"Towards a Theory of Networked Computation": workshops held in Princeton (Feb `06) and Berkeley (March `06) and a report on possible research directions by TCS and networking people.
Article by Dick Karp; November 2005. (Based upon a presentation at FOCS; to appear in SIGACT News soon.) Describes what the committee is trying to do, and invites help of all kinds from members of the TCS community.
A NSF-sponsored Committee report from 1999 that outlined the future challenges for theoretical computer science. This report called the TCS budget at the time (about $7.5M) "dangerously insufficient" and also recommended at least doubling it.
Two blogs that act as clearinghouses of information on public policy and funding issues affecting the computing community in general: the CRA blog, and the ACM Technology Policy Blog.
We like to think of CS as a "hot" field (just like Biology). It is therefore sobering to realize that total funding for academic CS research has stayed fairly flat for quite a while now. (In fact, the graph for CS resembles the graph for psychology and social science, rather than that of a "hot" discipline like Biology.) Meanwhile, the number of academic CS researchers has grown tremendously, and CS has had great impact on society. NSF statistics on R&D expenditures of all federal agencies also interesting reading.
An Endless Frontier Postponed. Science editorial by Lazowska and Patterson. Many other articles in that issue deal with computational science and distributed computing.
Is the thrill gone? Op-ed by Arora and Chazelle (to appear in CACM August'05). It tries to explain the point that CS is a radical new way to think, rather than just a road to IT infrastructure.
A powerpoint presentation from a program examiner at the Office of Management and the Budget. It gives some insight into how people in his position think. The slides titled "Ethos and Mythos" are the most interesting.
The latest report from PITAC, which calls Computational Science a national priority. We can probably use some of its recommendations wrt algorithms in our advocacy. Note how many times the report uses the term "infrastructure." I wish they had also stressed the notion that CS gives a new way to think. [Sanjeev A.]
An article announcing that PITAC is being disbanded.
Slides from the discussion of TCS funding at STOC in May 2005.
Task Force on the Future of American Innovation is a group of concerned industry and academia figures who argue for more govt funding for science and computing. They have an interesting report on their website that documents the shrinking lead of the US in basic science.