The TCS-Research Community’s View of the ToNC Initiative

1. The TCS-Research Community’s View of the ToNC Initiative Joan Feigenbaum http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/jf ToNC Workshop 1; Princeton NJ; February 16-17, 2006

2. Project of the Sigact Funding Committee (SFC) • The SFC was chartered in early 2005 by the Sigact Executive Committee to improve the funding situation in TCS. • Sigact Funding Committee Members: Arora Ladner Sloan Feigenbaum Lipton Sudan Gabow Mitzenmacher Tardos Karp (Chair) Papadimitriou Wigderson • ToNC planning is supported by an NSF Small Grant for Exploratory Research.

3. Goal of SGER:Define and Motivate ToNC Agenda • Sigact Funding Committee has put together a first draft: “Towards a Theory of Networked Computation” • Work plan: • This workshop  2nd draft  Advisory Board • March workshop (ICSI)  3rd draft  Advisory Board • Final revisions  NSF • ToNC Advisory Board Borriello Garcia-Molina Rexford Clark Leighton Rivest Dwork Lynch Shenker Fortnow Raghavan Yannakakis

4. Complexity Theory ofNetworked Computation • Machine model(s) that capture(s), e.g., massive scale, user self-interest, device heterogeneity, and emergent behavior • Resources • Reductions • Hardness results (for better and for worse) • Questions: • “Cook’s Theorem of Networked Computation”? • Is it feasible (or even desirable) to unify all of these concerns in one computational model?

5. Security of Network Computation • Assess security at the network level, not the agent level. • Consider quantitative measures of security, not just worst case guarantees. • Consider incentives for deployment and adoption. • Questions: • After 30+ wildly successful years of security and cryptology research, why is our computing environment so insecure? • Potential users should be able to get meaningful answers when they ask, “How much will it cost me to use this security technology? What will I gain if I use it? What will I lose if I don’t?”

6. Privacy in Networked Computation • Robust technological and social trends have led to a dramatic increase in the amount of sensitive information about people and organizations that is created, captured, stored, and traded. • Past: “Privacy”  “Confidentiality of info.” • Future: “Privacy”  “Appropriate use of info.”? • Questions: • New crypto-theory formulations, e.g., “Privacy in public dbs” (Dwork et al.) “Group privacy” (Shmatikov et al.) • Is any meaningful notion of “privacy” compatible with ubiquitous powerful computers and networks?

7. Usability and Reliability • “Ease of use” and “hardness of misuse” • New crypto-theory formulations, e.g., • CAPTCHAs (Blum et al.) • “Secure distrib. human comp.” (Stubblebine et al.) • Patterson: “21st-century C&C should be as reliable as 20th-century telephony.” • Lampson: “20th-century-telephony reliability levels were overkill.” • Question: Are these problems in networked computation?

8. MDS Computation • Progress over the last 10 years • Useful computational models (e.g., streaming, spot checking, property testing) • Many algorithmic results (especially randomized, approximate, and near-linear) • General challenge: Take this to the next level. • Sample concrete goal: Next-generation search • Adversarial behavior (“google bombing”) • Complex data formats • Personalization: Utility vs. privacy

9. MDS Communication and Storage • Progress over the last 15-20 years • New, better codes with novel properties (e.g., rateless, checkable, computationally bounded) that exploit algorithmic techniques (e.g., for faster decoding) • Connections to classical computational problems (e.g., PCPs and non-approximability) • General challenge: Take this to the next level. • Sample concrete goal: Correction of adversarial and strategic errors (not just random errors)

10. Economic and Strategic Considerations • “Ownership, operation, and use by many self-interested, independent parties give the Internet characteristics of an economy as well as those of a computer.” • Progress on “algorithmic mechanisms,” including ones for digital-good auctions, combinatorial auctions, load balancing, cost sharing, and routing • Questions: • Are “equilibrium” concepts from Econ appropriate? • Are non-monetary exchanges useful? (Think BitTorrent) • Is “irrational” behavior recognizable and manageable?

11. Networks in Physics and Biology • Massive number of simple computational nodes, local interactions, emergent system behavior • The “networks” of statistical physics • The human brain • WWW analogies • Random-graph-based algorithms for cortical tasks (Valiant) • Question: Can these analogies help in network-algorithm design, e.g., for sensor nets?

12. Verification • Progress • Model checking • Omega automata • Bridging the gap between “logic people” and “algorithmic people” • Challenge: If ToNC requires a radical rethink of “security” and “reliablity,” then it also requires a radical rethink of “specification,” “testing,” and “verification.”

13. Your Mission: Continue Development of the ToNC Agenda • Chart broad directions. • Formulate representative open problems. • Motivation and opportunities • Funding-model recommendations • Terminology and “framing” • Question: Does the first draft of the ToNC Agenda have the right scope? • Overly broad? Intellectually incoherent? • Networks in physics and biology? • Verification?

14. Possible Discussion Points • Group 1 (Information Systems) • Pollution of the information environment • Groups 2 and 3 (Architecture and Protocols) • “architecture”  “protocols”? (NeTS question) • “protocols”  “algorithms”? (ToC question) • Group 4 (Personal Information) • Bridge the gap between where we are now and the SMFE world. • Group 5 (Economics) • “games” vs. organizational independence

15. Organizational Positioning • ToNC is notpart of GENI or FIND. • ToNC is notaimed at NSF’s CNS Division or at its NeTS program. The Sigact Funding Committee is not trying to create a mechanism for TCS-researcher participation in general networking projects, because such mechanisms already exist ! • This is an initiative of, by, and for the TCS community. • It is aimed at NSF’s CCF Division. • It should support (among other things) single-investigator grants that pay for one or two summer months and one or two PhD students.

16. What Distinguishes a “TCS Initiative”? • This is something you should ask yourself over the next two days. • There is already a body of “networking theory” that has been developed in EE and in “systems theory.” How should the “CS Theory” of networked computation distinguish itself? • JF: Focus on algorithms and complexity. • SJS: ToNC  “theory of network design”

17. Follow-Up Agenda • NSF: Please let us know about the effect of this effort by the TCS++ community. • TCS Community: • Continue the dialogue with NSF. • Reach out to other funding agencies.