As an academic my field is technology. So, I've got two strikes against me. I'm an egg head, and geek head. My teaching area is operating systems, network systems, and security systems. Hmm seems like some fairly systemic thinking. I've always claimed that I am NOT a computer scientist and that I am a technologist. That means I don't sit around thinking up new algorithms that Knuth already documented in his books. The consistent criticism is that academics are not applied, or they do nothing. My entire field is only applied, and I only do things.

Unfortunately that means publication opportunities are few and far between as the academic landscape is littered with "basic research" only journals. It also means that by default my discipline is extremely inter-disciplinary. Everybody is always grabbing onto pieces of what I do (Information technology) because it is pervasive. Everybody is a programmer. Sort of like everybody owns a lawn-mower but that doesn't make them a landscaper.

There is also the constant threat to what we do in my department to turn us into vocational school. That is not what we do. I try very hard to teach concepts instead of applications. Students balk at that. Then a year or two later a bottle of wine, a really nice letter, shows up because they used some primary concept of technology to solve a big problem. Cool.

If you look at my research it gets much worse. My area of "expertise" is information assurance and security with a concentration in computer forensics. My dissertation research (I'm a life long student) is tentatively "Cyber warfare as form of low-intensity conflict". I am applying many of the tools and techniques of small wars to the cyber warfare landscape as an applied method of waging cyber warfare.

I read your email and I am watching you right now......

just kidding....

maybe....

What I do as research can be taken and immediately applied to the real world because that is a tenet of my discipline. In my discipline we don't get money for basic research as primary investigators (PIs). We get called in by PIs when their data repositories are broke, their applications suck, or they can't figure out how to ctrl-alt-del . So a large body of the research we do in my discipline is about social uses of technology or efficient uses of technology.

So, in many ways I look down on those "Think Tanks" that say academics information is hard to put into use, as what I do is usually ready to be commoditized, and because of that I can't get any traction to fund my research from think tanks.

I think they would call that irony.

Crystal caffeinated clarity clearly this morning.