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THE STATE OF THE NATION'S CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE
There were many golden nuggets of
information, bold statements, and calls to action made in a
keynote session on cyberinfrastructure (CI) presented by
Arden Bement, director of the National Science Foundation.
Bement read his presentation verbatim in a non-syncopated
manner, so it was difficult to keep up with his
extraordinary content.
CI is a new term for me, although it has been around for
quite a while. For more information about CI, read the
recently published report of the American Council of Learned
Societies (ACLS) Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the
Humanities and Social Sciences, titled "Our Cultural
Commonwealth" (final report just released on December 13,
2006 - see
www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/).
The ACLS report shares some of its roots with another
important report about CI, titled "Revolutionizing Science
and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure," which was
sponsored by the National Science Foundation and published
in January 2003 (see
www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report/).
EDUCAUSE also has a resource section on CI
located at
www.educause.edu/Browse/645?PARENT_ID=803.
As noted in the recent ACLS report:
"Cyberinfrastructure is more than just hardware and
software, more than bigger computer boxes and wider pipes
and wires connecting them. The term was coined by NSF to
describe the new research environments in which
high-performance computing tools are available to
researchers in a shared network environment. . .
"Of course, scholarship already has an infrastructure:
that infrastructure consists of the libraries, archives, and
museums that preserve information; the bibliographies,
funding aids, and concordances that make that information
retrievable; the journals and university presses that
distribute the information; and the editors, librarians,
archivists, and curators who link the operation of this
structure to the scholars who use it. This infrastructure
was built over centuries, with the active participation of
scholars. "Cyberinfrastructure is being built much more
quickly . . ."
Ushering in a New Age
Bement said the
CI "may well usher in a new technological age that dwarfs
anything we have yet experienced in the current information
age. It promises an enormous transformational leap in its
scope and power."
CI presents a need for developing and
utilizing more tools, such as data mining tools and
visualization tools, to help us better understand science,
engineering, the humanities, and the social sciences. "Just
consider two revolutionary innovations in our tool kit:
computer simulation and modeling" said Bement. "Combine
these with individualization and observational tools, such
as sensor nets, satellites, and distributed observatories,
and you have this flood of data that threatens to stall our
capacity to preserve, analyze and apply. With these new
capabilities comes a challenge to harness and use them
across new
frontiers."
Bement added that "CI is a comprehensive phenomenon that
involves the creation, dissemination, preservation and
application of knowledge." It is also consistent with the
missions of colleges and universities; supports new modes of
education; characterized by distributed knowledge in an
institutional context and in an open common; is global in
scope; and is not a single bricks and mortar university, but
a virtual organization that works across institutional
boundaries.
On Cyberlearning
Indeed, the
concepts and notions swirling around CI are truly exciting,
but it’s really all in an early developmental stage,
especially as it relates to enhancing learning and
education. Bement used the term "cyberlearning" in this
context. He said that cyberlearning augments traditional
learning environments and brings forth the possibility of
having people, information, and facilities together in the
same place at the same time. Enabling the laboratory, the
classroom, the library, and the museum, for example, all in
the same cyber environment, is a challenging proposition,
but there are ways to effectively integrate such elements
into virtual networks and community resources on both a
national and global scale. Everyone just needs to work
harder at developing these kinds of sophisticated networks.
"Universities must be responsible for
initiating, developing, and supporting the lion’s share of
CI," said Bement. "This challenge involves more than just
financial investment. The CI vision will never be achieved
without broad collaboration and support. It is inherently a
multi-stakeholder enterprise."
CI Projects
Near the end of his
presentation, Bement gave a number of examples relating to
the latest advances in the development of
cyberinfrastructure/cyberlearning environments.
The
Haystack Project
(http://haystack.csail.mit.edu/index.html),
for instance, is a consortium of humanists, artists,
scientists, social scientists, engineers, and technologists
from universities and other civic institutions across the
U.S. and internationally. Haystack is promoting
collaborations across disciplines. It is being fostered
through the early development of creative tools for
multi-media archiving, social interaction, gaming
environments for learning, virtual museums, programs in
information science and information studies, as well as
other digital projects.
Other notable projects include:
The
Network of Earthquake Engineering Simulations (NEES)
(www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nees/about.jsp)
involves 15 universities linked
together in a common network. As noted on its website, "NEES
is a network of 15 large-scale, experimental sites that
feature such advanced tools as shake tables, centrifuges
that simulate earthquake effects, unique laboratories, a
tsunami wave basin and field-testing equipment. All are
linked to a centralized data pool and earthquake simulation
software, bridged together by the high-speed Internet 2. The
new NEES grid system, a communications web that uses
collaborative tools and tele-presence technologies, allows
off-site researchers to interact in real time with any of
the networked sites."
The Oceans Observatories Initiative (OOI)
(www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=6197&org=OCE)
has plans to place sensors in the ocean to study toxicity,
temperature gradients and the discovery of new marine life.
It includes, as noted on its website, initiating the
"construction of an integrated observatory network that will
provide the oceanographic research and education communities
with a new mode of access to the ocean."
The
National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)
(www.neoninc.org/about/)
notes on its website that it will be "the first national
ecological measurement and observation system designed both
to answer regional-to continental-scale scientific questions
and to have the interdisciplinary participation necessary to
achieve credible ecological forecasting and prediction."
For more information about CI, visit NSF’s
Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) website at
www.nsf.gov/dir/index.jsp?org=OCI.
OCI "coordinates and supports the acquisition, development
and provision of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure
resources, tools and services essential to the conduct of
21st century science and engineering research and
education." The OCI website features plenty of detailed
information about funding opportunities, active awards, the
latest news, and much more.
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