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IP: Comments on Federal Support of Information Technology Research
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 21:11:47 -0500
This is a handout given to the Vice President during a meeting of representatives from the PITAC and senior industrial people with VP Gore. I was amassed at the insight that the Vice President had into the technology and its implications. Would be nice to have a future President with such a perspective . Dave Comments on Federal Support of Information Technology Research (Meeting with Vice President Al Gore and Presidential Science Advisor Neal Lane, 11/30/98) Prepared by Edward D. Lazowska from the PITAC Interim Report -------- Information technology is transforming all aspects of our lives: commerce, education, employment, health care, manufacturing, government, national security, communications, entertainment, science, and engineering. Information technology also is driving our economy - both directly (the IT sector itself) and indirectly (all other sectors that are "powered" by advances in IT). Thus, leadership in information technology is essential to the nation, economically and socially. Past returns on federal investments in information technology research have been extraordinary. The National Research Council's "Brooks/Sutherland Report," Evolving the Nation's High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative to Support the Nation's Information Infrastructure, documents the essential role played by federally-sponsored research in fields such as computer graphics, database systems, computer networking, artificial intelligence, computer architecture, user interfaces, and VLSI design. Current federal investment has not kept pace with the importance of the field. The annual federal investment in fundamental research in information technology is between $500M and $1B, depending on what you count. No matter what denominator you choose - economic and social importance, contribution to the GDP, annual federal IT procurement expenditures, levels of investment in other fields - this is way too small. Companies don't invest significantly for the long term - nor can they, nor should they. The vast majority of corporate R&D has always been focused on engineering: on identifying highly promising ideas and creating great products from them. This is what shareholders demand. Microsoft has established a world-class IT research organization in the past 7 years, but of Microsoft's $3B R&D budget, only about $100M - 3% - supports Microsoft Research, and much of the work in Microsoft Research is not truly "fundamental." Most leading IT companies invest far less. When companies create products using ideas and people from federally-sponsored research, they pay back the nation handsomely: in jobs, taxes, productivity increases, and world leadership. Government, industry, and academia are engaged in a true partnership. As remarkable as progress in information technology has been, the best is yet to come - if we invest adequately. The power of information technology as a human enabler is just beginning to be realized. -------- The power of information technology is its role as a human enabler - transforming all that we do. Information technology is far more than "just" the key enabling technology for all of science and engineering. Information technology is transforming all aspects of our lives: commerce, education, employment, health care, manufacturing, government, national security, communications, and entertainment. Even science and engineering need far more from information technology than just high-end computing. Examples include datamining, the web, algorithms for computational astrophysics, and the deep intellectual partnerships that characterize the confluence of biology and computation ("the genome is just bits"). And high-end computing is far more than just hardware: it is algorithms, software, visualization, computer architecture, and more. Thus, it is a mistake to equate IT research with high-end computing, or with the enabling of science and engineering. To do the former will under-value (and under-support) many aspects of IT beyond high-end computing that are crucial to the transformation of science and engineering. To do the latter will under-value (and under-support) many aspects of IT that can bring about revolutionary and transformational changes in other fields. Across the board, tomorrow's "killer applications" will be ones that we cannot even envision today. They will be totally new applications made possible by extraordinary advances at the core of the information technology field. More than looking beyond science and engineering, we must look beyond extrapolations of today's applications - beyond the needs that we can currently envision. Only in this way, will the potential of information technology for revolutionary and transformational change be realized. A wise research investment strategy will balance support for the needs of today's applications and their extrapolations, with support for the core of the information technology field. Thus, the PITAC Interim Report recommends a significant increase in fundamental research at the "core" of the information technology field. That's the only way that the revolutionary and transformational potential of information technology will be realized. For the health of the nation, support for fundamental research at the core of the information technology field must be dramatically increased. Today's investment strategy is not balanced: it badly under-supports fundamental research at the core of the field. -------- lazowska () cs washington edu http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/
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