Original author: WU Wei-dong, carried Turing community
reprint Address: https://www.ituring.com.cn/article/127792
From October 22nd to 25th, the China Computer Conference (CNCC 2014) was held in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. The conference invited Prof. Ivan Sutherland, the Turing Award winner, to give a special lecture. Professor Chen Baoquan, the dean of the School of Computer Science of Shandong University and the media reporters conducted an interview with Professor Sutherland for more than an hour. No. released. With the consent of Dean Chen, I reposted the content in the Turing community for readers. President Chen Baoquan had the following short comments on this conversation:
Sutherland's conversation has three deepest impressions:
- A genuine love for what you do does not care about the so-called "achievement";
- Treat young people equally and have high hopes for them;
- The core point of view of the 1995 National Research Council report co-authored with Brooks: Investment in basic computer research will eventually achieve an excessive return from the industry, encouraging the government to invest in basic research.
Ivan Sutherland is the father of computer graphics and the father of virtual reality. In 1963, he proposed a three-dimensional interactive graphics system in his Ph.D. The first interactive drawing system in history is also the beginning of interactive computer drawing. People later developed CAD and CAM on this basis, and they were called one of the most outstanding engineering technical achievements in the second half of the 20th century. In 1965 he published a paper called "The Ultimate Display", describing what we are now familiar with as "Virtual Reality". As early as the early days of virtual reality technology research, Su Zelan realized the three-dimensional display in his "Sword of Damocles" system. The augmented reality system refers to providing informational and entertaining coverage above the real environment. It was introduced by Su Zelan in the research on head-mounted displays.
On October 23, Professor Sutherland gave a keynote speech entitled "Computers of the Future" at the China Computer Conference. After the report, Professor Chen Baoquan, the dean of the School of Computer Science of Shandong University, and several IT media reporters interviewed Professor Sutherland for more than an hour. The following content is translated and edited based on the recording.
The picture shows Professor Chen Baoquan and the couple Sutherland
Sutherland is the father of information theory Claude Shannon. He talked about how his mother introduced him through friends and took his brother to worship Shannon as a teacher. That day Ivan also followed, attracting Shannon's attention and taking Sutherland away. The conversation begins with this story.
Sutherland : I worked with my brother for 20 years, which is a very good thing.
Chen Baoquan : Your brother is Bert (Sutherland)?
Sutherland : Yes, his name is William Robert, but everyone calls him Bert. If the name is William, everyone will call him Bill, because everyone knows that Bill is William's nickname. But his name is Berd. Those who are familiar with him call him Bert. Those who are not familiar with him say that I am very familiar with Bill.
Chen Baoquan : Yeah, that said, it shows that this person is not very familiar with William.
Sutherland : Yeah, that means this person doesn't know him.
Chen Baoquan : This is very interesting and a very good sign.
Sutherland : He hasn't retired yet, and I spoke with him by phone a few days ago.
Chen Baoquan : To some extent, your brother used to be your boss, right?
Sutherland : For some time, we went to SUN company, he served as the director of the company's laboratory. I have worked under the leadership of my brother for 20 years, which is a very good thing. I worked twice under the leadership of my relatives, and the other time for Marly Ronken (current wife). Marly is the director of the Asynchronous Computing Research Center (Ivan currently works at the center).
Chen Baoquan : Are you willing to work for your relatives?
Sutherland : If they are very good relatives.
Chen Baoquan : Obviously yes!
Sutherland couple: Haha ...
Marly : One reason may be to maintain balance. If he is famous, how could you refuse a very famous person? I can, because I am the laboratory director, so I have the right.
Chen Baoquan : I want to know how this laboratory started. Who's idea is the research of asynchronous computing?
Sutherland : This research was launched very early, and I tried to do research on asynchronous computing when I was at MIT. Goden Bell wanted to try to make an asynchronous computer, but he found it too difficult, so he gave up, he said "this is impossible, I can't do it, impossible to do", but he was wrong. Goden Bell is a good friend of mine.
Chen Baoquan : I have heard several reports from him. He still carries the camera with him, right?
Sutherland : I don't know much about what Goden Bell does, but he is a very good person.
