Next Big Thing?

UW History page

Margaret O’Mara is a historian at the University of Washington. She specializes in the history of Silicon Valley. Of course we are most interested in the future of Silicon Valley.

Today—between history and the future—we channel her insights to ask what next-big-things may intersect our fields.

An article last week in the New York Times quotes her on recent developments:

1. “The age of mobile and cloud computing has created so many new business opportunities,” O’Mara said. “But now there are trickier problems.”

2. “Imagine the economic impact of the pandemic had there not been the infrastructure— the hardware and the software— that allowed so many white-collar workers to work from home and so many other parts of the economy to be conducted in a digitally mediated way”, she added.

But what’s next?

The Next Big Idea?

The NYT article talks about the future of Silicon Valley as seen by O’Mara and other experts. The main issue is: what are the next big ideas that will come out of Silicon Valley? Big ideas are defined by ones that will change the future and generate billions if not trillions in dollars. Some possible ones are:

1. Self-driving cars;

2. Advanced artificial intelligence;

3. Brain implants—to control devices with only thoughts;

4. Quantum computing;

5. 

The article quotes Jake Taylor, the chief science officer at the quantum start-up Riverlane, as saying that “building a quantum computer might may be the most difficult task ever undertaken, [one that] defies the physics of everyday life.”

Next Big Theory Ideas?

I am quite interested in hearing what role complexity theory might play in creating the next big thing. If the area is quantum based then perhaps theory could play a major role. It helped start the explosion in interest in quantum computing. The famous results of Peter Shor on factoring could no doubt play a major role. But the paradox is that theory does not seem to be central to thoughts on what the next big idea will be? Even if the idea is quantum based.

What goal, result, breakthrough will make theory play a major role in the next big idea?

One answer is to search the Internet. We find that Kurt Mehlhorn has had a course on the main ideas of theory. Perhaps we could imagine a direction for the next big idea based on one of these ideas from his course:

1. Time vs. Space, P vs. NP, and More.

2. Interactive System, Zero Knowledge Proofs, the PCP Theorem.

3. Expander Graphs.

4. Learning Theory.

5. Streaming Algorithms.

6. Public-Key Cryptography.

7. Linear Programming.

8. Randomness in Computation.

9. Introduction to Approximation Algorithms.

10. Algorithms for Big Data.

11. Algebraic Techniques in Algorithm Design

Here are the opening slides from a related course at CMU by Anil Ada and Bernhard Haeupler.

The Next is ?

Another idea is to search for other groups that have more directly looked at possible next ideas. For example: in 2014, a team of technical leaders from the IEEE Computer Society joined forces to write a technical report, entitled IEEE CS 2022, surveying 23 technologies that could potentially change the landscape of computer science and industry by the year 2022. By the way, 23 is special: The famous Hilbert Problems are 23 in number. See here.

Here are some of the top few that we might consider. Note we left out some that seem less special for computer science. That leaves 14 problems. OK, 14 is the number of Steve Smale’s problems that are fully or partly unresolved according to this.

1. Security Cross-Cutting Issues The growth of large data repositories and emergence of data analytics have combined with intrusions by bad actors, governments, and corporations to open a Pandora’s box of issues. How can we balance security and privacy in this environment?

2. Sustainability Can electronic cars, LED lighting, new types of batteries and chips, and increasing use of renewables combat rising energy use and an explosion in the uptake of computing?

3. Device and Nanotechnology It is clear that MEMS devices, nanoparticles, and their use in applications are here to stay. Nanotechnology has already been useful in manufacturing sunscreen, tires, and medical devices that can be swallowed.

4. 3D Integrated Circuits The transition from printed circuit boards to 3D-ICs is already underway in the mobile arena, and will eventually spread across the entire spectrum of IT products.

5. Photonics Silicon photonics will be a fundamental technology to address the bandwidth, latency, and energy challenges in the fabric of high-end systems.

6. Networking and Interconnectivity Developments at all levels of the network stack will continue to drive research and the Internet economy.

7. Software-Defined Networks OpenFlow and SDN will make networks more secure, transparent, flexible, and functional.

8. High-Performance Computing While some governments are focused on reaching exascale, some researchers are intent on moving HPC to the cloud.

9. The Internet of Things From clothes that monitor our movements to smart homes and cities, the Internet of Things knows no bounds, except for our concerns about ensuring privacy amid such convenience.

10. Natural User Interfaces The long-held dreams of computers that can interface with us through touch, gesture, and speech are finally coming true, with more radical interfaces on the horizon.

11. 3D Printing 3D printing promises a revolution in fabrication, with many opportunities to produce designs that would have been prohibitively expensive.

12. Big Data and Analytics The growing availability of data and demand for its insights holds great potential to improve many data-driven decisions.

13. Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems Machine learning plays an increasingly important role in our lives, whether it’s ranking search results, recommending products, or building better models of the environment.

14. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Unlocking information in pictures and videos has had a major impact on consumers and more significant advances are in the pipeline.

Open Problems

Any thoughts? Can theory play a main role in the future?