Talk II: ICALP Plenary

In Iceland, I was in a twilight zone, jetlagged or simply overwhelmed by the day/nite ambiguity. My talk was also at a twilight of a time, 9 in the morning, and I felt somewhat displaced at the beginning. But Magnus stirred me with a witty Intro (citing sources, he said they managed to localize me in both space and time, and there I was). Wired, I gave a talk on a way to think about this world of search users, advertisers, search engines that are in the game. This was not a talk with crisp open problems, they come later, but if we internalize an intuitive way to think about this world (beyond the simplistic ways one hears in the media or in armchair research), I think we, the theoretical CStists will abstract problems in our style, solve them, and we will have new insights to offer the world (of Economists).

PS: Photos from ICALP are here.

Curiously, the passengers coming in from US had to go through the security (take out the laptop, empty ones pocket etc) when we landed in Iceland!