New Networks for Science and Education

Introduction

A presentation by Sam Kritikos, Thursday, July 9, 1998, at 1900 GMT (3 PM NY time) at the GNA Forum.

A discussion about a series of initiatives partially funded by the National Science Foundation for the creation of very high speed networks used for scientific research and education. These efforts have resulted in the development of a new type of long distance research frameworks called collaboratories for collaborative laboratories. It is expected that these will have far reaching effects for research and education at all levels. It is also reasonable to expect that they will help develop new ways of organization of virtual groups and appreciation of team work and ethic.

Transcript

Ken [G] teleports in.

Ken [G] says, "Hello Everyone"

Sam waves.

Sam asks, "welcome aboard ... Ken from down under?"

Ken [G] says, "No such luck. I'm currently in Illinois"

Sam says, "Thats ok :-)"

Sam says, "I have put together a small page with links about the meeting accessible through the workshop page.

You might find some of this stuff useful as the presentation proceeds"

Emerald_Guest has disconnected.

Sam says, "A number of people have volunteered to organize such meetings and more information will be announced in the days ahead."

Sam says, "This meeting as well as those ahead are sponsored by the Globewide Network Academy"

1st_Guest enters the GNA Forum (GNA-Lab).

Ken [G] says, "I can't actually connect to "

A horrid sea-creature arrives, dismembers Noel [Guest], stuffs the pieces into a gym-bag and waddles away.

Sam says, "My name is Sam Kritikos and I would like to say a few things about a series of networking projects sponsored in part by the "

1st Guest [to Hi]: I'm Debbie. Sorry I'm late.

Sam says, "Debbie welcome ... "

Noel_guest teleports in.

Bernardo has disconnected.

Sam says, "I have a small tech problem at the moment ... hopefully it will be fixed ;-)"

Noel_guest says, "I was only getting parts of what you said on the other moo"

1st Guest [to Sam]: anything we can help with?

Sam says, "I would like to say a few things about a series of networking projects sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation that promise to revolutionize the way we view science and education. This is a work in progress so expect a fair amount of hand-waving :-) Please feel free to ask questions."

1st Guest says, "I've read Nancy's paper, nothing else yet"

Noel_guest says, "I have also read her paper"

Sam says, "My plan is that we eventually go into a discussion period later on and concentrate on the article The Virtues (and Vices) of Virtual Colleagues by Nancy Ross-Flanigan in the March-April issue of Technology Review of this year. There are in my view two central concepts in these developments in networking: "

Sam says, "The National Science Foundation was founded in 1950 in order to promote "... the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense"."

cath materializes out of thin air.

Sam says, "It is estimated that they spend $3.3 billion per year in about 20,000 research and education projects in science and engineering. It is interesting to note that national defense is one of their goals and they have played an important role in the development of the Internet as we shall see. But it is ARPA that is usually associated with the Internet. When in 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik it was felt that a new agency will be needed to organize the research efforts necessary for national defense."

Sam says, "ARPA went on to fund a number of projects including the experiments in networking that led to the first network that used packet-switching the ARPANet. ARPA was very supportive of research efforts in the late 60s early 70s but became increasingly bureaucratic and sometime in the late 70s NSF became the focal point of funding. It is not clear from my reading on why that was so. It is perhaps interesting to speculate as to whether the then administration shifted emphasis, but I have not found anything more concrete."

Sam says, "In the late 70s it was still very rare for universities to be connected to the ARPANet. Most sites connected were from research departments in commercial companies. It was becoming clear that such connection was vital to research in Computer Science and it was felt the situation will lead to many computer researchers moving to company labs. NSF helped in 1981 the establishment of the CSNet as part of a five year plan. By 1986 when their involvement terminated most university CS departments were connected to the CSNet, and it had become self financed."

Bernardo [guest] finds its way in.

You exclaim, "Welcome Bernardo!"

Sam says, "About the same time NSF have helped the establishment of a small number of Supercomputer Centers and then their connection with with 56 Kbps lines that formed the NSFNet backbone. Super Computers are high end computing machines used for computationally intensive simulations primarily but not exclusively related to weather, weapons and high energy physics research. The NSF Supercomputer Centers program was instrumental in the development of computational science and engineering in this country. The program, that began in 1985 and ended in September 30, 1997, helped establish five NSF-funded supercomputer centers."

