Why care about constructible complexes of sheaves and characteristic cycles?
David Massey

Abstract: I will discuss why one should be interested in constructible complexes of sheaves, even if one is interested in only classical topological/cohomological questions about complex analytic spaces. I will then discuss why the characteristic cycle of a complex of sheaves is useful. I will NOT define sheaves or sheaf cohomology in this talk, but will assume that the audience has, at least, seen the notation for cohomology with integral coefficients, and believes that cohomology is an important mathematical device.