[lobbying-org] Re: CST Part II - May 1 Official Opening - Invitation

[Mark Seaborn]

I'll just expand a little on what I said earlier...

In the past, British universities were encouraged to stay independent
from industry.  The worry was that otherwise, universities would
concentrate on serving industry's short-term interests rather than
investigating important questions in the public interest.  Now,
though, contact between the two is almost required; and when industry
funds research it gets to influence the agenda, potentially putting
areas of research off-limits.  That's the trend at the moment.  It's
visible in other subjects, and I think it's visible in some areas of
Computer Science to some extent.

But to talk specifically about Billy boy: Isn't it traditional to name
faculty buildings after someone who has made a significant
intellectual contribution to the subject?  Gates obviously does not
qualify: he is essentially a marketing man with some technical
knowledge, who could just about program badly twenty years ago.  I
don't think the Biology department is naming buildings after
marketing directors of pharmaceuticals corporations.  The Chemistry
department isn't naming buildings after the CEOs of large chemical
manufacturers.  The Physics department names its buildings after
respected physicists like Cavendish and Rutherford.  I don't see why
the Computer Lab should have different standards.

Gates' donation was not an altruistic act.  Perhaps no donation can be
called truly altruistic if the donor gets their name associated with
it (like our college library), but the interests involved here are
more than that -- it was a strategic act.  We're talking here about
someone who offers to donate computers to schools -- with Microsoft
software, to maximise lock-in (with the software at zero marginal
cost, how generous this is).  We're talking about someone who
ruthlessly built a monopolistic empire through anti-competitive
practices, and cements it in place with destructive software patents
(probably to be followed by signed drivers to enforce DRMs), putting
qualitative barriers against alternatives as well as quantitative
economic barriers.  This is someone the university is now endorsing.

He's effectively buying advertising space:  The sign at the front of
the building and the name in the address in material from the CL have
an analogous effect to a big `Coca Cola' billboard, hammering a word
into your head repeatedly, forcing you to accept its presence.

He's buying legitimacy, credibility and respectability by associating
with the university.  It's not a question of making any absolute
change or getting any guaranteed influence, it's about lowering the
levels of expectation people have about the separation of respected
institutions from industry.  So when Microsoft lobbies to get MS
Passport used as a national ID in the UK (it's being considered in the
US, Politech reports), who knows -- maybe it'll make a small
difference.  The aim is to make Microsoft look big and friendly,
instead of malevolent.

Some of their strategies are fairly transparent.  The Register has
reported on `Rotor', Microsoft's faux-open-source implementation of
part of .NET, which they are trying to persuade academics to base
their work on.  Perhaps the ploy will work, who knows?  I know of one
PhD student at the Computer Lab who apparently spent some time looking
into .NET.

Is BG's purchasing of the new building likely to reduce criticism of
Microsoft in the Computer Lab?  Probably not hugely.  But it might
cause someone to think twice about criticism, to consider just for a
moment the possible risks -- not a good thing.  Or perhaps criticism
in casual conversation might provoke an ironic `yes, but they gave us
this building, didn't they?' (in an ambiguous way, so that you're not
really sure why they said it or whether they think it's a good thing).

And incidentally, I'm rather sceptical about whether the new building
was actually needed.  And the building is hardly ideal -- the
architects couldn't be bothered consulting those who would use it and
decided to provide cupboards for supervision rooms and make the
courtyards look like scarily bleak modern art installations!  But
maybe I'm just annoyed because it's no longer practical to walk to
lectures...

Maybe the building is already paid for -- but those running the CL
will be wanting future money.  And while Microsoft may not be funding
much research directly, the Lab is showing that it's open to outside
influence; they've shown that they can be compliant, as the name
choice for the building was technically voluntary.  This is part of a
general trend.  If Friends of the Earth and Newsnight had to study
pollen flow from the government's test sites of GM crops themselves,
because academia weren't bothering [1], what will be off the agenda
for Computer Science research?

Maybe criticism will be a little more muted.  Maybe people will be
more willing to study things that fit in the MS's vision if MS appears
more respectable.  Maybe people will be less willing to look at
genuinely new things.  Rob Pike has some things to say on that subject
[2].  Building interesting new OSes is practically off the agenda
now.  It just isn't considered realistic that there could be an
alternative to Windows and Unix.  For example, Ross Anderson rejects
the possibility of an OS with a smaller TCB.  And consider the
computing experience a student gets at the Lab at present -- just Unix
and Windows (and more of the latter).  Compare this with times in the
past when there would have been a proliferation of different systems
from Lisp machines to Plan 9 to KeyKOS, all making different design
decisions.  The attitude that puts new OSes off the agenda seems
similar to an attitude of accepting the status quo in other areas.

I could also go on to programming languages, where Cambridge probably
has a worse record, Java being the main language taught (ML being
confined to the sidelines), apparently because that's what industry
demands, despite it being pretty poor by the standards of programming
language design when it was created.  The Comparative Programming
Languages course also doesn't venture further than the 1970s.  On prog
langs, industry doesn't listen to academia unless the content is
at least twenty years old, and academia seems to be doing the same.

So, yes, the Billding won't affect things hugely, maybe won't reduce
criticism much, but it will alter the climate in which things happen,
and it's part of a general trend of compromised academic integrity.
And, strategically, of course a protest wouldn't change the fact of
the new building.  But who cares -- it would be fun!  And it would
send a message that it's not totally absurd to be critical when
megabucks want to buy approval.  And I want to point out again that it
would be fun (perhaps that's a stronger argument than all the rest!).


[1] George Monbiot gives that example in `Captive State'; there's an
    extract at <http://www.guardian.co.uk/imf/story/0,7369,370384,00.html>
[2] ``Systems Software Research is Irrelevant'',
    <http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/rob/utah2000.ps>

-- 
         Mark Seaborn
   - mseaborn@bigfoot.com - http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~mrs35/ -

 ``Bin Laden is more likely to be done in by a chunk of displaced arctic
   shelf than the Court-appointed Bush Administration'' -- Barry Crimmins