Sunday, August 3, 2014

The Mysterious Readers of the SIGGRAPH "Issues" Essay from 2012


I am ashamed to admit it, but I track my blog's page hits pretty closely.  Generally the numbers of hits is dependent on the recency of a post, and whether the post is serious or not.  The number of readers on any given day is closely related to the amount of effort I have put into it in the last 24-72 hours.

But every once in a while the numbers seem to jump, they double or triple out of nowhere and then return to normal after a few days. And what are they reading?

They are reading one thing: my SIGGRAPH “Issues for Discussion” essay that I wrote two years ago when I was late for SIGGRAPH but I was so frustrated with the whole affair that I felt that I had to do something, so I wrote that essay.

Now, a week or so before SIGGRAPH, the statistics on readership on that essay have gone through the roof. I wonder who is reading this? I wonder what they think? They probably think that I am an impractical lunatic because many of the issues are outside the normal agenda of an academic conference of this type. And I guess that is right. But for us, those of us who helped found the field, SIGGRAPH was always something more than merely another academic conference. In this we may have been deluding ourselves.

The essay was written two years ago. I have a dozen other essays on related topics but they do not get read as much.

I wonder who these people are? Do they like it? Do they hate it?

I have no idea, they are silent.

The essay in question can be found here:

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