Bernardo rushes into, with a pile of unfinished papers under his arms

Sam says, "The success of the network for Computer Scientists resulted in scientists from other disciplines to lobby for similar access. The NSF proposal was that if universities could organize between themselves local networks, NSF would then help them to connect to the backbone. The proposal proved a success making it possible for most university students in the US in the late 1980s to have access to email, as well as giving scientists access to the Supercomputer Centers and other research facilities."

Sam says, "It is interesting to note that 56 Kbps lines were considered high speed in the mid-80s but it became increasingly clear in this decade that new types of connections will be needed. So starting in 1994 a new type of experimental network was created called vBNS (very-high-performance Backbone Network Service)"

cath has disconnected.

Ken [G] says, "Sam, did that program end in 1997 or in 1987?"

Sam says, "vBNS is implemented by MCI and it uses MCIs commercial ATM network as its backbone. The commercial ATM network has OC-3 capacity (155 Mbps) and will eventually be upgraded to OC-48 (2.4 Gbps).This capacity also supports Internet video teleconferencing and tools facilitating collaboration between researchers. "

Sam says, "The supercomputer center ended in 1997, last year ... the program, not the centers themselves .... my understanding is that the program involved ways of financing and technical assistance ... I do not have the reference handy but will provide it in the mailing list."

Sam says, "In the old NSFNet access was primarily to individual centers. The difference and the substantial advance and promise for vBNS is that new types of computations become possible because of the network speeds involved. These speeds allow utilization of the Supecomputer Centers in a distributed manner so scientists can perform computations in more that one center at same time."

The housekeeper arrives to cart cath off to bed.

Sam says, "Without the NSF support the process would not have started. On the one hand developers would not have developed applications without the network in place, and on the other no one would have undertaken the project to develop the network in the first place without applications to make it useful because of the cost involved. So NSF decided to "...break the chicken and egg cycle" according to an MCI official quoted by BYTE magazine. Currently vBNS serves 44 institutions of higher learning " So government involvement can be beneficial despite the rumours :-)"

Sam says, "So far our presentation has focused on technological issues and characteristics of the new network deployment. Given that in the past many Federal programs have been criticized for the way they have managed money, there might be doubts as to whether the above programs will deliver on their promises and have beneficial effect on American education and scientific research. There is however some evidence and rationale that these large spending efforts not only will work, but they could potentially signal the start of a new era in human intellectual history. Traditionally we have acquired knowledge in two broad ways: "

1st Guest says, "what about 3. by chance/circumstance"

Sam says, "This is of course a very crude way of presenting things and does not do justice to the complexity of intellectual work. Even philosophers have some experience of real life and do not think in a vaccum. Similarly applied mathematicians can be seen as theoretical physicists, and engineers need theory to predict performance, although how much theory depends on the discipline. As science and engineering advance, our understanding of the world becomes more complex. Contemplation on its own however is not sufficent to understanding. It is at this point that the use of large computer systems become relevant in the scientific enterprise because they allow us to experiment without actually doing an experiment in the traditional sense. Computer simulations permit us to see the significance of theoretical formulations without actually constructing experimental equipment, and so they represent a way to do theoretical experiments, and quite possibly mark the beginning of a paradigm shift. "

Sam says, "vBNS is just one of a number of projects of high speed networking in which NSF give support. I shall provide through the workshop home page a number of links that you might want to pursue further about other projects. These include: Internet 2, New Generation Internet, and the so called Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure."

Ken [G] jokes "I know a few mathematicians and physicists who whould be hurt by your caharacterizations :)"

Sam says, "So far I have provided background information about the new ..."

Sam says, "point taken :-) :-) Im just try to simplify ... philosophers might make a living here for the next few centuries ;-)"

Sam says, "... infrastructure that will be made widely available in the next few years in Universities and increasingly to the public. This infrastructure supports the simulation aspect that I mentioned earlier on. Before we move on to discussion I would like to say a few things about the collaboration framework that is created."

