In this column I'd like to share some vague thoughts about the future of the Information Theory Society (its members, volunteers and leadership). I think the Society has a bright future if it can remain progressive and outwardly focused, tackle new technical challenges and embrace new ideas, and take a long term view. Specifically, the Society needs to:
Maintain Technical Breadth and Excellence. The Society must live up to its broad field of interest, which according to the Society's Constitution is ``the processing, transmission, storage, and use of information, and the foundations of the communication process. It specifically encompasses theoretical and certain applied aspects of coding, communications and communications networks, complexity and cryptography, detection and estimation, learning, Shannon Theory, and stochastic processes.'' The nature of objectives is also diverse. The Society's ``objective shall be scientific, literary, and educational in character. The Society shall strive for the advancement of the theory and practice of electrical engineering and of the allied arts and sciences, and the maintenance of a high professional standing among its members.''
The breadth of technical interests of the IT Society membership is apparent in the following data, taken from doublet matrix membership statistics prepared by the IEEE Technical Activities Department. Selected statistics for 1993 (the latest year for which data is available) and 1989 are indicated in Table 1. Note that less than eight percent of IT Society members are in the IT Society only. About half of IT Society members have interests in communications, and about (an overlapping) half have interests in signal processing. There is also a rather sizable interest in the computer society among IT members, but that has dropped somewhat to one third. A smaller and decreasing fraction of the IT members are in the Control Systems Society. Of course many IT Society members have substantial technical involvement in non-IEEE entities as well. The challenge in maintaining breadth is to also maintain the high quality that is the hallmark of the Information Theory Society.
Table 1: Numbers and percentages of IT Society members that are
in various IEEE Societies
Enhance the Society's transnational status. Society activities and leadership should reflect the fact that nearly half of the IT Society members live outside North America. The globalization of the telecommunications race offers new opportunities in many regions of the world. At the same time, some regions are experiencing a period of economic and political stress, and our Society must work to maintain a presence in these areas in hard times. Our society must maintain a long term view in dealing with these challenges and opportunities. Our Society should help politicians and technocrats around the world appreciate an open basic research infrastructure in which all nations have an economic stake and social obligation to do their part in the basic research arena.
Serve the technical community. The Society must be constantly concerned with recruiting and retaining new members, and new volunteers and leaders within the Society. The Society also needs to facilitate technology transfer. In particular, individuals from academia, government laboratories and industry should all feel welcome and feel it is worth their while to read the Transactions and participate in the activities of the Society. For these reasons, publication of expository articles and special issues of strategic importance in the Transactions, and an assortment of workshops focused on topics of current interest, are extremely important.
Thrive in the Electronic Information Age. The Society must monitor closely and participate in developments in the electronic dissemination of information. The bulk of both the expenses and income of the IT Society are currently due to the IT Transactions. It may be a challenge to keep the balance between income and expense satisfactory while stimulating, organizing and sharing ideas even more effectively in the future.