Jason Liu's Personal Website

A couple of weeks ago, the W3C announced the launch of a new Math Working Group to produce a version 3.0 of the MathML standard. MathML is a way to represent mathematical expressions in Web pages. A nice example of a Web site that makes extensive use of MathML in their pages is The String Coffee Table, a group blog on physics at the UT-Austin Physics Department. Note that to view the pages properly, you will need to use a Web browser with the ability to view MathML markup, either natively or through use of a plug-in. Mozilla's Firefox has native rendering of MathML, or if you use Microsoft's Internet Explorer, you can download either the MathPlayer or techexplorer plug-ins. To the best of my knowledge, Apple's Safari currently does not have any support for MathML.

I really think that MathML could revolutionize the way that math, science, and engineering resources are made available over the Internet, if only more of the right people knew about it, and were willing to become true advocates of this "new" technology. Unfortunately, until its popularity gains enough critical mass, I'm afraid that a version 3.0 of the standard won't really make much of a difference (the original 1.0 standard was formalized in 1998!) in terms of increasing adoption of the standard. In all of my years of dealing with the academic worlds of math, science, and engineering, I've come to realize that the people in these fields tend to be relatively conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies. I believe that this paradoxical behavior in the men and and women who usually drive our world's new knowledge and technologies has a relatively simple explanation: new knowledge and technologies are founded on current and old knowledge and technologies. But while these fields tend to evolve and grow in a gradual way, as a long-time technology advocate, I've always believed in the power of the "shake-ups" that are provided when quantum leaps in the use and adoption of technologies are made, and the amazing benefits that they can provide to the many men and women working in math, science, and engineering.