Sam says, "Collaboratories are centers in which research can be contacted without regard to location. These virtual research centers utilize a variety of software tools for storing and distributing information including chatting and videoconferencing. Collaboratories so far have been very focused projects in specific areas of research. The high speed networking projects mentioned earlier are top-down approaches to effect change to the network as a whole. It is our contention that these two streams will eventually merge."

Sam says, "It is important to note that high speed networking is not necessary for fruitful scientific collaboration. For example one of the projects supported by GNA is BioMOO, a MOO specially designed for biologists from around the world to meet, exchange views and work on common projects. This requires nothing more than access to "telnet"

Sam says, "However the high speed networking and the conceptual experimentation that it allows can not but change dramatically how we understand "science and education."

Sam says, "For example science graduate students will have increasing opportunities for meeting advisors from institutions other than their own, as well as being able to use equipment not available locally. "

Sam says, "Some of these opportunities will also be available to undegraduates as the article by Ross-Flanigan makes clear. She also provides additional information that I did not want to duplicate here. Also worth mentioning is the CoVis project, an effort at Nortwestern University to use the idea of a collaboratory for high-school students."

Sam says, "It is also expected that the infrastructure and software developed can and will be used for commercial purposes. Companies can for example use it to coordinate distributed teams of researchers and engineers that co-develop products and services. Motorola for example developed the operating system for their satellite network using software developers in countries outside the US to a very large extent. Motorola used proprietary technologies and they have the financial muscle to develop such projects. However the widespread use of high speed networking would mean that smaller companies could conceivably be in a position to use workers from other countries. The implications for the future of work are enormous. "

Bernardo_guest . o O ( commercial purposes... international virtual bussiness incubators, maybe? )

Sam says, "also cheap labour :-("

Sam says, "We should also mention that the use of video is not a panacea for an organization or a project. As the article points out, there is evidence to support the view that collaboration over the Internet is more effective if the people involved have also the chance to meet in person."

Sam says, "On the other hand it seems that there is also evidence to support the view that virtual meetings are better for brainstorming purposes. People spend some time in composing their views and that result in a better level of communication. "

Sam says, "Nevertheless it is anybody's guess how the scientific culture will reconfigure itself in view of the collaboratory experience. A number of questions come to mind: "

Sam says, "having said that I would like to urge everybody to make some coffee and we can start the discussion :-)"

Bernardo_guest . o O ( both in infrastructure and _cost of communications_) )

Sam says, "Third world countries are still paying for debt incured in the 80s ... there simply not enough money for keeping up with the new networks"

Bernardo_guest makes coffee and apologizes for being late ... had to work out how to connect reliablily first. Greetings from Argentina to all participants.

Sam says, "The research possibilities might attract new scientists ... increasing the brain drain"

Ken [G] says, "Much like min wage workers tyring to keep up with the technology curve"

Noel_guest says to you, "You said our several times in your presentation, who is this our :)"

Sam says, "It is quite possible that large corporations will take over research in small countries ... establishing local labs for example "

Bernardo_guest says to you, "you're are right ... We have good communications now in my country, but phone rates are around $1/hour here... a way to pay debts, also"

Sam says, "example in point: India"

You ask, "Noel, probably a matter of speech ... which case in particular?"

Noel_guest asks you, "well what I was asking was who do you work with? What is your roll?"

Sam says, "Both Microsoft and Baan have research labs in India ... also TI"

Sam says, "I am a member of GNA, a volunteer group ... we are a small virtual community dedicated to distance education ... however my use of "we" might have meant my understanding of the prevalent view"

Noel_guest nods

Sam says, "I had the opportunity to see some of the Virtual Reality simulations here in Chicago last year and they were impressive"

Noel_guest asks, "What technologies have the collaboratories that are currently up been built around?"

1st Guest says, "I'm going to have to log off ... Sam, thanks, this has been very enlightening. "

Sam waves.

Sam exclaims, "Thanks for coming!"

1st Guest says, "Bye, everyone, see you around"

1st_Guest has disconnected.

