i am wondering why is the public image of category theory so important for us. i mean, if category theory is a powerful and useful tool, as it is, then it should be able to take care for itself. bread does not need advertising. i have been with categories for many years. i think in categories, and i used them in each and every one of my research projects, in every piece of software that i designed, in every paper that i wrote. but sometimes it is easier to get to the point without spelling out all definitions in full generality. and without tackling the opprobium. e.g., i worked on networks, and have papers about trust networks, and reputation networks, and recommender systems. a network is a weighted graph, and it composes to some extent, because a friend of a friend is almost like a friend, but a friend of a friend of a friend etc, six hops removed --- is probably not a friend. but you can do with networks a lot of what you can do with categories: make arrow networks, adjoin colimits... anyway, i defined all that, and mentioned categories, but did not really advertise them. was that a mistake? maybe it wasn't such a good work, and i would have done a disservice to category theory by advertising it in a bad paper. i have been using categories in my little crypto modules, and in serious reduction proofs, for more than 5 years (cryptography is a theory of functions after all!), but i first gave a crypto talk using categories last week. and this was not a talk to hard-core cryptographers. i think category theory sometimes suffers from our advertising. even in a good paper, advertising is advertising. there are places for that, and there are places where it is better not to do. i do understand that we need to take care for the public image of our work. funding depends on that, hiring depends on that. but maybe we should clearly state that this is a matter of advocacy and of influence, and not mix it up with Promoting the Truth. i somehow think that the truth can take care for itself. but as always, maybe i am wrong. -- dusko [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]