We are entering a second revolution in information technology, one that may well usher in a new technological age that will dwarf, in sheer transformational scope and power, anything we have yet experienced in the current information age.
We are already intimately familiar with the first revolution, now well under way. Information, computer, and communications technologies have transformed nearly every aspect of our lives, creating entirely new opportunities and challenges, and trailing some inevitable surprises in their wake.
In the science-and-engineering community, these revolutionary technologies have helped us scan the research frontier at velocities that are orders of magnitude faster than ever before. These tools are not simply faster — they are also fundamentally superior. They have raised the level of complexity we can understand and harness. That capability is growing at a breathtaking pace.
Just consider two revolutionary innovations in our tool kit: computer simulation and modeling. Combine these with new visualization and observational tools — such as sensor nets, satellites, and distributed observatories — and you have a flood of data that threatens to swamp our capacity to preserve, analyze, and apply it. With these new capabilities comes the challenge to use them to cross new frontiers of discovery.
The engine of change for the next revolution is cyberinfrastructure, a comprehensive phenomenon that involves the creation, dissemination, preservation, and application of knowledge. It adds new dimensions that greatly increase transformational potential.
Like other infrastructure — the electric power grid, the national highways — cyberinfrastructure combines complex elements to create a dynamic system. It eclipses its many hardware and software components to enable people and their interactions with technology to become the central focus. At the heart of the cyberinfrastructure vision are cultural communities that support peer-to-peer collaboration and new modes of education. They are distributed-knowledge communities in an institutional context, not of bricks and mortar like the traditional university, but rather virtual organizations that work across institutional boundaries — and ultimately around the globe.
Cyberinfrastructure encompasses a diverse array of interrelated social, economic, and legal factors, everything from norms of practice and rules to incentives and constraints that shape individual and collective action. Putting these into the mix from the very beginning can help ensure that the cyberinfrastructure effort, bolstered by good systems and tools, does not stall when it meets these complex human and institutional factors.
To create and use cyberinfrastructure, learning and work-force development initiatives will be the most important requirements. You may have seen a recent New York Times article with the headline, “No Test Tubes?” It considers whether students immersed in Internet and computer learning may not be missing something that is vital to their education — the “hands on” experiences that can be delivered only in the tangibility and messiness of the real-world laboratory. This controversy is driven, in part, by the possibility that the College Board may not recognize science classes based solely on simulations as equivalent to those including hands-on experience.
To be sure, these are important questions, and more research is needed to understand the factors that optimize cyberlearning. However, we need to think in terms of systems rather than “either or” dilemmas. The real gold can emerge only from our thinking of “both — and more” opportunities. Cyberlearning and collaboration augment the more traditional learning environments. They offer additional modes of interaction among people, information, and facilities.
This is no small advantage in an age when bringing people, information, and facilities together in the same place at the same time — be it the laboratory, classroom, library, or museum — is probably the most expensive of the various ways we collaborate and educate. For just this reason, there is an increasing trend toward international collaboration in developing large research facilities that are just too costly for every nation to replicate. When these cyberinfrastructure tools are integrated into virtual networks, they become community resources, on both a national and a global scale.
The power of cyberinfrastructure to enhance education and provide new learning opportunities is such an expansive and beneficial feature that we must be sure to create the conditions for synergy between research and education from the outset. That means that developing these strategies at the very core of our cyberinfrastructure enterprise, rather than as an afterthought, is critical.
Cyberinfrastructure is not just for elite researchers, just as it is not simply for campuswide chats, although we would be missing a significant source of its potential if we did not recognize that both extremes are legitimate features of a learning community. In time, cyberinfrastructure will extend to every level of education. Some universities are already providing K-12 youngsters with access to cyberresources.
William A. Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering and vice chair of the National Research Council, and James J. Duderstadt, president emeritus and a professor of science and engineering at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, have warned that “the capacity to reproduce with high fidelity all aspects of human interactions at a distance could well eliminate the classroom and perhaps even the campus as the location of learning.” This seemingly radical speculation may be closer than we would like to believe. I wonder how many of us have seriously considered the possibility. Even fewer, I suspect, have taken the next step and actually thought about what strategies are needed in a world where this is a real prospect. Along the way, we must not forget to question what we gain and what we might lose.
To my mind, America’s universities are a national and international treasure. There is ample time to respond decisively to the changing landscape. More important, if we begin now, we can shape that landscape through innovations in education. In other words, the American higher-education community can lead the pack by embracing the cyberinfrastructure vision.
I would go one step further and suggest that the community has a responsibility to move forward with alacrity toward e-learning. Embracing cyberinfrastructure is a tall order, considering the press of current issues — from privacy to property rights, and from cybersecurity to cybersustainability — as well as keeping current with technologies that become obsolete in a flash. But that is precisely what we need to do.
The National Science Foundation has been a leader in supporting supercomputing centers and high-broadband interconnections for the research-and-education community. We are equally committed to a robust cyberinfrastructure initiative. But the point to remember is that NSF’s leadership efforts will touch only the tip of the iceberg. We are dealing with a matter that is broad and deep. The evolution of knowledge communities enabled by cyberinfrastructure will require extensive collaboration among individuals from all fields and institutions across the entire educational spectrum. In particular, universities must be responsible for initiating, developing, and supporting the lion’s share of cyberinfrastructure.
As cyberinfrastructure evolves, it will become an integral part of research and education across the board, including the humanities and the arts. To be somewhat provocative, I would even suggest that leadership in cyberinfrastructure may well become the major determinant in measuring pre-eminence in higher education among nations.
And pre-eminence matters in a knowledge-driven world. Although there are many competitive forces at work globally, the demand for highly skilled talent looms larger and larger. In October, The Economist magazine carried an article with the title, “The Search for Talent: the world’s most valuable commodity is getting harder to find.”
The message is clear: “The value of ‘intangible’ assets — everything from skilled workers to patents to know-how — has ballooned from 20 percent of the value of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 to 70 percent today. The proportion of American workers doing jobs that call for complex skills has grown three times as fast as employment in general.”
No one doubts that the American system of higher education is currently the best in the world. The quality of U.S.-trained scientists, engineers, and technologists is a measure of that excellence. In fact, America’s global leadership in innovative technologies depends, in large part, on this “spike” in a world that is increasingly flat, to use the metaphor of Tom Friedman, The New York Times foreign-affairs columnist.
The United States has enjoyed an unparalleled position of strength in the world because of our incredible ability to create new ideas and to transform them into innovative technologies that keep us competitive. Innovation is America’s ace in the hole. Indeed, I would suggest that leadership in cyberinfrastructure may determine America’s continued ability to innovate — and thus our ability to compete successfullyin the global arena.
Certainly other nations are acting with determination to realize their own visions of the future, including how to educate the scientists and engineers who are central to technology-driven societies. Every nation now knows that investments in education, research, and research infrastructure are the key elements that are driving the global economy in this knowledge-intensive era.
When asked where their nations will be five years from now, the leaders of China and India reply: “We will be where the U.S. is today.” This potential reality should spur the United States to be in a different place five years from now. The rapid pace of new technology development along with growing investments in research and education around the world should signal to us that no nation can afford to be complacent. We must continue to invent the future and fine-tune our national innovation systems. A robust cyberinfrastructure is central to that future.
While the coming cyberinfrastructure revolution will further flatten and shrink the world, it will also reward those who are agile and adept at change. Charting a course for this second revolution is a task for here and now. It will require passion and persistence to propel us to success.
Arden L. Bement is director of the National Science Foundation. This article is adapted from his remarks at The Chronicle’s recent Technology Forum.
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 53, Issue 18, Page B5