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Near Future Laboratory » Blog Archive » Digicult Interview

Interesting article/interview. I like how the lab is positioning itself in that middle ground between immediate applications and future research. As they put it, “…a mixture of today’s seriousness and fantasy, utilitarian and non-utilitarian situations. It’s made out of cardboard, dirt, duct tape, tubes, bad wiring and vinegar waiting to be turned into a playful and sustainable environment.”

Back when I was considering pursuing the PhD in information science instead of escaping with my terminal masters, I kept running in to this friction amongst the faculty about building near-future information systems. They were right, of course, it’s not what one would really consider academic research. On the other hand, the sort of tinkering on the edges of that research and real-world systems doesn’t really belong in the corporate world either—too much profit-driven pressure. That leaves this middle ground that I find most interesting, and most likely to pay off in the long term. That there was no support for this in the program I was in was the primary reason I left.

I think that the corporate world would do well to provide more support for this kind of research; and to be fair some do. For example, Google asks employees to set aside several hours a week for self-directed research. I hear that employees have to guard this time fiercely, but at least there is institutional support. For the most part, however, development is based on 60 – 80 hour work weeks and geared toward product releases at least every twelve months. Yet most of the paradigm shifting applications to come about in the past 10 years or so have been born out of the efforts of hobbyists, graduate students, and people working on their own time. Napster, Blogger, Flickr, Facebook, etc were not spawned directly out of academic research or corporate R&D but from individual or small group effort.

This is the kind of environment that most excites me. The EVIADA project was exactly what I was looking for. Even though it was based on academic research and was grant funded, the project was essentially toying with edge technologies and information research with some well defined goals and a four year life cycle. My present position offers very little opportunity even though I’m theoretically able to draft my own project agenda. Unfortunately, the everyday world intrudes to the point that there is no room for research projects.

So now I’m looking at returning to school, this time in computer science. Shoring up my technical chops should give me better options in terms of finding work that combines my twin joys of programming and information organization/discovery.

To bring this all to some kind of conclusion then… This interview struck me as an interesting place to position one’s self, especially as I consider moving forward in to another round of education. I’m still relatively certain that academic research isn’t what I want to do. Thus it looks like another terminal masters is my goal.