DGPis40 Bill Buxton talk

Here is a talk that I attended from the DGPis40 reunion conference for U of T's Dynamic Graphics Project, which turns 40 years old!

40 Years: Almost Enough Time to Make a Difference
Bill Buxton
Microsoft Research
www.billbuxton.com

Bill started his stints at DGP as a student but he was not a Computer Science student but a musician. Today, he probably would not be admitted as a Computer Science student. His talk today is based on whether Could DGP Happen Today? He is reviewing 40 years of DGP. A lot of the technologies of icons, Palm’s Graffiti, teletype, all came from beginnings of DGP. Also, Bill is mentioning that another icon is the Academy Award, which DGP has probably amassed more based on its alumni and the lab compared to other schools, which is strange he says because since DGP is in the Computer Science department.

What is the real accomplishment of the past 40 years? Bill worked on a computer that is now in the National Research Council (NRC) archives. NRC made a mouse in 1968, probably the second mouse based exactly from Doug Englebart who invented the mouse before PARC came up with the mouse in the 1970s. Bill worked as a musician and an artist, and started contacting Leslie Mezei at U of T (who is the founder of DGP). While working at DGP, he felt worthy of respect and became colleagues with others. If you wanted to do something, you could make it happen. Compared to other environments, you are dirt and you have to show respect to others until you have paid your dues. At DGP, people are challenged and are questioned and are proven to be wrong, because this means you will have learned something. DGP has published many papers at SIGCHI and SIGGRAPH more than any other academic and research lab during the first 20 years of its incarnation.

DGP was a self-organizing group because it was based on communal responsibility, he gives the analogy of filling concrete. Once students graduated, others came to fill the hole, so there was some kind of social contract. There are three generations of people in the CHI Academy, the only university to do so (Bill Buxton, Brad Myers, and Ron Baecker considered the grandfather in this lab). Bill is talking about The Long Tail a book by Chris Anderson, in the old economy you only had the beginning or head of the tail, whereas now in technology the most interesting opportunities happen in the long tail. A lot of work is done in the beginning of the tail in innovation and doing research. It takes 20 years from innovation to commercialization which is the exact number of years before a patent gets expired.

According to Bill, as academics, we are on a slippery slope and the slope is tilting. According to the New York Times in December 2007, corporate research labs are going away. There were few PhD students working in industry research than in 1980. There is no and will not be a Silicon Valley in Toronto or Canada. According to Bill, the DGP lab is absurd compared to other academic and corporate research labs. DGP represents integrity and values, productivity and influence around the world. Computers and technologies need to have as much engagement and review and criticism similarly to art and literary review. We need to think about culture and society within technology.

One question that was asked is how to bring the culture of DGP to corporate research labs like Microsoft Research that focuses on patents before publications. Bill answered that 80% of the work is on cultural change, the other 20% is the actual work. In his opinion, Microsoft Research has more academic freedom than any other university, which was an interesting comment in my opinion seeing that you would think Microsoft would absolutely tie all research back towards Microsoft products. Which is not to say that Microsoft doesn't do that of course, Microsoft Live Labs is exactly doing that, being a industrial lab to foster innovation within its MS products. What I got out of the talk is that there needs to be open Research, research with a capital R, not just some wishy washy research that is just for the benefit of the company and not the rest of the world. That is how you make a difference.