Joint review of "Introduction To Natural Computation by Dana H. Ballard"; MIT Press, 1997, ISBN 0-262-52258-6 and "Mathematical Methods in Artificial Intelligence by Edward A. Bender", IEEE Press, 1996 ISBN 0-8186-7200-5.

ABSTRACT

One of the interesting trends in theoretical computer science in recent years is the turn towards new application areas. It is not strange to see career shifts from complexity theory to cryptography, from type theory to security, from formal language theory to computational biology. The trend is reflected in journals as well. For example, the newly-open-for-business electronic journal Logical Methods in Computer Science has editors in the "emerging topics" of quantum computation and logic, and in computational systems in biology. Theoretical Computer Science recently added to its two sections (algorithms, automata, complexity and games; and logic, semantics and theory of programming) a third section entitled "Natural Computing". This "is devoted to the study of computing occurring in nature and computing inspired by nature. ... it will contain papers dealing with the theoretical issues in evolutionary computing, neural networks, molecular computing, and quantum computing." (Interstingly, SIGACT News seems to be immune from this trend, at least so far.) Finally, we turn from official journals to decidedly unofficial sources: weblogs summaries of panel discussions at conferences. On May 14, 2004, the Columbia/IBM Research/NYU Theory Day held a panel on "The Future of CS Theory." As reported in Lance Fornow's Computational Complexity Web Log, Richard Karp "highlighted three areas of interest for the future: (1) the study of large scale distributed systems such as the Web, incorporating ideas from economics and game theory; (2) connections with areas of natural science, ranging from statistical physics to quantum mechanics to biology; and (3) the 'new face' of AI in which stochastic and graphical models and statistical inference are playing a big role."

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.8 Problem Solving, Control Methods, and Search
          Subjects: Heuristic methods

Additional Classification:
  F. Theory of Computation
  F.2 ANALYSIS OF ALGORITHMS AND PROBLEM COMPLEXITY
      F.2.0 General