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Mundie demos a prototype on his recent college tour.

Craig Mundie has a unique view of the technology landscape, working as Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer and also serving on President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Mundie talked with TechFlash recently about the economy and the future of technology as he prepared to set out on a speaking tour of several college campuses.

Q: Given what has been happening with the economy, do you feel increasing pressure to produce actual products out of Microsoft’s research and development budget?

Mundie: I guess I wouldn’t say I feel any more pressure than we always feel. And we do get a tremendous amount of output from our pure research activities. Of course, Microsoft across the whole company now is either the largest or certainly one of the world’s largest investors in research and development. It’s important to have both parts -- the “r” and the “d.” Microsoft is notable simply because we do invest in doing some pure research in order to explore these different areas. Many, many companies are not doing much research, they’re just leaving it up to academia to do, and that’s been a declining area of investment for some years, too.

Q: Even as Microsoft’s research and development budget has gone up overall, there have been cutbacks at the company over the past year, and it has affected some of the groups under you. How do you explain those two things -- the overall R&D budget going up and, yet, cutbacks in some areas?

Mundie: We’ve been trimming projects that don’t look like they have high potential to yield. The economic situation has just forced some extra discipline in that regard in the company everywhere. But we want to continue to invest in the things that are growing, and in a world where the company is not by and large growing at the rate it was, that requires us to be more thoughtful about the reclaiming and reallocation of resources. Unfortunately people are not always truly fungible in the research and development space, so sometimes we had to trim people of a certain type in order to add back people of a different type.

Q: You’re using a digital pen input in some of your demonstrations for college students. Obviously the world is very enamored with touch and gestures as forms of input right now. Is there a role for pen-based computing anymore?

Mundie: Yeah, I think there is. The problem with your finger is it’s not very pointy. So if you want to actually do something like write numbers, or draw sketches, or point with some accuracy, you either need to go back to the mouse, or if you want some direct manipulation, I think pens will play a role. It really depends on the granularity of what you’re trying to control.

Q: Another technology that you’ve talked about in the past, and shown, is the idea of augmented reality -- overlaying data on top of the real world, as people experience it. Are you expecting that to come more into the marketplace now, and do you expect Microsoft to offer products along those lines?

Mundie: I do believe that will continue to be important. Some of the things we continue to do with Photosynth (a Microsoft 3D photo browsing program) and work related to Bing Maps are trending in that direction, so I think they’ll be a steady progression there. I demonstrated an ultramobile PC where you could use the video camera to look at a scene and then we would do image-matching on the scene to identify well-known items, and then we would bring data forward and annotate the scene dynamically on that. I think that’s certainly in the cards, and you’ll do that on your cell phone.

Q: You travel a lot, as evidenced by your college tour. Do you have any big technology tips for other travelers? Is there one thing you’ve figured out about what to take or how to use it?

Mundie: Well, the thing that has made a big difference for me is that I only take a Tablet computer, and all the briefings are on (Microsoft note-taking software) OneNote. Because OneNote can basically put anything in it -- music, videos, you can record stuff, you can annotate stuff, you can handwrite things. Everytime I would go on a trip like this, people would prepare the briefing book, and frequently I would get a binder that was two inches thick of papers to read, and the briefs for every meeting. I don’t take any paper anymore. I just take everything as OneNote sections.

Q: How are you feeling generally about the economy at this point? Do you feel like it has hit a bottom?

Mundie: If you look at it globally, I think things are clearly bottoming out and starting to turn up. I think that’s especially true in Asia and to some extent in India. I don’t think that we are recovering as quickly in Europe and the United States. I think the U.S. appears to be bumping along near the bottom now, and that’s encouraging. I guess at a personal level, the thing that still troubles me is unemployment in this country. I think clearly the administration seems to recognize that that’s an issue, too.

Q: As you’re talking to these college students, what are the implications of the economy for technology jobs?

Mundie: Well, at least at Microsoft we’ve retained our college recruiting last year and again this year in these difficult times. I think clearly the people who have degrees, particularly advanced degrees, are not having any trouble getting work. People with PhDs in computer science are still in high demand. It varies by geography and by discipline.