Rabin

I just finished reading a pretty cool article about Michael Rabin in a 2010 issue of "Communications of the ACM".  He did some really neat work with math and computer science, to say the least.  I particularly liked some of his closing words in the interview.

After noting that computer science has evolved and even revolutionized itself many times in the course of his career, he referenced the obviously fundamental work of Alan Turing's theoretical computing machine.  Then finite automata represent models for sequential circuits (essentially state transition diagrams).  "Nondeterministic and deterministic so-called push-down automata play a pivotal role in the syntactic comilation of programming languages."  The study of algorithms will always play a critical role in computer science and life.  After the emphasis on formal languages and the like, focus has shifted to networking and communication through the Internet and other distributed systems.  "The developments are giving rise to a torrent of research in information retrieval, in machine learning, in computerized language understanding, in image understanding, in cryptography security and privacy protection, in mult-agent systems..."

It lead me to think 1) that I have come a long way since the 8th grade, when I knew nothing of programming and life was easy and breezy, and 2) there is a long way to go.  I try to make plans on what I will do in my future, but I just am not able to see that far ahead.  I need to be flexible and adaptive moving forward, and we'll see where life takes me.  I believe the changes in the next 5-10 years will continue to change the face of where computer science and the world go.  And as that unfolds I will play my role, whatever that role may be.