Reporter on site: I would like to ask the second question. You are often referred to as the father of computer graphics, virtual reality and computer user interface. How did you create this new research field?
Sutherland : As I mentioned in my morning report, I discovered the largest computer in the world at Lincoln Laboratory. No kidding, it was really the largest computer in the world at the time, and this computer was used in a very unusual way. At that time, the computer was like this. You gave a punch card to an operator. They put it in the computer. Two hours later, when you come back, you will find a stack of paper. At that time, computers were used in this way, and all of them were like this. But only one computer is different, that is TX-2. This work cannot be done anywhere else.
Reporter on site: Which person and which book have the most influence on you?
Sutherland : This is not a question that can be answered. I have many mentors in my life, and I do n’t want to exclude any teacher. But the person who has influenced me the most is of course my parents. My dad is an engineer. When I was very young, I learned a lot of engineering knowledge on his knees. This is really the biggest impact.
Reporter: What is your life pursuit?
Sutherland : What is my goal in life? Pursue happiness!
Reporter on site: How did you achieve it?
Sutherland : I don't know, ha, sometimes happy, sometimes unhappy.
Reporter on site: Are you happy now?
Sutherland : I have a very good leader.
(Laughter all over.)
Chen Baoquan : In front of the "leader", you have to say this.
Sutherland : Even if she is not present, I will say so. Not only is she very nice and charming, she is also very smart. In the past about a year, we have been happy working together.
Chen Baoquan : What is your next research goal? You are doing simulation now, will you build a machine next?
Sutherland : I mentioned a lot of results in my report today, and these have already been produced. As I showed in the picture, it is already built and it is a real chip. It's not just simulation.
Chen Baoquan : Have any chip manufacturers noticed your research, like Intel?
Marly : Intel bought a company that does asynchronous computing. It now also has expertise in this area. It can be said that they have pushed Intel towards asynchronous computing. In addition, Philips used to have a very strong team, and now it is split.
Chen Baoquan : Another topic. In 1995, Fred Brooks and you submitted a very famous report to the government.
Sutherland : That report is called the Brooks- Sutherland report and is the report of the National Research Council. I do n’t know if you understand the National Research Council, so I ’ll explain it a bit. There are three non-governmental, non-profit organizations in the United States, one is the National Academy of Sciences, one is the National Academy of Engineering, and the other was once called the American Institute of Medical Sciences, now called the National Medical College. The three organizations work together, and they have a "operational shoulder"-an organization that really does things. This organization is called the National Research Council. The National Research Council is a great organization, publishing about 250 books (reports) every year and 250 books every year! And all these reports can be found online.
Live reporter: Free download?
Sutherland : Yes. The Brooks- Sutherland report is one of them. They invited Fred Brooks and me to set up a committee to see what other changes can be made in the field of computing. We have set up a great committee, and the people inside are excellent. I think the most important thing in this report is the Tire Tracks chart [1]. The chart refers to 11 branches in the computer, showing the progress of these fields in universities and industry, government funding, and the relationship between fields. And how information flows. This chart shows that it takes 15 years for an idea to grow from a laboratory to a multi-billion-profit industry, and the value of taxes, jobs, and business generated by this multi-billion-profit industry far exceeds that of the research Invest. The purpose of that report is to tell you that if you insist on doing research, your research results will one day have greater value. I hope that this book will have some influence on the government's decision-making and will strongly support exploratory research.
Reporter on site: Professor, if you want to recruit researchers, what do you value most? What are the qualities necessary for a good researcher or scientist?
Sutherland : What must a good researcher have? Very interesting question.
Marly : My suggestion is to follow the feeling, because if you like it, you really want to do it. If you do it often, you will do better. This is usually the case.
Sutherland : Yes, that is what we should tell young people, but the question is how to choose good researchers. This is a very difficult question. I do n’t know how to answer it. How do you choose wise people? Are you a wise person? Are you smart?
Reporter on site: So, do you mean you will choose more wise people?
Marly : No, he meant it was very difficult to select researchers.
Sutherland : And sometimes research is related to luck, so sometimes it is not a human problem, but the result of the environment.
Chen Baoquan : This is exactly the case.
