Shannon Theory: Present and Future
Moderator: Sergio Verd'u
As part of the 1994 IEEE Workshop
on Information theory held in Moscow,
a panel dis- cussion on "Shannon
Theory: Present and Future" took
place on July 5th. The invited
panelists were
- Richard Blahut, University of Illinois
- Imre Csisz'ar, Hungarian Academy
of Sciences
- David Forney, Motorola, Inc.
- Prakash Narayan, University of Maryland
- Mark Pinsker, Russian Academy
of Sciences
- Sergio Verd'u, Princeton University.
What follows is an edited and extended
version of that discussion.
Question 1
With the current increasing emphasis
on practically oriented research,
some people think that information
theory "is not where the action
is", some seem surprised that
we are "still working" on Shannon
theory, and some people even go
as far as saying that "information
theory is dead". So the first question
I put to the panel is: Is Information
Theory dead, and if not, what evidence
do we have to the contrary?
Question 2
Let us talk about the current
trends in Shannon theory. What
kind of problems should we put more
(and less) emphasis on? [The tape
recorder missed a portion of the
discussion, including Dave Forney's
answer to this question].
Question 3
Let us move on to what we perceive
are the future trends in information
theory. We will celebrate the
50th anniversary of our field in
1998. So, what do we see as the
main problems people will be working
on in 1998 and into the 21st century?