Scene: A small office. Mahler playing softly. The only light is the soft pulse of an iBook's "asleep" light, which at its peak reveal books, a desk, a couple of chair, occupied by JOSHUA and a mysterious INTERLOCUTOR.
JOSHUA: I don't know. Something. Perhaps I felt that, finally, academia was the place I ought to be.
INTERLOCUTOR: But not computer science?
JOSHUA: No. Well, yes. I did think about that. But it's...
INTERLOCUTOR: Moribund?
JOSHUA: Not all of it. There are great people doing important work. But it isn't what it once was. Progress is stymied. The "theoreticians" dominate, together with the people in fundamental algorithms and numerical analysis. They don't respect what I do, anything I do.
INTERLOCUTOR: And what do you do?
JOSHUA: Well, some software engineering; if you can't build systems, it's not worth the effort. Some cognitive psychology, because understanding the human mind was the beginning, will be the end, and should be in the middle. HCI. AI. Anything that affects (or is affected by) culture and cognition.
INTERLOCUTOR: And you think you can make advances?
JOSHUA: Sure. It should be hard to do. Most disciplines look inside for inspiration. In an interdisciplinary approach, we can look anywhere, find anything. If the approach fails, it's because we've failed to look. It simply can't be that no one outside of CS has come up with good ideas that can be applied in the context of computing.
INTERLOCUTOR: So you're a reformed computer scientist?
JOSHUA: I suppose you could say that. I've studied a lot of fields; history, language, literature, philosophy...
INTERLOCUTOR: And why computing?
JOSHUA: Ultimately, I like building things. Ideas, systems, tools.
INTERLOCUTOR: Art?
JOSHUA: I haven't (yet) convinced myself that my art is as good as my artifice. I'm a synthesizer.
INTERLOCUTOR: Isn't that a step down from being an originator?
JOSHUA: I thought so at one time. But we're always trapped in what Bloom referred to as the "anxiety of influence". My resolution is to see the creative act as a cultural process, rather than an individual process. Bruno Latour's work on science is consistent with that, as well.
INTERLOCUTOR: So how can someone contribute?
JOSHUA: I don't have a final and ultimate answer, but clearly two keys are to seek to understand and to experiment. That's true for artists and scientists, this acceptance of risky behavior. But perhaps that is also what separates the artist from the scientist: an artist revels in risk, and exposes his risks to the world, where a scientist accepts risk, but packages his work to hide the chances he took, and to make it all seem controlled.
INTERLOCUTOR: Is academic science a place in which you can afford to take the necessary risks to bring about the changes you wish to see? To express yourself, as it were?
JOSHUA: Industry has been seen as a climate of fear. Academia has its limits and restrictions, but for now, it's the best direction for my personal growth.