IP: New DARPA BAAs

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

From: Thomas_A._Kalil () opd eop gov
X-Lotus-Fromdomain: EOP
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 15:37:02 -0500
Subject: New DARPA BAAs

IPers might be interested in the
new batch of 6 DARPA BAAs
(their version of request for proposals),
especially the one on "Expeditions
into the 21st Century."

See http://www.darpa.mil/ito

Kudos to Dr. David Tennenhouse and
his team at the DARPA Information Technology
Office -- I hope that the research
community will rise to the challenge!

Tom Kalil
The White House
kalil_t () a1 eop gov

Excerpt from BAA

The goal of the Expeditions into the 21st Century is to encourage
vigorous and revolutionary research in information technology. The
selected efforts will set out to invent the future of information
technology by exploring alternative visions and their impact on society.
It is expected that the ideas pursued by information technology
expedition teams will lead to unexpected results and nourish the
information infrastructure and industries of the future.

This BAA solicits proposals for radically new visions as to the future of
information technology that step outside of the present and anticipated
models both of the technology itself (hardware, software, HCI, etc.)
and of the domains and modes in which it is applied. There are a
number of precedents for the "expedition" approach. One of the most
famous examples is the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC),
where researchers created an experimental network of computers for
use by individuals. This effort pioneered many of the revolutionary
technologies that led to today's personal computers, including graphical
user interfaces, pointing devices, laser printing, distributed file
systems,
and WYSIWYG word processing. It is notable that this expedition was
rooted in an alternative vision as to how Information Technology could
be organized and used by individuals (i.e. distributed computing) -- as
opposed to simply increasing the raw capability of then dominant
mainframe computers.

The focus of an Expedition may be on either a discipline-based theme
such as bio-informatics, or on an infrastructure-based theme such as
ubiquitous computing. To establish a context, each Expedition should be
based on assumptions not true today, for example the world wide
availability of near infinite bandwidth. Each Expedition need not be
limited to a single such assumption, however, proposers should discuss
an approach to the exploration of their vision within the context of the
assumptions. Think big and bold.



_____________________________________________________________________
David Farber         
The Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems
University of Pennsylvania 
Home Page: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~farber