Lead Microsoft and Xerox technologists tout the benefits of research in the quest to deliver the next big thing in IT and computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Emerging Technologies event. Signifying its commitment to invest in finding next-generation technology, Microsoft has opened a research lab near MIT called Microsoft Research New England.CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—At
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Emerging Technologies event here
Sept. 23 to 25, Microsoft and Xerox stood among several leading companies
describing their view of the future of the computing world.
Microsoft's chief strategy officer, Craig Mundie, basically said anything
game-changing typically takes a long time to develop. "The things that
really change our lives broadly, they take a long time," Mundie said,
noting that Windows and Office "took at least a decade" of initial
development and many versions before they could displace existing systems or
ways of doing things.
Mundie, of course, is right that game-changing technology tends to take a
long time to get right. That's why Microsoft has invested heavily in its
research arm. Most recently, Microsoft opened its Microsoft Research New
England facility, which borders on the campus of MIT. I recently visited the
facility and spoke with Mundie there, but I'll write more on that in a separate
post.
Microsoft officials said Microsoft Research New England will focus initially
on the combination of core computer science—especially as it relates to new
algorithms—and the social sciences, including economics, psychology and
sociology. An additional team of researchers also will focus on design. The
combination will bring together form and functionality in the context of how
people use—or want to use—technology, with the goal of envisioning and
beginning to develop the technological experiences of the future.
Microsoft officially opened its newest lab on Sept. 22. The lab is expected
to benefit other research and academic institutions in the New
England area, providing opportunities for collaboration and
connections with top Microsoft researchers, the company said. The lab already
is working on two joint seminars with MIT, one with the MIT Laboratory for
Information and Decision Systems and another with the MIT Computer Science and
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Microsoft Research New England also is
interacting with Harvard University's
Initiative in Innovative Computing and Berkman
Center for Internet and Society, as
well as the Janelia Farm Research Campus, a new stand-alone interdisciplinary
biology institute founded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
According to the news release announcing the opening of the Microsoft
Research New England lab, other collaborative projects underway in the lab
include the following:
The lab already has hosted several
prominent economists from MIT and Harvard for its work on aspects of the
economics of ad auctions.
Another cross-disciplinary team is
working on the game theory of matching algorithms, which are widely used to
match residents with medical schools, kidney donors with recipients and other
complex associations.
A prominent physicist from Torino, Italy, has been working with several lab members
on a promising new class of network algorithms that could solve a wide variety
of problems, from matching ads with advertisers to reconstruction of gene
regulatory networks.
Another visiting researcher from Boston University has been working with the lab on models of stability for Web search
engine crawling, dealing with how to most efficiently process massive amounts
of data.
Meanwhile, Mundie, in his keynote at the MIT conference, said he focuses on
technology that is likely to have an impact "in the three- to 20-year
range." Mundie said he is looking at areas like parallel computing platforms,
live platforms, the cloud, modeling, robotics and a lot more.
"Space is the next frontier," he said, noting that computing will
become more context-centric with more surfaces and a much more immersive
environment. The spatial computing environment will be seamlessly connected,
context-aware, model-based and personalized, and will use sensors, and speech,
vision and gestures will be accepted means of interacting with the system, he
said. Mundie then demonstrated how a system such as he described might work.
In a separate keynote on innovation, Sophie Vandebroek, CTO
of Xerox and the president of the Xerox Innovation Group, said a lot of the
focus of researchers at Xerox relates to helping its customers deal with the
information explosion. Indeed, Xerox has an Information Overload Research
Group, she said.
In addition, Vandebroek said the annual cost to companies is about $650
billion a year in lost productivity based on information overload. "Xerox
sees this as an opportunity," she said.
Because so much of the information coming in is unstructured, "We're
making documents smarter by leveraging natural language technology" and
adding intelligence and structure to documents, Vandebroek said, echoing Mundie's
interest in natural language technology and "natural user interfaces."
She said Xerox has more than 5,000 scientists and engineers.
Vandebroek also demonstrated reusable paper, an
environmentally friendly technology from Xerox that enables users to reuse
paper more than once in printing. The paper wipes itself clean after a period
of time so it can be reused.
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