InfoMagic Standards 1994 January/InfoMagic Standards - January 1994.iso/inet/nren/hpca/langen.txt

Text File | 1991-04-13 | 11KB | 194 lines

 Statement by DONALD N. LANGENBERG

 Chancellor, The University of Maryland System

  Before the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space
  Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation


 United States Senate

  March 5, 1991


 Donald N. Langenberg is Chancellor of the University of Maryland
 System. With a doctorate in physics, Dr. Langenberg has held faculty
 and administrative positions at the University of Pennsylvania and
 the University of Illinois at Chicago. He served as Acting and Deputy
 Director of the National Science Foundation. He is currently Chairman
 of the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of
 Science and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National
 Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. He chaired
 the panel of the NAS/NAE/IOM Committee on Science, Engineering,
 and Public Policy that authored the 1989 report, Information
 Technology and the Conduct of Research: The User's View.



 Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

       Thank you for your invitation to testify on S. 272, the High-
 Performance Computing Act of 1991.


       I am Donald Langenberg, Chancellor of the University of
 Maryland System. My view of the issues addressed by this bill has
 naturally been shaped by my own experience. I am, or was, an
 experimental solid state physicisL I have served as Deputy Director
 and as Acting Director of the National Science Foundation. I am
 currently CEO of an eleven-campus state university system,
 Chairman of the Board of the American Association for the
 Advancement of Science, and Chairman of the National Association of
 State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. These affiliations account
 for some of my biases, but most are a result of my service as chair of
 a National Research Council panel that wrote a 1989 report entitled
 Information Technology and the Conduct of Research: The User's
 View.

       My service on the panel convinced me that the current
 breathtaking rate of change in information technology will inevitably
 force historic changes in our institutions for managing information.
 Nowhere is this more evident than in the research and education
 communities that both create important new developments in
 information technology, and are often bellwethers in its use. It is the
 viewpoint of these communities that I will try to represent this
 afternoon.

       Information is the fundamental stuff of both research and
 education. Research and education are about the creation of
 information and its transformation into knowledge and
 understanding, for our individual and collective benefit.

       Modern information technology has presented us with a
 challenge of unprecedented scale. The Library of Congress contains
 about 10 terabytes of information. It took us over two centuries to
 collect ii It's stored nearby in an impressive collection of expensive
 real estate. Medical imaging machines nowadays produce that much
 information every week or so. The particle detectors of the
 Superconducting Super Collider will one day engulf their designers
 with that much information every few seconds. NASA already has
 1.2 million magnetic tapes containing data from past missions, and its
 archives are growing by about one Library of Congress every year.
 In ten years, if all goes according to plan, NASA will be piling up
 about fifty Libraries of Congress each year. Everywhere one looks,
 similar gushers of information exist or are in prospect.

       Fortunately, modern information technology also promises to
 give us the means to meet this challenge. Transforming promise into
 reality, however, will take time, skill, resources, and, above all,
 wisdom. In my opinion, S. 272 represents a major contribution to
 that transformation. I strongly support its passage into law.

       Let me make a few points related to the work of our NRC panel.

       1.   The Panel found that there exist significant technical,
 financial, behavioral, and infrastructural impediments to the
 widespread use of information technology in research. Though the
 Panel's charge was confined to research, I believe the same
 impediments exist with respect to education. The Panel made three
 main recommendations and a host of subrecommendations for
 dealing with these impediments.  S. 272 responds to most of them.

 2.    One of the Panel's three principal recommendations was that,
 "the institutions supporting the nation's researchers, led by the
 federal government, should develop an interconnected national
 information technology network for use by all qualified researchers."
 S. 272's National Research and Education Network (NREN) responds
 directly to the need reflected in this recommendation, and also to the
 very important collateral need of the educational sector. In my
 judgment, NREN will revolutionize both research and education (in an
 evolutionary way, of course).