Sutherland : I know what kind of people I want to work with. I want to work with people who are good at expressing themselves, can express their own ideas, and have strong language skills. Marly is Dutch. Her mother tongue is Dutch, but her English is very good. I think it shows that she thinks very clearly and she writes very beautiful English.
Reporter on site: Professor, you mentioned that Logical Effort is your biggest achievement. Why do you say that?
Sutherland : I believe this is not my original words. What I am saying is that this book is my best scientific work. I am mainly an engineer, most of the time, I make things. Logical Effort is a science that tells you how things work. This is very good science because it is very useful. It is about the mathematical principle of designing integrated circuits, which makes it work very quickly. You can make transistors of different sizes. I ’m not sure if this is the case in Chinese tradition, but in the past there were legends about the world abroad. The world is flat and placed on the back of an elephant. The elephant stands on top of the turtle, and the turtle is on the stone again The size gradually increases. [2] For integrated circuits, there are also cases where the size gradually increases. If you want to drive a big thing, you need to start with small things and step by step to drive bigger and bigger things, like an exponentially amplified loudspeaker. The Logical Effort book tells you how to maintain logic when expanding. Every time you do logic, you lose the ability to expand. This book is to tell you, for example, every time you want to make an "and" or "exclusive or" function, how much you will lose the ability to expand. "Exclusive OR" is very scary, the same two values XOR is 0, the difference is 1, the result is a very difficult logical function, every time you implement an XOR, you will lose the ability to expand. This is science, not engineering. It is very useful in engineering, but this is a scientific work.
Reporter on site: What do you think is your most important achievement so far?
Sutherland : I have two children and four grandchildren, which is definitely my most important achievement.
Reporter on site: What is the main focus of your current research and what new changes will it bring to our lives in the future?
Sutherland : The speaker behind me talked about the research on the use of electricity by computers, which is very expensive and requires millions. It is just a study on electricity. And Marly and I are studying asynchronous computers, precisely to reduce the demand for electricity.
Chen Baoquan : Can save energy.
Sutherland : Yes, save energy. I was planning to raise my hand and stand up and say, "I know the solution to your problem, listen to me!" (Laughs)
Chen Baoquan : Did you understand his report then?
Sutherland : Yes. Their PPT is in English. I know the problem they are studying.
Chen Baoquan : Do you think his answer at the time gave some answers?
Sutherland : It's hard to say. There are many questions on the PPT that seem obvious, and whether there are obvious answers, I don't know.
Reporter on the scene: My last question, from what aspects should we use information to help our city construction?
Sutherland : I have no answer. If you want to know the answer, you should ask the young people. Don't ask older people.
Reporter on site: Do you have any suggestions for young students?
Sutherland : My point is clear. Find your interest and act hard. The secret of happiness is to really like what you are doing. Like means you are really interested in it. If you like music, then learn music; if you like computers, then learn computers; if you like art, then go for art. No matter what, as long as you really like it, do it seriously. This is also the principle I have always followed. As a result, I never felt that I was working all day. I was not working, but playing and enjoying what I liked.
Chen Baoquan : You have enjoyed your favorite career all your life. By the way, I saw Fred Brooks many times before at the SIGGRAPH meeting, but I have n’t seen it in recent years. Have you always been in touch with him?
Sutherland : I last talked to him about three months ago. I like him very much, a great person.
Chen Baoquan : Yes, he is very humorous and interesting.
Sutherland : He is majestic and intelligent.
Chen Baoquan : What research is he doing recently?
Sutherland : I don't know. I haven't communicated with him about research in a long time.
Chen Baoquan : What did you talk about at the time?
Sutherland : I talked about some people, how to do things and why.
Reporter on site: Why were there so many breakthrough achievements in the 1960s and 1970s? How to do research in the 21st century?
