[This post was conceived and co-authored by Andrew Ruef, Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, working with me. –Mike]
As researchers, we are often asked to look into a crystal ball. We try to anticipate future problems so that work we begin now will help address those problems before they become acute. Sometimes, a researcher guesses the problem and its possible solution, but chooses not to pursue it. In a sense, she has found, and discarded, an idea ahead of its time.
Recently, a friend of Andrew’s pointed him to a 20-year-old email exchange on the “firewalls” mailing list that blithely suggests, and discards, problems and solutions that are now quite relevant, and on the cutting edge of software security research. The situation is both entertaining and instructive, especially in that the ideas are quite squarely in the domain of programming languages research, but were not considered by PL researchers at the time (as far as we know).