Sam says, "I would like to hear though of what others thought of the article. Did you find it interesting? worth your time?"

Pedrinho arrives.

Sam says. "BTW next week we have Barbara Steinberg ... she will do a presentation on emotional aspects in the design of virtual communities"

Pedrinho goes home.

Behn's_Guest has arrived.

Sam says, "Welcome"

Noel_guest says, "I found the article interesting. "

Sam says, "It promises to be an interesting meeting with more ground for discussion ... todays topic was more information centered "

Noel_guest says, "I was interested in how the 97 campaign attacted spectators"

Sam says, "I hope you can make it next week ... "

Bernardo_guest. o O ( there's any way I can get the transcripts of this meeting? )

You ask, "what campaign?"

Sam says, "the meetings are recorded"

Ken [G] says, "I'm loggin thg the whole thing"

Noel_guest says, "the '97 UARC campaign"

Sam says, "This is a work in progress and there are a number of things that I need to follow up"

Ken [G] says, "I am particularly interested in changes in the percesption of reality as electronic mediation incrases"

Behn's_Guest has arrived.

Bernardo_guest agrees with Noel about this impressive presentation...

Sam says, "With the coming of tech such as ADSL the possibility of VR coming to the living room is very "real""

Bernardo_guest says, "collaboratories is a new and exciting concept to me"

Sam says, "imagine a generation of kids growing up playing immersive VR ... not very promising"

Bernardo_guest says to you, "well, actual ones are growing watching the dumb box (grin)"

Sam says, "I have found the novel by Gibson called "Idoru" very relevant in this respect ... highly recommended"

Sam says, "his vision of what VR+AI is engulfing (if you allow me the expression)" if not frightening, I recommend the book ..."

Bernardo_guest asks, "Sam's question of science without laboratories sounded a bit strange to me... virtual laboratories, software simulated laboratories cannot be considered _real_ laboratories?"

Sam says, "having said that, VR can have good implications for education"

Sam says, "What I meant was that in the old days people had to actually use equipment or go to do field work .. in the article it becomes clear that a lot of research now and more in the future will be through computer screens ... getting a degree without visiting the North Pole and having to deal with the elements"

Bernardo_guest exclaims, "yes, many people go now to real laboratories to sit in front of computer screens (grin) to get a glimse of real world!"

Sam says, "you deal with representation as opposed to the actual objects"

Bernardo_guest says to you, "but science is abstraction, also"

Sam says, "Its like saying that someone is an artist without ever painting anything ... "

Bernardo_guest says, "maybe you can say that you deal with _real objects_ represented in another ways"

Sam says, "In a way any scientific project that involves mathematics is removed from the object ... But there is a limit to how much math can model the world "

Bernardo_guest asks, "and the need to _represent_ leads to higher levels of abstraction, that's good to science, dont you think so? I mean, you need to know the object better to render an exact representation of it"

Sam says, "Personally I believe that there is place for intuition ... I can not prove it but I feel that there is a need for a requirement that science education involves actual experiments "

Bernardo_guest says, "oh yes, of course, intuition is an important part of the process of knowledge building ... maybe there is no conflict between virtual and real laboratories... both concepts should complement each other"

Sam says, "I agree with that ..."

Bernardo_guest says, "you go real when there is a need to be real, and go virtual when virtual fits better"

Sam says, "Im only concerned that we might end up with VR taking over :-)"

Bernardo_guest asks, "like now (grin)... this is a VR meeting uh? ... sometimes VR can be good"

Sam says, "because people are attracted to the "beauty" of the representation (think of DisneyLand) and do not want to deal with a dirty lab room ;-) I have a feeling that 20 years from now all of us will look back with a certain nostalgia about MOOs :-) :-)"

Bernardo_guest says, "I started tweaking electronic circuits when you had to build everything (chassis, breadboard, etc)... now i'm amazed how easy you can test and bulid virtually in a computer, before doing it in real life ... saves lots of time & efforts"

Sam says, "It is true that a lot of electronics education can be simulated ... I have done digital electronics myself ... a few years ago I was in a EE department"

Bernardo_guest says, "BTW I will mail you some ideas about my presentation ... I'm writing something just now"

Sam says, "I hope that we can continue this discussion ... feel free to expand on your views"

Bernardo_guest says, "well, I started analog, and working with electronic tubes"

Sam says, "My views were influenced last year, I met a PhD student in EECS ... he had never actually built anything ... would you trust such an engineer?"

