A couple of posts ago, I wrote about how DSP is a technology behind most of today’s technologies and advances. I also mentioned briefly the importance of volunteers for the IEEE. This post is closely linked with these two concepts.

As I mention then, the article “Signal Processing Inside”, inspired me to create this blog as a way of promoting the idea of “Signal Processing Inside”. It turned out that, after a couple twists of destiny, the blog led me into becoming an Associate Editor for the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. Here, my role is to manage a permanent column called “In the Spotlight”. The column’s idea is to take news appearing in the mainstream media and present a technical discussion of the signal processing related to the news. For example, we have covered the recent (or maybe still current) worldwide financial crisis (by discussing signal processing methods to predict the evolution of stocks), or the H1N1 influenza outbreak (the topic was the study of the virus genome). We have also covered more technical topics such as the signal processing done at the Large Hadron Collider, part of the hardware installed in the last servicing mission to the Hubble space telescope and brain-computer interfaces. My role is that of deciding on the topics to be covered (in most of the cases), invite the authors and manage the writing of the article. For me, this has been a great source of personal satisfaction because I never imagined back when I was an undergraduate student, enjoying reading this magazine, that one day I would be managing an article in every issue. More importantly, I have learned a lot of things I didn’t know. So, although the time I dedicated to the column was one of the reasons I couldn’t post more often in this blog, this time will now pay off because I will discuss more signal processing inside topics in future posts here.

Finally, if you are interested in learning more about these articles and other columns in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, follow this link.

At the time I was a postdoc at The University of Maryland, my mentor, Prof. K. J. Ray Liu, was Editor in Chief of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. As such, he wrote a number of very good columns. One of the best ones is “Signal Processing Inside”

The main point of the article is to highlight how Signal Processing as a technology does not get the recognition it deserves from society, simply because it is a “phantom technology”, working from behind the scenes to make most of modern day advances work. The article highlights how other industries and companies (e.g. Intel) face the same problems. But, unlike these industries and companies, the Signal Processing community per-se has not the resources to mount very expensive advertising campaigns. So, as the article says, it’s up to us, the Signal Processing community, to help ourselves and work for this technology to be broadly known.

In my case, this column has made a big influence in many of the ventures I do. One example is this blog, because when I thought about it, I wanted to be a tool to promote the impact that DSP has on our world. Ironically, it has influenced other activities I have been doing that had prevented me for posting more often.

In any case, I believe that “Signal Processing Inside” is a must read for anybody in the DSP community. If you like it, you should also read “Volunteers“.

It has been more than a year since I last published in this blog. The fact is that life had taken me through the busy life of a tenure-track faculty, plus other activities I’ll be posting about in the future. Nevertheless, I have been thinking about reviving the blog, only that this time I may be forced to make short posts, something longer than twitter but maybe shorter of what I used to. So, stay tuned…

The other day I happened to take a look at the electronic version on the IEEEXplore of the first issue of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. There, I noticed something that I think has been lost in current journal publications and that I have been planning for this blog. What I found, was constructive research discussion and argumentation. What I mean is the following: take for example one of the papers in the issue, written by no other than C. Shannon. In the same issue, along with the paper, you can find a review by 6 readers and the ensuing answers from Shannon. This is not exclusive to Shannon’s paper; in fact, every single paper in the issue is treated in the same way. The end result is an issue extremely instructive, dynamic and entertaining.

Today’s reality is that published research basically goes through a peer review process where it seems to me that most of the constructive and interactive discussion is tightly constrained within the authors-reviewers-AE interaction. In this process, some of the constructive comments eventually are incorporated but the later process of argumentation and intellectual exchange between the authors and the interested readers are all but missing. Why has this happened? Well, I don’t think I have the answer but I do think that the volume of submissions compounded with an obvious limitation on how much can fit in a particular journal issue have translated in long publication cycles and space being only available for new contributions. I believe that this process has removed perhaps one of the most important steps in creative research.

Some may say that conferences are the right venue for this kind of interaction but many of you who have been at conferences would agree that the audience of such interaction is limited to the relative (to the eventual number of readers of a paper) few attendees to a particular session and, even more, in general the discussions are limited to a tight timing which frequently forces the session chair to “move the conversation offline”, where it really becomes private.

In reality, I think that the answer is in the technology we have helped developed. We can first settle with the reality that printed journals have some inherent characteristics that make intellectual debate on any paper very difficult. At the same time, we can embrace the fact that some recent changes are certainly helpful. By this I mean the electronic management of the submission and revision process, as well as the electronic publication. With this, there is only one element missing, and this is a dynamic, flexible and public medium that facilitates and hosts the debate.

I think the answer is right here, in a blog. A blog can catalyze discussion by initially posting a report, a comment or a review of a paper. Then, the blog is indented for open discussion where everybody can post as comments their own contribution to the debate. In fact, even anonymity of the person posting a comment could be maintained since anybody can use an alias. Those hiding behind an alias to post erroneous or ill intentioned post will be sorted out as a natural process because the posts are public.

Whit this said, I will try to make the debate of DSP ideas an important component of this blog. I plan to start doing so by selecting published papers, commenting on them and opening the debate to anybody interested. As always, I welcome any suggestion with regards to what to cover or how to approach it. I’m aware that for this idea to work I need a critical mass of readers and comment posters and that achieving this is a long journey, but any long journey starts with a single step. Besides, I truly believe that this could turn into a valuable medium to advance DSP technology that is worth trying.