Young Researchers | Hideyuki Tokuda (Dean, Graduate School of Media and Governance)
2006.09.08
In late August, I visited Pittsburgh, my second hometown, for the first time in a while. This trip was to attend the dissertation defense of Mr. O, an SFC alumnus, at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) as a committee member, and to meet with Professor Farber and Professor Kanade at CMU. Although it was a very short stay, I had lived in the city for a long time, so I rented a car and arrived at my hotel smoothly without getting lost on the way to Oakland. The next day, I was surprised to find that the Dept. of Computer Science at Pitt had moved to a new building, and at CMU, not only was the building for the Intel Research Centers and Institutes completed, but construction on the Gates Building had also begun. As always, the campus continues to evolve.
I stopped by the CMU bookstore and, as usual, was looking to see what kind of CS-related textbooks were being used when I found books by Jennifer Washburn, " University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education ," and Chris Anderson, " The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More ." University, Inc. is worth a read for anyone involved in academia. I think The Long Tail is a good book to read after Mozio Umeda's " Web Shinkaron: Hontō no Daihenka wa Korekara Hajimaru ."
Now, regarding the topic of "young people," let's look at it from the perspective of "young researchers." The privilege for those of us working in research and education is that we have many opportunities to freely discuss with young people. There are various discoveries every day. Putting aside whether they are good or bad, let me give a few examples (or should I say, cases?).
1) Information Freshness Hypersensitivity
I don't think they are being pushed to produce new results constantly, but one of the surprising things in the research field is when I am occasionally told, "I didn't read so-and-so's paper because it's from 199X and therefore old." From this person's point of view, even a paper from 2005 might already be old. But good research results have universal value.
2) Internet Addiction
These days, they might be people with instant messenger addiction or SNS addiction. In the past, there were people who would send emails or browse the web during information processing classes, but nowadays, it's Mixi. It is a fact that people cannot live alone. However, am I the only one who feels something slightly dangerous about the feeling of anxiety when not constantly connected?
3) Mentally Fragile Constitution
This was a topic that came up in a lively discussion with the Director of a certain company's Research Centers and Institutes for software, and it's the observation that the number of people among the youth who are not very resilient is increasing. The point is that there are people who seem on the verge of breaking down when they get involved in troubles at work or in their private lives. In fact, he said that some people at the workplace have actually broken down, which is a real shame. I can't help but think that it might be too late to improve this mentally fragile constitution at the university level.
On the other hand, being at SFC, I feel that the "sensibilities" of young researchers are indeed rich, and they are energetic about their research. As long as this energy, free campus culture, and comfortable environment exist, I believe the SFC campus can continue to evolve. Am I being too optimistic?
(Date Published: 2006/09/08)