Re: NII and Reality

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: Sat, 14 May 1994 18:50:12 -0400
To: Mark Stahlman (via RadioMail) <stahlman () radiomail net>, hes () unity ncsu edu
From: tkalil () arpa mil (Thomas A. Kalil)
Subject: Re: NII and Reality
Cc: com-priv () psi com


At  2:34 PM 5/13/94 -0700, Mark Stahlman (via RadioMail) wrote:
rnia.
> I'm interested, moreover, in anything you might know about shifts in
> research funding as a result of the NII efforts.  I've been told that some
> outstanding NSF grants in medicine have been reclassified NII research.
> Has the "dual use" framework at ARPA been used to fund significant NII
> efforts beyond outstanding Internet projects?  Does anyone know about these
> matters?
>
> Mark Stahlman
> New Media Associates
> New York
> stahlman () radiomail net


There have been some shifts.  The major change in the High Performance
Computing and Communications Program is the addition of an additional
research thrust called Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications
(IITA).  The original four were high performance computing systems (e.g.
teraop systems), networking (Internet, gigabit testbeds), software and
algorithims for computationally-intensive Grand Challenges (e.g. predicting
the weather, computational fluid dynamics), and basic research.


The new research thrust (IITA) is concentrating on:


- Services that are necessary for a wide range of applications (e.g.
tools for information discovery and retrieval, resource reservation,
authentication, electronic remittance, etc).


- Technologies necessary to support National Challenges such as digital
libraries, health care, life-long learning, delivery of government services,
etc.


To get more information on these research programs, check out:


http://www.hpcc.gov


http://ftp.arpa.mil


(See in particular ARPA's recent solicitations).


Mark,


I disagree with you that the Clinton Administration is trying to "control"
the NII.


For example -- the major goal of the telecom legislation is to promote
competition in local telephony and video service by:


- Promoting unbundling and interconnection in the local loop; and


- Eliminating the cable-telco cross-ownership.


The eventual goal is to have an environment in which any company can offer
any service to any customer.  The transition will be difficult because
many players have substantial market power that they could use to engage
in anticompetitive behavior.


The Administration thinks that enlightened government policy can help
promote the evolution of the NII:


-  Fostering competition in telecommunications markets here and abroad;


-  Dissemination of government information


-  Using the NII to deliver government services and carry out agency
   missions (being a better user of this technology)


-  Sponsoring pilot projects and testbeds


-  Conducting R&D


The Administration has said over and over again that the private sector
will build, own, and operate the NII, and that the federal investments
in pilot projects, R&D, etc. will be a tiny fraction of the private sector
investment.


The notion that the Administration is trying to "control" the NII is absurd.


Look at how fast the technology is changing.  In 1976, a Cray 1 cost $20
million and delivered 160 MIPS.  In 1995, $500 set-top boxes are expected
to deliver 1 billion instructions per second.


However, I do think that government-funded R&D and other activities have helped
promote the infrastructure:


Consider:


Original research on packet-switched networks
ARPANET
ARPA's support for BSD Unix
ARPA sponsorship of Jim Clark's research at Stanford (which provided
some of core technologies for SGI)
NSF's support for NCSA and Mosaic
DOE's support for research on multicasting tools
NSF support for IETF
NSF and ARPA support for gigabit testbeds.  (Here: $20 million in gov't
money was leveraged with $400 million in in-kind private sector contributions)


****************************************************************************
Thomas Kalil                                      "The NII - just do it!"
tkalil () arpa mil
National Economic Council
The White House
Washington DC 20500
(p) 202-456-2801
(f) 202-456-2223


"Your taxpayer dollars at work."
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