Notes

• In the meeting there was a question from Ken about the duration for the NSF's Supercomputer Center program. The information that I have is that the program started in 1985 and ended September 30, 1997, and comes from the following paper:

  Smith, Philip M. "The NSF Partnerships and the Tradition of U.S. Science and Engineering", Communications of the ACM, November 1997, Volume 40, Number 11, p 35.

• There was mention of UARC in the meeting by Noel that was not followed up. I assume he meant the Upper Atmospheric Research Collaboratory (UARC). It has now evolved into the Space Physics and Aeronomy Research Collaboratory (SPARC).

Bibliography

The discussion was based in part on the article: The Virtues (and Vices) of Virtual Colleagues by Nancy Ross-Flanigan in the March/April 1998 issue of Technology Review.

• Cerf, Vinton G. "Computer Networking: Global Infrastructure for the 21st Century".

• Dern, Daniel P. and Scott Mace. "The Internet Reinvented", BYTE, February 1998, p 89-96.

• Edelson, Daniel C. And Douglas N. Gordin. "Adapting Digital Libraries for Learners: Accessibility vs. Availability", D-Lib Magazine, September 1996. Available from the CoVis site.

• Graubard, Stephen R. (Ed) A New Era in Computation, Daedalus, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Volume 121, Number 1, Winter 1992, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• Hafner, Katie and Matthew Lyon. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet, Touchstone, New York, 1996.

• Jamison, John and Rick Wilder. "vBNS: The Internet Fast Lane for Research and Education", IEEE Communications Magazine, vol.35, (no.1):60-3 (1997).

• Johnston, William E. and Sonia Sachs, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the DCEE Program Participants. " Distributed, Collaboratory Experiment Environments (DCEE) Program: Overview and Final Report", (Draft, version 3) February, 1997.

• Kaufmann, William J. And Larry L. Smarr. Supercomputing and the Transformation of Science, Scientific American Library, New York, 1993.

• Kline, Morris. Mathematics and the Physical World, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1981. (Originally published by Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York 1959.)

• McRae, Gregory J. "How Application Domains Define Requirements for the Grid", Communications of the ACM, November 1997, Volume 40, Number 11, p 75-83.

• O'Neill, D. Kevin, and Louis M. Gomez. "The Collaboratory Notebook: A Networked Knowledge-Building Environment for Project Learning", in T. Ottmann & I. Tomek (Eds.), Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 1994: Proceedings of Ed-Media '94 (pp. 416-423). Charlottesville, VA: AACE.

• Poundstone, William. Prisoner's Dilemma, Anchor Books Doubleday, New York, 1992.

• Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Addison-Wesley, Reading Mass, 1993.

• Smarr, Larry L. "Toward the 21st Century", Communications of the ACM, November 1997, Volume 40, Number 11, p 29-32.

• Smith, Philip M. "The NSF Partnerships and the Tradition of U.S. Science and Engineering", Communications of the ACM, November 1997, Volume 40, Number 11, p 35-37.

• Stevens, Rick, Paul Woodward, Tom DeFanti, and Charlie Catlett. "From the I-WAY to the National Technology Grid", Communications of the ACM, November 1997, Volume 40, Number 11, p 35-37.

We have not read these but they look interesting:

• Olson, Gary M. et al. "The Upper Atmospheric Research Collaboratory (UARC)", interactions, Volume 5, Issue 3, May/June 1998, Special section on collaboratories. Available from the Association of Computing Machinery site.

• Murray, William. "Cancer's New Enemy: Building a national mammogram archive", New Architect, October 2002, Volume 7, Issue 10, p 10-12.

Resources

Some of the organizations mentioned in the meeting:

• vBNS (very-high-performance Backbone Network Service)

• The National Science Foundation

• Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

• Learning Through Collaborative Visualization Project (CoVis)

• The Internet 2 project of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID)