A Crisis for Computer Science Theory?

A recent report by a committee of eminent theoretical computer scientists has been creating waves in the Theoretical Computer Science community throughout the world because of its fatalistic assessment of the future of the discipline in the form in which it exists today. The report contends that unless theoreticians make a significant effort to make their work applicable in practice, funding for theoretical work will dry up.

The committee which wrote the report includes prominent names like Alfred Aho, Richard Karp and Christos Papadimitriou. This ensures that the sweeping conclusions drawn by the committee will be considered very seriously by funding agencies, at least in the USA. While it is true that the modalities of science funding and administration are vastly different in the USA and most of the rest of the world, we cannot afford to be complacent about the issues raised by this report.

Since many people in India may not have actually had access to this report, we provide an (impartial!) summary of its contents, along with a reference to the source from which the full report is available. We also summarize a highly-publicized rejoinder by Oded Goldreich and Avi Wigderson which was circulated at the STOC conference this year.

The aim of this exercise is to generate a debate within the IARCS community on the issues raised by the Aho et al report. To start with, we present two responses in this issue of the Newsletter and look forward to hearing from others on this topic.

--Editor

Summary of the Aho et al Report
Summary of the Goldreich Wigderson Report
How relevant are the comments of Aho et al in the Indian context? Are their opinions on the nature of TOC justified? Here we present two responses from TOC researchers in India. If you have a different point of view, or if you would like to address some issues which you feel have been missed out, do write to the Editor at the address given on the first page. Two responses are given here.
Response from V Arvind
Response from Kamal Lodaya