Information Technology Research: Transforming Our Future

Dr. Ruzena Bajcsy

Assistant Director

Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate

National Science Foundation

**Abstract.** The Information Age is transforming our economy and our
lives. In its pathbreaking 1999 report to President Clinton, the
Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) outlined
the ten crucial ways that new technologies are transforming society in
the U.S. It is clear that the Federal government will need to provide
the critical R&D investments that will help retain and bolster the U.S.
technological lead in the 21^st^ century. These investments will also
support efforts to make new technologies and their benefits available to
all U.S. citizens.

# 

# Introduction {#introduction .INTRODUCTION}

The Technology Revolution. The Information Age. The New Economy. We are
living in exciting times today, and no one is quite sure how to describe
them. What is certain however is that rapid advances in computing,
information, and computation technologies, particularly over the last
two decades, are transforming our world rapidly in ways that are often
difficult to comprehend. Like the discovery of fire, the invention of
movable type, and the harnessing of electricity, these transformations
will profoundly influence how we live our lives in the future---but
their effects can be maddeningly unpredictable.

In the U.S., many of these transforming technologies, including the
Internet itself, grew out of basic research supported by U.S. Government
agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). But in recent years, Federal
investments in crucial high performance computing and communications
research has not kept up with rapid developments in these technologies.
To address this problem, the Clinton Administration established, in
February 1997, a bipartisan Presidential Information Technology Advisory
Committee (PITAC), comprised of technology leaders from business and
academia, to advise the U.S. Government how to bolster its sagging
investments in critical Information Technology Research and Development
(IT R&D).

# the pitac report

In its pathbreaking 1999 report to the President, *Information
Technology Research: Investing in Our Future* \[1\], the PITAC outlined
ten important ways in which technology is transforming modern society.
It also issued a series of forward-looking recommendations designed to
support the research community and ensure that the benefits of
technological education and innovation would be made available to all
citizens. In addition, it underlined the continued importance of
Government investments in the research and development of leading-edge
technologies that might take decades to achieve fruition---precisely the
kind of long-term R&D that increasing numbers of private sector
businesses, driven by the incessant demands of the competitive global
economy, no longer find it economically feasible to support.

## The Ten Transformations

In the opinion of the PITAC, the ten National Challenge-level
transformations that must be addressed in the 21^st^ century are:

### Transforming The Way We Communicate

By now it is abundantly clear that the Internet is the heart of the
national and international communications revolution. But the current
Internet is already bursting at its technological seams. We must learn
to expand, to scale the Internet to anticipate future growth and an
ever-increasing hunger for bandwidth. In addition, communications must
be simplified and networks must be made more robust. From top scientists
to novices who've just purchased their first PC, the Internet experience
is far more complicated, far less simple than operating a television,
and these reliability and usability problems must be addressed.

Global networking also poses interesting challenges. How do we respect
national boundaries and sovereignty? How do we best take advantage of
the Internet for sharing information globally? These are questions for
which there is no simple answer and no simple solution. But to discover
these answers and solutions, we must invest in basic research
immediately and continuously.

### Transforming the Way We Deal with Information

While the Internet itself is transforming society, the effect of the
information it carries may ultimately prove to be even more profound.
But the vast treasure trove of information that is now seemingly at our
fingertips is often difficult to access and search. How can we improve
our interface with this information? Are CRTs and keyboards adequate to
the task, or do we need to change the way we think about accessing
information? Future information access may be derived from today's
experimental multi-modal human computer interaction technologies. In
addition to the traditional keyboard, access to information by means of
speech, touch, gesture recognition and synthesis will eventually provide
equal access to novices and experts, regardless of their physical
condition or global location.

