Group 3 Report

1
Group 3 Report

• Speaking Truth to Power

2
Process

• List individual benefits
• Classification
• Name of the program
• Effective means of communication vs stakeholder
• Communication with power
• Vision and scenario
• List major elements of such a vision

3
Naming

• infrastructure is the means, not the end, and
  (except to technologists) sounds boring
• Cyper sounds nerdy and/or trendy
• Ideas (but more thought needed)
• Digital science and engineering exploration
• Cyber-empowered science and engineering
• Cyberfuture

4
Categories of benefits

• New knowledge and exploration
• Cure diseases
• Economics and industry
• International competition
• Anticipate objections

5
New knowledge and exploration

• Generate a visionary scenario understandable to
  non-scientists
• Scenario is specific but incorporates all the
  major new capabilities

6
Major capabilities

• Digital environment capture all environmental
  parameters everywhere all the time and organize
  and make available to all
• Tree-forest ability to attack problems at all
  scales from sub-atomic through the universe
• Systems ability to understand complex
  heterogeneous systems based on data analysis and
  modeling
• Manhattan project on a dime large
  interdisciplinary teams can be quickly formed
  around new problems (opportunities and
  challenges), without regard to institution or
  place
• IT as a tool New distributed applications can be
  created quickly by scientists with little IT
  expertise

7
Major capabilities (cont)

• Global instruments expensive scientific
  instruments available everywhere to everyone
• Real-time based on environmental sensors,
  ability to predict events (e.g. earthquakes) and
  guide emergency response (e.g. terrorism)
• Community expansion entirely new groups (K-12
  students, amateur scientists, historically Black
  colleges, Indian reservations) can conduct
  sophisticated scientific investigations
• Education create a new professional category of
  those who deeply understand IT and an application
  domain

8
Cure diseases

• Substantial cost associated with not moving now
• Again a scenario would be a good way to
  communicate this

9
Diseases

• Insecurity and vulnerability
• Declining usability
• Declining scientific productivity due to spending
  more time battling IT issues
• Information overload will expand geometrically
• Tower of Babel proliferation of incompatible
  technology choices and standards will increasing
  preclude interdisciplinary research

10
Diseases (cont)

• Digital divide growing reliance on IT
  disadvantages many groups and institutions
• Information loss without systematic attention to
  preservation, data and software generated at
  great expense will inevitably be lost, precluding
  new investigations

11
Economics and industry

• Moores law will continue, but our economy can
  benefit only to the extent we exploit with new
  uses at the frontier and mitigate negative
  impacts
• Job destruction increasing outsourcing of high
  technology will destroy jobs unless we maintain
  preeminence at the frontiers
• Human resources many new professionals with
  expertise in the uses of IT

12
Economics and industry (cont)

• Science is a technology driver with later
  commercial spinoffs
• E.g. massive data sets, computational
  requirements
• Government should mitigate market failure
  mechanisms
• E.g. long time-horizon speculative research
• Application/infrastructure chicken and egg
  conundrum (internet example)

13
Economics and industry (cont)

• Many direct commercial spinoffs and new markets
  for industry
• NSF funding will stay at the frontier, and
  commercialize where possible

14
International competition

• Opportunity to maintain the Nations preeminence
  in information technology and computer science
• To conduct the best science, our scientists need
  access to the best facilities
• Early signs of falling behind (e.g. Earth
  Simulator, e-Science)

15
Anticipate objections

• Why NSF?
• NSF as leader
• Experience and history (internet, PACI)
• Has a vision
• Why now?
• Already behind the curve
• Why is this not just procurement?
• Stupid journal alert IT doesnt matter