

Ask HN: Interesting recent developments in academic computer science. - rplevy

Curious to learn about any concepts or techniques developed recently in academia that you think should be used more widely in applied settings.
======
antiform
There are a slew of fascinating recent advances in CS and I discover more with
every passing semester, but for brevity I will pick three things that have
been occupying my mindspace as of late.

1\. It seems that lazy functional programming languages (like Haskell) may
provide a basis for a serious improvement in more robust natural language
processing. A survey paper:
[[http://cs.uwindsor.ca/~richard/PUBLICATIONS/NLI_LFP_SURVEY_D...](http://cs.uwindsor.ca/~richard/PUBLICATIONS/NLI_LFP_SURVEY_DRAFT.pdf)]

2\. Semi-Human Instinctive AI, a new dynamic, nondeterministic decision-making
process, seems to be the new hotness in robotics/learning algorithms. In it, a
given agent is given a set of basic behaviors ("instincts") that it hones with
both open and closed learning methods in a problem space.
[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi_Human_Instinctive_Artifici...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi_Human_Instinctive_Artificial_Intelligence)]

3\. Anatoly Shalyto's Automata-based programming, using finite state machines
to describe program behavior, seems to have a lot of potential. It attempts to
view programs from the context of engineering control theory, which opens the
door to the use of powerful techniques from dynamical systems in mathematics.

~~~
likpok
Number 3 seems interesting...

If it catches on, architecture classes might get higher precedence in
curricula. Moreover, it might unify (to some extent) the theoretical
background around hardware and software.

------
randomwalker
In the academic world, the semantic web is pretty much taken for granted.
Curiously, it appears that people in the real world have been saying for so
long that the semantic web will never happen that they have failed to notice
that has already happened!

Look at this diagram: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linking-Open-Data-
diagram_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linking-Open-Data-
diagram_2008-03-31.png) All these datasets have already been interlinked and
are available for you to use. This is the linked open data approach
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_Data>) The opposite approach is to use
data from a single already-interlinked source through an unified API,
exemplified by Freebase (<http://freebase.com>), which is more straightforward
but perhaps offers less control. I've found these resources invaluable in more
than one project that I'm working on, and every hacker should at least keep
abreast of what is available so that you can use it if you need to.

~~~
aristus
You've linked to a PNG file and said "see! semantic web!"

I tried to dig into it, looking for some data and to see what you are talking
about, and I finally find a piece of RDF, real semantic web stuff:
[http://dbtune.org:3030/sparql/?query=describe%20%3Chttp://db...](http://dbtune.org:3030/sparql/?query=describe%20%3Chttp://dbtune.org/bbc/peel/artist/1036%3E)

Um, ok. Now what? This is short XML file containing links, half of which are
dead. The biggest problems with SW is that no one agreed on the labels, inputs
and outputs, and that there are no mechanisms for data preservation or trust.

How have those been solved now?

 _(edit)_ I'm not hating on the idea, btw. It just doesn't seem to be a
technological problem. It's a social one. The second you find a way to get
people to structure their data for fun & profit, the SW will blossom. And then
it will be spammed. And then someone will find a way to index it and filter
out the spam, and by then it will be something good, but quite different from
what was intended.

I am genuinely curious to know what has changed in the last few years that
academics now take SW for granted.

~~~
MaysonL
Fluidinfo seems to have an interesting handle on the problem.

~~~
aristus
Can you elaborate? All I see is that I have to listen to Robert Scoble talk
for an hour about it, and a blog post explaining that it takes an hour to
explain it.

------
paraschopra
Yep, on a related note I was wondering recently if there is any website which
lists currently _hot_ and _buzz-worthy_ research papers in CS or other fields.
I know faculty of 1000 does that for biology but is there any other website?

~~~
sqs
I like <http://hnr.dnsalias.net/wordpress/> . And just reading the papers that
won awards at VLDB and SOSP.

------
brent
Well, if you're interested in machine learning NIPS was last week.

<http://books.nips.cc/nips21.html>

There were several papers near applied areas like text classification,
breaking audio captchas, and even brain machine interfacing. However, even the
theoretical papers usually come with examples (e.g. image classification) that
show optimistic results. If you were doing any learning task that is
definitely the place to find the state of the art.

------
ken
I'm more interested in using interesting concepts in academic computer science
from 50 years ago. I'm not against new good ideas, but it's not as if we've
run out of old good ideas already.

~~~
rplevy
I'm interested in both. I'm a fan of Common Lisp, but also of Clojure.

------
markessien
In my opinion, it's obvious what the next big thing is going to be. Image
recognition, accelerometer integration, multi-touch and so on. Basically,
we're looking at the death of the mouse and keyboard a few years down the
line.

It's starting now, and it's starting the same way the web started - working
poorly, very fragmented, cool but not yet practical. This will change soon.

~~~
likpok
Given that multitouch has been around since the 80's or so (at least the
technology), I don't think we're going to see the death of the keyboard. It's
just too good of a method of input.

~~~
swombat
I don't think it's that great... Most importantly, keyboards require a flat
surface to be really good. When on the move, keyboards really suck. There's
plenty of room for improvement in portable input devices. Even something with
a lot less expressiveness, but that, for instance, can be used with your hand
in your pocket (perhaps while wearing a HUD of some sort) would be a huge
improvement.

~~~
likpok
It depends on what you're trying to do. Most phones I've used can be operated
with one hand, blindly, to do common tasks (raise/lower vol. silence call).

The biggest problem, though, is that modern portable devices /need/ the
expressiveness of a keyboard. Which is why devices like the Blackberry, the
sidekick, etc. took off.

The touchscreen changes some of that, but, from what I hear, it doesn't quite
work as well.

~~~
markessien
Why do they 'need' it? If voice recognition were completely perfect, they
would not need it.

~~~
rplevy
The power of editing and revising printed text with a keyboard is not
something that can be easily duplicated using voice. Consider trying to write
code in this way. It's easy to say words but faster to type when you need
custom spellings and editing words at a character level. It seems awkward to
have to edit text with speech (easier to type something like C-space down down
C-s quote . right C-space C-k M-x end-of-buffer C-y than to say it). Maybe
some combination of keyboard and voice would work. Voice is not be ideal for a
workplace situation, unless it is subvocal silent speech, which it sounds like
is a technology that is almost ready.

------
jmtame
The Blue Waters project (<http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/BlueWaters/>) is being done
in the building across the street from me, I can see it right out the window
from this CS room. It's one of those "off limits" things, although you really
need to have a use for it first.

~~~
siong1987
Distributed computing will be the next huge thing. I can see it right through
the window too.

Anyway, the BlueWaters project will be done by 2011. It will be the fastest
computer then.

~~~
markessien
No, it won't be. There was a while when we had 200mhz computers. Then we moved
to 2Ghz computers. Looking at all the innovations that happened within that
time period, very few were due to the super computers getting faster.

Distributed computing just means computers getting faster. There is no killer
app for this. Yes, you may say cancer research or flight simulations or so on,
but there are not the next big things - not the way the web was.

~~~
jdunck
1000 core 2GHz machines for the desktop are 5 years out. Parallel is the way
forward.

------
jaydub
I'm a part of the XMT project @ UMD
<http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~vishkin/XMT/index.shtml>

Admittedly, the _concepts_ involved are dated since PRAM theory
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Random_Access_Machine>) dates to the
70's. However, this project marks the first successful commitment of PRAM
theory to silicon

------
tsally
You should certainly look into research related to Google's Map Reduce and Big
Table.

