Wind of change
A couple of weeks ago, Prof. Constantine Caramanis (UT-Austin) visited Stanford and gave a talk in our group meeting about robust optimization. During the talk, he had a comment (which I’m rephrasing here): “previously (ten years ago, maybe?) linear optimization is easy, and non-linear is hard; now, actually convex optimization is easy, and non-convex is hard…”
That made me again thinking about how fast the science and technology change over the last ten years, and how hard it is to keep up with current advances if you are working in an engineering/science field. In 2002-2003, I did my undergrad final research project on 3G cellular wireless networks, which was one of the hottest research topics in Vietnam at that time. However, I couldn’t imagine that just 5 years later I would be able to watch a YouTube streaming video on my 3G cell phone while driving at 70mph on highway. It’s just amazing!
On the other hand, some of the current advances will possibly die in the next few years. There are quite a lot of such examples in the past, e.g., ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), or ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode). There were times (not too long ago) that they received much attention, but now, well, you probably can only find them in a dead-tree textbook.
Of course, I really hope that these cutting-edge researches I’m seeing now won’t disappear and will be realized in the next 10 years or so. Let’s see…
Troi oi la troi, anh Loc oi, vua lai xe vua xem youtube the nay thi lam sao ma good example cho em dc
Nhungvit
July 23, 2010 at 8:22 pm
Hehe, y anh la mot nguoi ngoi lai xe con nguoi ben canh xem youtube :P.
banhlot
July 23, 2010 at 8:49 pm
I remember a professor used to tell me that technology (and research problem) is like a spiral. An old technology/research may draw so many interests when brought into a new context.
ATM may appear to be dead but it is actually not. It still inspires a lot of current network design. Convex optimization is another example…
We just never know enough about the future!
hoang
July 24, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Sometime the better technology is not the winner. ATM is such an example. It, as you said, still inspires a lot of network designs. But it missed the chance to be realized widely.
But who knows, some dead technologies might be resurrected in the future :D.
banhlot
July 26, 2010 at 5:45 am