Sutherland : A good study contains three elements that you can write down. This is helpful advice. First of all, is this a problem? Whether it is a problem that can be solved, or a problem that is difficult to solve when the early computer science is not so perfect, you need to have a problem. This is the first point. The second point is that you need support, need funds, and need someone to provide material support for researchers. Third, you need a leader, which is also the hardest to find. You need someone who is desperate to solve the problem, someone who would rather die than fail. You need a leader, so what makes a leader? I do not know either. Some people are born leaders, some are not. The most important point is that leaders are scarce. Why are leaders scarce? Because a leader is someone who is willing to follow hundreds of people, there is only one leader out of every 100 people. In this case, how can we find a leader? I don't know, they just appeared like this, they are leaders at first glance. But you do n’t know before they appear and become leaders. There are many such leaders in history. They were unknown before, and suddenly they became leaders. Because they coincided with the weather, geographical conditions, and harmony, they said they did the right thing. Can they be seen as leaders before then? No one knows. But one thing is certain, they are scarce. And a good research must be conducted under the guidance of a good leader.
Chen Baoquan : I very much agree with this view. I don't think leaders are looking for them, but they naturally appear under certain circumstances and become leaders.
Sutherland : Fred Brooks is a good leader.
Chen Baoquan : He is very remarkable.
Sutherland : Why is he a good leader? I do n’t know, just feeling. (laugh)
Chen Baoquan : He just has that kind of personal charm of leadership. ... will you come to China again?
Sutherland : I don't know.
Chen Baoquan : Yes, life is full of changes. You have received many invitations to come to China before.
Marly : Yes, we did n’t think we would come to China two years ago, but now, you see, we are in China.
Chen Baoquan : Do you like this trip? Do you travel a lot?
Sutherland : Yes, I travel a lot, but I do n’t like traveling year after year because of my age.
Chen Baoquan : Is it in the United States or in other countries?
Sutherland : I was in Germany three weeks ago.
Chen Baoquan : I would like to say that some things that you think are natural will become very different in China because of cultural differences. Our questions and answers, the questions you ask, and your agile answers now have meaning. The way you ask questions and your answers to questions is itself a message. I really appreciate your repeated emphasis on young people, because in China, elders and authorities often have more say, and people value their age and experience more than their opinions.
Sutherland : In our case, all young people call me Ivan. They do n’t call me Dr. Sutherland, or Professor Sutherland, just call me Ivan. Why did you do this? Because your point of view is as good as mine, it may even be better than mine, because I will be constrained by what ca n’t be done, and they do n’t know what they ca n’t do, so they can study boldly. I think this is a very important point in the research. You do n’t know who a good idea will come from, because it may come from anyone.
Chen Baoquan : In fact, I have already started to do this in my own laboratory. Students can directly call the professor ’s name. I think this is to convey a message that researchers are equal to each other.
Sutherland : I will tell you a story about the leadership of one of the most outstanding deans I know. When I was at the California Institute of Technology, I was the founder of the Computer Department, and my leader was the dean of the Academy of Engineering, his name was Bob Cannon. I like to play volleyball. The teachers and students of the computer department play volleyball a few days a week. In the parking lot, we also set up simple volleyball facilities. There are often cars in the parking lot that affect us, and we will move the car away-twenty people can move the car. Sometimes the ball will hit the body, not hit the pit but will leave traces of dust. Right next to the parking lot is the campus property office. They are responsible for the campus construction, parking lot, etc., providing services and ensuring that everything on the campus is organized. One day, when we went to play, we found a piece of paper that read "Don't play in the parking lot." For this reason, I went to Dean Cannon. On the second day, a staff member of the campus property office painted a line in the parking lot, marking our volleyball court. I asked Dean Cannon how he did it. He said it was simple. When having lunch with a leader of the office, he explained to him that the campus serves teachers and students and not others. Playing volleyball is very important for scientific research, so teachers and students should be supported to play volleyball.
Marly : I think our conversation can come to an end today, right?
Chen Baoquan : We are very grateful for the conversation with you. It is casual and relaxed but very beneficial to us. This is not just to praise you, but we need such a conversation very much. This is very important for Chinese young people. You also know that China has a history of thousands of years, and the hierarchy and the concept of respect for the humble have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, but these need to be broken.
Sutherland : You look much younger than you actually are. Although you can't guess your age, you are almost the same as these young people. It's great. This is also my high praise for you.
Chen Baoquan : Thank you. I am one of them, and my students and I have also become one. Thanks again!
reference
[1]
http://www.cccblog.org/2012/12/02/tire-tracks-poster-and-brochure-continuing-innovation-in-information-technology/。[2] See Wikipedia: World Turtle.
