Existing in fast and slow moving spaces

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Ottawa has a thriving technology meet-up community. In fact, I am fortunate to live about a 5 minute bike ride away from the hosting venue of the Ottawa Machine Learning Meetup group. Tonight's lecture was "An Introduction to Natural Language Processing (NLP)". It struck me through a combination of comments made during the talk, and during my discussion with a young Computer Systems Engineering student, that working in the technology space means adjusting your frame of reference for what is a new and old idea.

Botany. a discipline as old as time
Image via www.twenty20.com
"Classical" NLP techniques date back to a decade ago. An "old" and developed Data Science company means it has existed for 5 years. These frames of reference are in stark contrast to my regular existence in the Biology, Systematics and Taxonomy world, disciplines pioneered over 100 years ago. "New" techniques in systematics include DNA sequencing, first used over 40 years ago. "Modern" methods include manual curation of Excel spreadsheets.

This brings me to the ultimate conclusion; context is everything. Understanding context is something humans do well, but that machines do poorly. The "Introduction to NLP" lecture taught me this in more ways than one! Thanks ML Ottawa!

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