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From: weide@elephant.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bruce Weide)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: ACM CRITICAL ISSUES CONFERENCE - 6-7 November 1990
Keywords: ACM, software, complexity, modeling
Message-ID: <85830@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 9 Nov 90 22:39:24 GMT
References: <1990Nov3.083035.14409@tss.com>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Reply-To: Bruce Weide <weide@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science
Lines: 22


The Critical Issues Conference sounds interesting but also a bit
scary.  I worry that some bureaucrats will treat the resulting "action
agenda" (which will certainly include the most popular if not
necessarily the most important questions facing CS) as a real research
agenda for computer science.  A worst case scenario will be that
funding for work in those areas voted most important by the attendees
will dominate certain agency budgets, to the virtual exclusion of
research in other areas.

What precautions are there against this?  Or is this the real purpose
of the meeting?  If so, I can only shudder at the likely outcome.
(OK, I'm a cynic :-)

Now that the conference has concluded, perhaps someone knowledgeable
could BRIEFLY summarize to comp.software-eng the issues that the
attendees voted most critical (at least those related to software
engineering).  This will be sure to inspire additional network traffic
:-), but perhaps a significant fraction of it will be useful
discussion of important issues.

	-Bruce