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

[James Srinivasan]

>From first email:
> Bill Gates, a man whose contribution to
> Computer Science has been negative

Hmm, take a look at Microsoft Research:

http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/

> 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.

Whether you like it or not, more and more research is going to be funded by
industry. Personally, I see this as a good thing - the potential for extra
funding is certainly appreciated for my PhD application.

> 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.

Hmm, have you seen the sign outside the lab - it's tiny. If I were buying
advertising space I'd make sure it was a damn sight bigger!

> 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.

I know of several PhD students who have looked at .NET, what's your point
here? Are you suggesting they should ignore it and pretend the largest new
venture from the largest software company will just go away?

> 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!

I disagree - the old buildings were in terrible shape. The Heycock lecture
theatre has resident pigeons, the Hopkinson gave me serious back pain after
5 minutes not to mention the risk of mercury in the Rayleigh. The old
Rainbow Room had a chronic leaking air conditioner and getting to the top of
the tower required superhuman effort.

> But
> maybe I'm just annoyed because it's no longer practical to walk to
> lectures...

Tell me about it!

> 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.  .

The impression I was given by the lab is that we aren't taught any specific
programming languages because 5/10/20 years down the line it'll be history.
Java and ML are used as examples of OO and functional languages but only
make up a small proportion of the course.

> 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!).

Unfortunately Mr Gates visited last Christmas when all us pesky undergrads
were at home, so you've missed any pie-chucking opportunities!

James