Signal Processing - November 2017 - 5

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
Rabab Ward | SPS President | rababw@ece.ubc.ca

Signal Processing Is More than Its Beloved Name

S

ince its inception in 1948, the IEEE
Signal Processing Society (SPS) has
evolved in pace with the many technological changes and advancements in
our field. In its early days, our Society-
the first and oldest among the IEEE's
Societies-was known as the Professional Group on Audio of the Institute
of Radio Engineers. Over the course of
four decades, our name has changed few
times from Audio to Audio and ElectroAcoustics and then to Acoustics, Speech,
and Signal Processing, and then to Signal
Processing to reflect the field's growth
and diversity, becoming the IEEE Signal
Processing Society in 1989.
Since then, our scope of interest has
been revised twice to reflect new theories and applications, and many SPS
technical committees have also changed
their names. Our Society has also developed many new workshops, conferences,
specialized publications, journals, periodicals, and outreach programs in an
effort to celebrate the achievements of
our members, strengthen our industry networking opportunities, and also
increase public awareness about signal processing.
We've made great strides, but our field
is consistently evolving while eyeing the
future. Over the past few years, members
have suggested that we're perhaps due for
another name change, that the term signal
processing is obscure and doesn't adequately capture the scope, range, dynamic nature, and fundamental impact of our
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSP.2017.2750307
Date of publication: 13 November 2017

chosen field on so many facets of everyday life. We are certainly not alone in this
dilemma. For example, the famous mathematician Stanislaw Ulam wrote: "What
exactly is mathematics? Many have tried
but nobody has really succeeded in defining mathematics; it is always something
else. Roughly speaking, people know
that it deals with numbers, figures, with
relations, operations, and that its formal
procedures involving axioms, proofs,
lemmas, and theorems have not changed
since the time of Archimedes."
By comparison, our field is in its
infancy, but it has grown and expanded
rapidly to include many branches and
subspecialties. So, in December 2013,
our Society formed a committee, headed
by Prof. Petar Djuric, to explore the possibility of a new name. The committee wrote a wonderful blog post about
this topic (see https://signalprocessing
society.org/sites/default/files/uploads/
get_involved/docs/Power_of_a_Name_
Article_and_Comments.pdf), soliciting
member feedback, and listed nine previously suggested name changes:
1) Society on Signal Science and
Engineering
2) Society on Signal Processing and Data
Science
3) Society on Signal and Data Science
4) Society on Signal Science and
Processing
5) Society on Data Science and Processing
6) Society on Data and Signal Processing
7) Signal and Information Processing
Society
8) Society for Data Science
9) Data Science Society.
IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING MAGAZINE

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November 2017

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Notice that the term data science is in
five of these nine suggestions and data is
in six, but the word information is only in
one. The post elicited a lively discussion.
Among the 58 respondents, some favored
a name change, and Signal and Information Processing was the most popular
of the proposed names, favored by 21
respondents. Yet the majority of respondents (28) preferred to stick with our current name, saying that while it may not
be inclusive of everything that we do,
it's the most succinct way to describe
our complex, evolving field. Indeed,
the very definition of a signal means
the conveyer of some type of information, while the information within the
signal is often related to knowledge
and intelligence.
The respondents were certainly not
unanimous that a name change would
either increase or decrease our visibility among the general public, while
also reflecting the monumental changes in our field since 1989. Whatever
the ultimate decision, I agree with
the recommendations that we would
certainly benefit from improving the
strength and clarity of our brand messaging, by articulating the impact of
signal processing on so many fields,
such as finance, seismology, satellite
communication, medical instruments,
and a wide range of commercial electronics and wearable technologies that
billions of people use every day-at
work, at play, and, in almost every facet
of communication.
Highlights from Society members'
responding to Prof. Djuric's blog post
5
https://signalprocessing http://www.society.org/sites/default/files/uploads/
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Signal Processing - November 2017
