Ohio IT Skills Blog

Is Computing really a science? The death of computing: BCS

Link: The death of computing (Member view) : Articles : Future of Computing : BCS.

Alright - now it's out in the open.  We have danced around the issue for the last couple of years, inferring a problem indicated by declining enrollment in computer science programs around the country.  We have attributed the decline to a perceived lack of a strong career opportunity due to news of outsourcing, bursting Internet bubbles, and so on.

But perhaps we have been missing the elephant in the room.  Perhaps computer science itself has reached some natural limit.  Could that be possible?  Neil McBride is a principle lecturer at a British University - and he posits that computer science may actually be in its death throes as a discipline.

Note that he does still point to some discredited old chestnuts about lack of jobs, and the like.  But beyond that - he points out that much of what was originally computer science was performed by scientists from other fields who had a need and a passion about the nature and structure of information, and the ability to manipulate it.  And - he further points out - there haven't been a lot of new developments in the field of late.

Advanced hardware does indeed make things run faster, and there has been some work in the nature of parallel problem solving and processing.  But it is true that many - most? - of the needs for computing today are met by some strategic engineering tools and procedures - constructed at the operations level.  We're not quite at the Legos stage of sophisticated software construction yet, but there's evidence we're certainly moving in that direction.

So the question for the "big thinkers" in computer science may boil down to this: What are the big computing problems left to solve?  Further, is "computing" truly a "science?"

Certainly we need people to continue pushing the envelope in getting the ability to do computation into smaller and faster packages.  But what new things have we discovered that information does - or that we want to do with information - that can become the focus of research, discovery and revolution?

For the time being there are plenty of jobs for computer scientists as we have defined and known them.  There is a burgeoning growth in IT - applications-oriented computing - and a need for people who can identify problems and solutions and apply them in specific cases.  But maybe computer science needs to view the declining numbers of enrollment as a clue to a larger problem - and start to think more broadly about the skills and and the knowledge required to continue to move forward.

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

Best Cities For Jobs - Ohio is Challenged

Link: Best Cities For Jobs - Forbes.com.

According to the rankings released by Forbes.com, no Ohio city/region broke into the top half of the 100 Best Cities for Jobs.  Four Ohio cities fell into the "90's."

One of the key factors in the calculations - job growth - also left Ohio in the dust, with one exception.  Akron 33 in this area (overall rank 61), while the remaining Ohio cities fell into the bottom half.  Here's an extract of the charts for Ohio cities and 2 of the 8 ranking categories for 100 American cities:

                                                                                                                                                               

City	Overall rank	Improved	Job growth rank
Akron	61	*	33
Cincinnati (region)	56	*	53
Cleveland (region)	92	*	91
Columbus	65		70
Dayton	95		97
Toledo	96	*	86
Youngstown	98		87

What does this mean for Ohio employers and workforce?  It may mean that the focus of the last 10 years or so - whatever that focus might be - has been mis-directed.  Certainly a number of other cities who ranked relatively high, have faced considerable challenges in the changing economic flow.  Among these are Oklahoma City (21), Camden NJ (26), Poughkeepsie NY (27), Knoxville TN (37), Edison NJ (40) and Baton Rouge LA (43).

At his first inauguration - the height of the Great Depression - Franklin Roosevelt said: "Do something.  If it works, do it again.  If it doesn't, do something else."

No one can deny that our government infra-structure, our chambers and business groups, our schools - have all been doing something.  But the results - this Forbes.com survey being only the most recent - indicate a general back-sliding, and little progress toward higher productivity and a healthier economy.  The traditional business complaints about taxes can't play a significant role if you don't have a business capable of making money on a sustained basis.  Traditional labor complaints about benefits and health costs have no grounding if there is no job to support them.  The education system - from the bottom to the top - talks about reform, complains about funding, but the results show little apparent improvement in graduation rates, literacy, job fitness, etc. 

The problems are systemic, and the solutions must be conceived and attained with a collaborative - not an adversarial - approach, across community special interests.  This is not a zero sum game - unless everyone keeps fighting each other, continues to cling to old patterns of thought and behavior - in which case everyone gets zero.

It appears to be time for new ideas.  It may be time to do "something else."

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

Tech training in the days of yesteryear

New technologies have always been a challenge.  One can only imagine how long it took for the wheel to finally reaching its tipping point (maybe, in that case, its "upright" point?).

But - in spite of best efforts at interface design - nothing is really self-explanatory.  So - with all due respect to our colleagues and constituents who must get that first experience in order to be comfortable with the second, and so forth - let us re-visit the candle-lit scene of one of the original open tickets at Tech Support:

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

IBM Labs sees five innovations in five years - Network World

Link: IBM Labs sees five innovations in five years - Network World.

IBM is a very different company than it was 5, 10 or 20 years ago.  They are thriving - but as integrators of systems and solvers of problems, rather than simply hardware/software providers.  They are on their way to becoming the largest purveyor of Linux - an open source operating system!  Tom Watson must be spinning!

This article points to one of the reasons for IBM's current and continuing success - they recognize change is inevitable and they work hard to remain players in the results of that change.  So it is imperative for them to plan years ahead - they undertake big problems and those problems have big solutions - not something you knock out in a couple of weeks.  They are dedicating resources today to be a viable company in 5 years.

• real time translation
• sensor technology for medical and related uses
• nano technology for real-world problems like water filtration
• 3-D Internet for better collaboration, and commerce
• advanced "presence technology"

Not everyone is going to share this same list of concerns and priorities.  But everyone would probably benefit from having a list.  Check out this story, and see what skills you might require to meld into a technology movement or product line in the decade to come.

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

The death of computing : Future of Computing : BCS

Link: The death of computing : Future of Computing : BCS.

This op-ed from a lecturer at the De Montfort University in the UK - and member of the British Computing Society - asks the question "Is computer science education so out of whack with real-world needs, that the existence of the field is threatened?"

Many curricula in higher education must adjust regularly to changing conditions in their disciplines.  Technology changes, discoveries change perceptions and theories, the outside world changes the need and/or the execution of the discipline.  Two of the most drastically impacted  areas of study are bioscience and computer science. Bioscience has actually made a trade of leap-frogging research and constantly changing educational paths and content.

Computer science - the theoretical basis of Information Technology, has not pursued such a high-profile nor rigorous program of research or change, lately.  For one thing - the commercial sector has arguably decimated the ranks of potential university researchers and teachers.  Moreover, the new developments are more of a problem-solving nature, than a result of the examination of basic principles, or the discovery of new facts or theories. 

A five-minute brainstorm - even among laymen - can assemble a pretty respectable and lengthy list of issues deserving investigation in the bioscience fields.  The open questions in computer science seem much more obscure -and much less relevant to any real world curiosity or commercial potential.  We live in a time where better computing as resolved into faster processors.  The biggest news in new computing science seems to fall to any new announcement from Intel or AMD or IBM about miniaturization of traditional chip architectures - or application of alternate transmission media - like light - to carry and process information.

The biosciences have large and very public problems to solve - cures for devastating diseases, enhancement of biological systems, the "map" of genomes (literally harking back to that internal need for exploration and adventure).  The world eagerly awaits every drop of news - and there are assertive business people waiting to implement new ideas, foundations ready to fund distribution and education - it's a social movement!

We know that there are problems whose solutions  would improve computing. But the potential for making any fundamental changes in the way computing is done, the base technologies that enable and support it - are slim and none.

Bill Gates has recently been bemoaning the state of the education-turning-to-employee pipeline in the computing science field.  But, ironically, Microsoft itself may be one of the greatest obstacles to ramping up any excitement about research and growth in the field.  Microsoft's dominance is such that no independent idea has very good odds of succeeding (and investors are notoriously skittish about going up against the king of all "established leaders").  And the process for getting new ideas even considered is simply unknown to outsiders of the company.

And the days of "one guy in a garage" making a big difference - especially a fundamental difference - are long gone.  Just as bioscience has out-grown the lone experimenter and turned into massive collaboration projects - so has computing science where hardware advances occur at the nano level, and software advances require simultaneous changes in multiple levels of systems.

The open source movement might have some potential for enabling groups of people to tackle large problems - but so far those teams have focused on applications - most often open source versions - read "free distribution" - of profit-making applications.  Searching for fundamental new ways to compute, for new techniques for security, encryption, networking or any of a host of other projects - is going to be pursued by people who are convinced their creative energies will lead them to wealth and personal freedom.

Microsoft is not an evil bad guy as far as the future of computer science - is concerned - but the company does represent a real obstacle to progress - and a real potential for change.  If we could find ways to openly identify the big problems of computing - and find ways to make their research open and exciting again - with rewards given where rewards are due - outside of the paranoid limits of patents and secrecy and all the rest - we might get computing science back on track.

Meanwhile, IT remains the kingpin. Practical problem-solving - and the application of all the sciences that converge on computing - will remain the outpost for new frontiers.  And we'll go as far as we need to go.

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

Took Time, But Finally Tech Jobs Are Rising Where You Would Expect Them

Link: Took Time, But Finally Tech Jobs Are Rising: Investor's Business Daily.

It's difficult not to judge the state of any aspect of the computer technology segment through the lens of Silicon Valley.  Even tough IT and computing-related hiring has increased steadily around the rest of the country - a solid, measurable rise in the cathedral of tech - Silicon Valley - makes it all seem so much more real.  For the investment community anyway.

This article points to increases last year that raise employment numbers - if not to pre-bubble-burst levels - then certainly to an encouraging degree. The region lost about 220,000 jobs when everything came tumbling down in 2000-2001 - a painful collapse, but - in retrospect - probably a necessary purge.  Now the numbers show an up-tick of 33,000 jobs in the first part of last year alone.

The cause is pegged to innovation as much as growth of established businesses.   New Web 2.0 ventures,  new services and new industry like the nano revolution  fuel new thinking about innovative products and services.  The feedback loop between vendors and their customers gets progressively stronger with exciting new functions and business models.  And, of course, growth among giants like YouTube and MySpace is certainly not trivial.

So it looks as though what good growth news there is here in Ohio, may be a little earlier, more stable and perhaps more dependable than growth based on what remains a hotbed of speculation in Silicon Valley.  The gold fields are not longer apparent, there's no reason to pack up the car and head west to pick up wealth just lying about on the ground.  But job health in a place considered one of the bellwethers of the industry - provides a good example and a heartening predictor for the rest of the country.

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

Best Jobs: The Top 50 & More!!

Link: MONEY Magazine's Best Jobs: The Top 50.

Everybody loves lists - and there are an infinite number of ways to cut and compile information to make a list interesting.  But no matter how you shape it - IT jobs continue to float to the top of several recently released list of "good", or "top-paying" careers. 

The main link is from the CNN-Money Magazine site is a great place to start - the Top 50 jobs - by job growth and average pay - include two broad IT computer science-related job categories in the top 10: Software engineers (#1) and Computer/IT analyst (#7).  (In real life, these "categories" cover a number of actual job titles.)

Looking a little deeper though - the fact is that all but a handful of these 50 "top jobs" absolutely depend on strong - and in some cases - creative computer skills.  If you can't manipulate information, you aren't going to be a good Market Research Analyst (#6), Medical Scientist (#15), Engineer (#17), Actuary (#24), Financial Analyst (#42), or even a Registered Nurse (#47). 

Then - on the really high end of the scale - there are those jobs that pay in the $100,000+ range. Two of the "10 Jobs: Big Demand, good  pay" - also from CNN-Money Magazine - are heavy-duty IT job classes: #7 SQL database administrators and #8 .NET and Java developers.  Again these categories cover a  large number of possible job titles - but their functions - regardless of what they are called - are key and well-paid.

And Ohio is not shut out of this category at all:  Cleveland appears as one of the 16 cities in the US with the most $100,000+ jobs.  The potential is here, now and going forward.

Of course these opportunities don't come for free.  Some of the American Idol contestants think if they just convince themselves that they can be the winner - then the panel of judges must believe that also.  But, in fact, you don't become an American Idol just by wishing, and you don't get a high-end IT career without working and studying hard.  But it's sure good to know those rewards are out there!

And there are more of those jobs, than there are American Idols in a year - your odds are much, much better!

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

Job Market Remains a Puzzle: The Columbus Dispatch

Link: Job Market Remains a Puzzle.

If you have skill, talent, experience and credentials and still can't find a job - that hurts.  But when  prospective employers say they have unfilled openings because they can't find people with the requisite skill, talent, experience and credentials (e.g., YOU) - that can be simply maddening.

But employers are claiming - and complaining - that they can't find the skill-sets they need for the jobs they have open.  More to the point - as one source points out in this story - they can't find people willing to work for the wages being offered.  Could it be that the "skills shortage" is really a shortage of imagination?

"When a business says shortage, they really mean they are finding it difficult to obtain labor at the wage they are accustomed to paying," said Richard DeKaser, chief economist at National City Bank."

It appears that the emerging trend is that employers want perfection walking through the door. 

"Companies spend 50 times more recruiting a candidate than they do training them after they’re hired, according to Deloitte Research. Only 37 percent of central Ohio companies provide general skills training beyond an initial orientation."

Low-skilled entry-level jobs are often among the first to be automated or out-sourced.  The entry-level bar is continually raised.  So the new "entry-level" requires more skill and knowledge than ever before.

"Many unskilled manufacturing jobs have been replaced with jobs requiring advanced math and computer skills, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.

The group said 90 percent of manufacturers are suffering from a shortage of skilled workers such as machinists and technicians, in part because of trouble recruiting young workers to replace skilled retirees."

Without some change and better planning, the situation will only get worse.  "The U.S Department of Education estimates only 20 percent of the U.S. population will have the skills needed to perform 60 percent of the jobs in coming years."

Even though productivity increases have reduced the number of workers needed in some areas - the fact is that the retirement of the baby-boom generation is going to create a huge vacuum in most job categories

The lesson from this story comes back to both sides of the equation.  Prospective employees need to prepare with more training (and continuous updating of knowledge and skills).  But employers may have to re-think their attitudes about training.  If everyone remains unwilling to invest in employees because they might move to a different employer, there will most likely be an increasing crisis.  A community perspective - and communication among all players in the employment landscape, including employees, employers and government - might make for healthier attitudes about investment in  people - whose thinking-power and creativity remain the most important asset in any enterprise.

(The print story in The Columbus Dispatch contains a chart showing the "fastest growing jobs" and the "most job openings" in Ohio.  This chart was not made available online, but the same information is available at the Ohio IT Clearinghouse Workforce Data site, with projections for local city-regions in Ohio, and through 2014.)

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

 

Georgia Tech's Computing College Awarded NSF Grant to Broaden CS Pipeline

Link: Georgia Institute of Technology :: News Room :: Computing Awarded NSF Grant to Broaden CS Pipeline.

The work of the Ohio IT Clearinghouse, itWORKS, and other groups throughout Ohio is focused on increasing the pool of talent in educational programs and seeking careers in IT and computer science related fields.  The need is not just in Ohio alone, however, and the problem is recognized at the national level.  Now the National Science Foundation (NSF) has made a $2 million award to the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, to create programs to encourage more interest and enrollment in these programs, under the "Broadening Participation in Computing Initiative."

Any time such a large grant is made, there are questions about what is this institution offering that others do not?  The answer may lie in part, in a new approach to structuring curriculum that focuses in the end on functionality rather just specialized knowledge in isolation.

This program is known as Threads™, and yes the trademark symbol is there because the name is protected by GA Tech. The slogan uses the following sentiment, a quote from a book by Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind, as its guiding principle: "We are moving from an economy and a society built on the logical, linear, computer like capabilities of the Information Age to an economy and society built on the inventive, empathic, big-picture capabilities of what's rising to take its place, the Conceptual Age."

The Threads program is comprised of eight themes, all of which should be very resonant to employers who have been complaining for years (not just about GA Tech, but higher ed in general) that graduates don't have the requisite skills to tie the background and the theory they learn, to real world needs and jobs, working with people in a setting designed to make a profit, etc.  Looks like GA Tech may have wrestled this issue to the ground with the following points:

1. Computational Modeling    
2. Embodiment    
3. Foundations    
4. Information Internetworks    
5. Intelligence    
6. Media    
7. People    
8. Platforms

If you explore any of these elements, you can see a good deal of thoughtful assessment went into the concepts.  The application of this structure to the computing program is further described in a paper called "Threads™: How to restructure a computer science curriculum for a flat world," by Merrick Furst (Assoc. Dean for Undergraduate Programs), Charles Isbell, and Mark Guzdial, they credit insights from Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat, as a source of justification and inspiration for the development of this innovative program. 

We must look forward to any valuable ideas that come out of the GA Tech efforts paid for by the NSF grant - ideas that may help everyone find new ways to message the exciting  and rewarding challenges of IT and computing science careers.  But GA Tech has already created some thought-provoking innovations in thinking about technology education that bear close examination.

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)