAT12, which came from discussion between Marc McDonald and Bill Gates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table Our operating systems are the result of descent from CPM, which came from Gray Kildall deciding to write a RAM tester. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M And that applies to 90% of the market. "Look ma no research!" I can find you similar examples for compilers and networks as well, though in those fields the examples will not be so outright embarrassing to academia. What research is about is mostly chasing trends in conferences and funding bodies. Don't buy academic hype.
    - pm90 14y ago
      >Please get your facts straight. If the papers had never existed we would still have the Internet, Networks, Filesystems, OS and Compilers. That is a question without an answer. Probably, they would have been invented, probably not. The ideas themselves were played around and worked on by academics though. You can't deny that they helped to usher in the technologies much quicker than otherwise. >So you will find that how those things got onto the market was by some engineer figuring out how to do it and hacking it together, not the work of some professor Professors don't (usually) sit down and write code, they hire others to do it for them. As I said before, the point of research isn't to produce a product, ready for use. It is to try out ideas that wouldn't be tried by the industry. Its good that Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina were hired to code what later turned out to be the Mosaic web browser. >Our operating systems are the result of descent from CPM, which came from Gray Kildall deciding to write a RAM tester. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M MSDOS, true. Unix, false. Unix descended from MULTICS[0] which started much before CP/M[1] >I can find you similar examples for compilers and networks as well, though in those fields the examples will not be so outright embarrassing to academia. I wince at your choice of words. "Embarrassing"? Why? If the industry produces an idea or technique that solves a research problem, academics have no trouble accepting it. See for instance: how quickly AWS, CUDA etc are being adopted by academics for their research. So, in total, you have given one "fact" which turns out to be untrue. And you say you can give more examples in networks and compilers. Please do. I am genuinely interested to see what it is that has so tarnished your views on the work of academia. >And that applies to 90% of the market. "Look ma no research!" Clearly. Here, take another famous example: relational databases originated in a paper by an academic, E.F. Codd[2]. I see that you are hell-bent on showing that academic research has made no contribution at all to the development of modern computer science. I haven't got the time or inclination to argue, so this will be my last comment on this matter [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database