 3.    When one thinks of what NREN might do for education, one
 thinks first of the education of scientists and engineers, then perhaps
 of the incredible potential inherent in linking NREN to every
 elementary school, secondary school, public library, and museum in
 the country. There is another educational need of utmost importance.
 I believe that part of the challenge we face is the creation of an
 entirely new kind of institutional infrastructure for managing the
 new information technology, led and supported by a new breed of
 information professionals. The latter may bear some resemblance to
 librarians, or to computer scientists, or to publishers. Whatever they
 might be, we need to create schools for training them and institutions
 within which they can function. That means educational and
 institutional innovation of a kind S. 272 appears well designed to
 foster.

 4.    The most important words in the title of our panel report reflect
 our most important observation. They are "the user's view." In
 simple terms, the Panel concluded that the development of
 information technology and its applications in the conduct of
 research (and, I would add here, education) are far too important to
 be left to the experts. The Panel cautioned that planning and
 development should be guided by users of information technology,
 both current and prospective, Dot by information specialists,
 information scientists, information technologists, or local, national,
 and international policymakers. It may not invariably be true that
 "the customer is always right," but institutions that create technology
 or make policy without a clear understanding and appreciation of the
 real needs of their clients and constituents risk making serious and
 expensive blunders. S. 272 calls for the advice of users in the
 development of the National Research and Education Network I
 especially applaud this provision.

 5.  In my preface to our panel's report, I wrote:

 "I share with many researchers a strong belief that much of the
 power of science (whether practiced by scientists, engineers, or
 clinical researchers) derives from the steadfast commitment to free
 and unfettered communication of information and knowledge. This
 principle has been part of the ethos of the global research
 community for centuries, and has served it and the rest of humanity
 well. If asked to distill one key insight from my service on this panel,
 I would respond with the assertion that information technology is of
 truly enormous importance to the research community, and hence to
 all humanity, precisely because it has the potential to enhance
 communication of information and knowledge within that community
 by orders of magnitude. We can now only dimly perceive what the
 consequences of that fact may be. That there is a revolution
 occurring in the creation and dissemination of information,
 knowledge, and ultimately, understanding is clear to me. It is also
 clear to me that it is critically important to maintain our commitment
 to free and unfettered communication as we explore the uses of
 information technology in the conduct of research."

 What I asserted there about research, I would assert now about
 education. If I am right, then by far the most profoundly important
 consequence of the creation of NREN will not be the expedition of
 research or the improvement of next year's balance of trade. It will
 be the fundamental democratization of all the world's knowledge.
 That means placing the accumulated intellectual wealth of centuries
 at the beck and call of every man, woman, and child. What that
 might mean can only be guessed, but let me reminisce for a moment.

 I grew up in a small town on the Great Plains. In that town was a
 Carnegie Library, one of hundreds Andrew Carnegie endowed across
 the nation. That modest building and the equally modest collection it
 housed opened the world to me. I have been grateful to the
 Pittsburgh steelmaker ever since. What if I had had direct personal
 access to the Library of Congress, the British Museum, the Louvre,
 and the Deutsches Museum, all in the course of a summer afternoon
 in North Dakota? Imagine!

 My point here is that there is an overriding public interest in NREN
 and in the rest of the provisions of S. 272, an interest that transcends
 research and its industrial applications, or issues of governance and
 the timetable for commercialization. We have an opportunity here
 for an American achievement of truly Jeffersonian proportions.  Let's
 not blow it!

 6.  Finally, I note with approval that S. 272 identifies the National
 Science Foundation as the lead agency for the development of NREN.
 The choice is wise, I think NSF has a demonstrated capacity to
 manage large complex technical operations. Unlike other S&T
 agencies, NSF's focus is not on some "mission," but on its "users," i.e.,
 its client science and engineering communities. And, perhaps most
 important, alone among federal agencies NSF bears responsibility for
 the support of research across the full spectrum of scientific and
 engineering disciplines, and for the training of those who perform
 the research, and for the general education in science and technology
 of everybody else.

 You will have gathered that I have considerable enthusiasm for S.
 272. I do!  I urge you and your colleagues to enact it into law.