Now for something completely different...

Almost everything in computer software today has roots in the work done from the late sixties to the early eighties in universities such as the University of California, Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Back then, the Computing Industry was dependent on the knowledge and expertise contained within the hallowed labs and bearded academics of such Universities.

Skip to the 21st Century, and the coolest academic computer scientist is perhaps Professor Nicholas Negroponte who decided to create a project to give an educational device to every child in the developing world. In places without indoor classrooms, without libraries and without domestic electricity; children will have access to hundreds of electronic books in their language as well as specially designed educational applications and Internet access through a brand new peer-to-peer wireless mesh network.

However, the interesting thing is that he did not turn to academia to create the software, he turned to Red Hat and Google. He did not use a university incubation centre and sign over his 'intellectual property' to the University, he quit his day job and started a non-profit project. He did not use university administrators to organise and run his project; instead the OLPC project uses their own mailing lists, a wiki and IRC. It is just a lot faster and more efficient this way.

I recently read 'What's wrong with CS research' by Mencius Moldbug. Although the point of departure is the American academic system and computer science, it is a very interesting article none the less, and it applies to many areas of University research.

Moldbug talks about how the latest innovations in computer science are increasingly coming from those outside the academy. Yes there is a lot of 'research' going on inside the academy, but he argues that some of the research is increasingly not as critical to the long-term future of the discipline as more creative research that is happening outside. He is not talking about traditionally abstract areas of research such as artificial intelligence or mathematics, which are increasingly vital; he is talking about research that on the surface claims to be utilitarian but will never actually by used but yet also doesn't bring the discipline forward.

For the more negative examples read the article. One of his positive examples is the new generation of distributed revision control systems, perhaps one of the biggest developments in the process of software development for a decade or more, these were developed with no involvement from the academy at all. Another positive example is that he compares Python, developed by people outside the academy, with Haskell, developed inside the academy. The former has a huge usage in industry and has been used in many interesting applications and experiments in other academic disciplines; the latter will perhaps always be somewhat esoteric.

Moldbug argues that the disparity is structural, programmers working in their spare time or tangentially as part of their jobs can define interesting problems and solve them too, long before the grant bodies can even notice, so it is partially a speed problem:

> "The problem is the funding. The reason why CS research produces so little that can be called creative programming these days is that the modern process of grant-funded research is fundamentally incompatible with the task of writing interesting, cool and relevant software. Rather, its goal is to produce publications and careers, and it's very good at that. But because of this problem, most creative programming these days comes from free-software programmers working in their spare time."

Academic researchers are at the whim of the research bodies, and it may take many months or years of hard work to get a project in a virgin area approved, this is equivalent to several generations in today's computer technology, so therefore academics are tending to be pushed towards research that seems very rigorous but is less creative, leaving others to fill the gap, those who can pick up good work in industry can afford to work on whatever problem they like, just out of interest sake and for glory among their peers:

> "It's very difficult for creative programmers in the academic CS world to compete with those in the free-software world. Academics have one advantage: money. Free-software programmers have another: freedom. Ideally one would have both, but if you have to pick, pick freedom. If you look at the salary of a grad student or a postdoc, it's not that hard to support yourself at the same standard of living by working intermittently in the corporate salt mines. Besides, you might actually learn something".

So if academics lose their freedom, creativity and the ability to move quickly, they then begin to become librarians, reporting on and compiling new ideas and creative processes that are first generated elsewhere. I'm not sure I agree with all of Moldbug's argument, the academic computer scientists I know are doing really important work, but Moldbug's wider point, that there is now less freedom within the academy than outside it, is certainly something worth worrying about. Especially if, over time, the research going on outside universities continues to become freer, more collaborative and more extensive, while University life becomes more bureaucratic and thus slower to react to new developments.

When words have no meaning anymore

This springs nicely to a bulk email I received yesterday in my inbox. I often receive emails from various online services saying there has been a change in their privacy policy, which almost always means you have less privacy than before, and they are now going to share your personal information with another third party. So the real purpose of privacy policies is often to take away your privacy rather than to give you privacy.

This time I received a controversial email from my University that had been forwarded from the centre down eventually to my little corner of geekdom. The email explained that there had been a change in the 'Freedom of Speech' policy (I didn't know we had one), so now anyone from outside the University must be given written permission to speak on campus. So the 'Freedom of Speech' policy now restricts freedom of speech.

Without a lot of careful steering, Universities always tend to drift into ivory tower mode, now we are pulling up the drawbridge too. Here is the email:

> Colleagues

I have attached for your information and subsequent action the revised policy on the Code of the Practice on Freedom of Speech on Campus which was approved by Council on 19 September 2007 to be implemented from 30 September 2007. The Authorising Officer for Freedom of Speech is [Senator McCarthy], Director of [Big Brother] who has nominated me to act on his behalf.

I have also attached a PDF speaker request form which includes a section from the policy regarding conduct of meetings on university premises to be given to people making an application for an outside speaker. I would be grateful if all requests were made on this form with immediate effect.

The Code of Practice defines Outside Speakers as persons who are not students, employees or other members of the University, who are invited to speak on University premises on occasions other than as a normal part of an existing academic programme of study authorised by the relevant budget centre, or as a normal part of a regular careers exhibition or similar event.

I would be grateful if you would cascade this policy and new speaker request form within your School to staff and students who are involved in booking outside speakers.

If you require any further information please let me know.

Thank you

[Corporate Drone X]

So it is a classic bit of Orwellian doublethink where 'Freedom' of speech requires an application form to be submitted three weeks before to obtain permission from a central bureaucrat, thus not actually being free any more but a privilege handed down by a neo-monarchy.

Reds under the bed

I'm sure the changes to the (un)freedom of speech policy comes from people with seemingly good motives, i.e. to protect us all from those dirty and scary common real people outside the campus gates. Like the British Empire was created with seemingly good motives or those who set up Guantanamo Bay had seemingly good motives. The problem with the British Empire, like a 'Freedom of Speech' policy, is that it is paternalistic.

The British did not trust the 'natives' to run their own affairs; even though the native cultures were thousands of years old, they did not have the signs and symbols of the Western world, so therefore they must be inferior and Western control and Western signs and symbols must be introduced. Likewise, even though dozens of events involving the public have been held on our campus, on almost every week for over 100 years, the Council does not trust academics and students to run their own events involving 'outsiders'. Common sense and good manners must be replaced with the signs and symbols of bureaucracy.

I find it very unlikely that all our academics and students are secretly harbouring subversive ideologies; I find it very unlikely that our academics are secretly communist revolutionaries, Islamic fundamentalists or members of the national front (though I hear the Masons do quite well here). Perhaps even if a minority are, then engagement is surely the correct policy. If the universities stop believing in the power of free thought and open discussion, then why is society funding the universities at all?. If there were radical elements on campus who refuse to discuss with rational academia, then we would need to do a lot more than email a couple of PDFs to combat them.

The most bizarre thing is that the people tasked with implementing this policy are not academics, but the department that deals with accommodation, gardening, postal services, cleaning and so on. I have no idea who [Senator McCarthy] is, but we could (in theory) have someone who started as a gardener or porter telling professors and lecturers who can and cannot speak at their events. University cleaners are the latest recruits in George W. Bush's war on terror.

Whose University is it anyway?

Even if we put the censorship issues aside for a moment, the required three weeks notice is just not practical for many of the events, including the most dynamic and interesting ones, so it either means the policy will just be ignored or outsiders will be invited onto campus less often. There is a grandfather clause for some existing events, but in general this extra layer of red-tape means the University becomes even more cut off from the public who fund the whole University.

British Universities are almost exclusively financed by the tax-paying public. There is an elaborate dance of quangos and bureaucrats between to help burn a bit more cash, but it is the tax-payer who foots all the bills. Research Councils == tax-payers. HEFCE == tax-payers. The grants and subsidised loans that students use to pay their fees == tax-payers.

So in return for all their support, the public, who are paying for the whole thing, need written permission and at least three weeks notice to open their mouths on campus. Charming. Even though I benefit a little from all this tax- payers money, I find this lack of respect for the public somewhat tasteless.

Recently someone was found to have gambled away 4 million pounds of the University's money, i.e. tax-payers' money, no one in the senior administration resigned or lost their job over it; even though the senior administration was responsible for overseeing and reforming the structure that allowed this to happen. If the university's senior administration and council would spend a bit more attention on their core role as custodians of other people's money and therefore know where this money is, then maybe they would have less time to waste on censoring invited guests who speak at University events.

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