Information overload is also a serious problem. Sometimes the problem
for a researcher is not discovering where the information is located,
but sorting through the huge amount of information that is uncovered.
Today's information systems require dramatic improvements in data access
methods. Current research issues include network reliability and
bandwidth, scalable software support, database structure and retrieval
algorithms, robust and secure access, and the maintenance of quality
audio and video under heavy network loads. Additional issues, not
necessarily involving high end science, but important nonetheless,
include copyrights, intellectual property, and business issues.

### Transforming The Way We Learn

Education is not keeping pace with today's rapid advances in technology.
We must dramatically improve the information infrastructure to transform
the way in which the average student or citizen learns. To accomplish
this, we must first improve software technologies to enable fast, easy
development of new educational materials for the 21^st^ century, and
support simplified modification and maintenance of these materials by
educators. We must also determine rationally what educational needs can
be fulfilled by computing and communications technologies, and what
needs can be fulfilled by traditional methods. The ultimate goal is to
help all citizens learn and use new technologies effectively in personal
and professional lives.

### Transforming The Practice Of Health Care

Federal agencies are already working on the problems of a national
infrastructure for electronic medical records and health system
intranets for data sharing. Chief among the problems to be solved are
the issues of privacy and security, and the management of knowledge
repositories. Telemedicine is another promising area of research, but we
need to solve complex technical problems in order to make telemedicine
work for patients *and* physicians. New research is also needed in
remote visualization and robotics that will enable expert techniques and
skills to be carried simply and reliably to remote or underprivileged
areas of the country. But for telemedicine and remote surgery to become
a reality, we will need to increase the reliability and stability of
today's capricious communications networks. High-reliability,
low-latency communications are needed to support sophisticated
applications such as telepresence surgery.

### Transforming The Nature Of Commerce

The Internet has already changed how business is transacted. It is now
clear that leading-edge technologies can get companies closer to
customers and reduce paperwork, purchasing costs, and delivery time. But
once again, privacy and security are critical topics. International
trade relations will become more important in this area.

### Transforming The Nature Of Work

It has been estimated that as many as 15 million U.S. workers will
become telecommuters over the next decade. This will enhance
productivity, and provide organizational flexibility and environmental
benefits. To continue transforming the nature of work, high speed
networking capacity will be needed, collaborative software technologies
will be critical, and privacy and security of communications will once
again be crucial. But this transformation involves human factors
problems as well. The social and economic implications of workforce and
workplace transformation must be studied, and the worker skill base
needs to be significantly and continuously bolstered. Lifelong learning
will become paramount so that no worker will fear that technology will
make him or her obsolete.

### Transforming How We Design And Build Things

New technologies can and are increasing productivity, reducing cost of
goods sold, improving product quality, longevity, and reliability.
Networked computers can allow simultaneous modification of standard
products to meet specific customer needs. Leading edge technologies are
also helping companies maintain maximum flexibility and reduce design
cycle time. But new high-end technologies are needed for concept design,
simulation, analysis, and data mining. There is also a need for
improvements in planning and scheduling, purchasing, investment, and
cost analysis.

### Transforming How We Conduct Research

Research problems are becoming more complex and interdisciplinary in
nature. Increasingly, high speed computers and networks are enabling
discoveries across a broad spectrum of disciplines, and, as a result,
innovative methods for collaboration around the globe are being created
and promoted. Key technologies in this area include high-end computing
for modeling complex physical phenomena; advances in collaborative
environments; visualization of complex datasets; innovative data-mining
techniques; and management of very large datasets and databases.

### Transforming Our Understanding Of The Environment

We must support a substantial increase in research in climate modeling
to improve the accuracy of local and regional forecasting; disaster
management; and support for national and international energy and
environmental policies. Progress in this area depends on improved
computational methods requiring order of magnitude increases in
computing capability to deal with immense problems of time and space. In
addition, researchers will need to design improved numerical methods and
algorithms and sophisticated new tools for data storage, management,
analysis and visualization, as well as improving software development
and testing techniques, and advanced networks for distributed computing.

### Transforming Government

We must insure that Federal, state, and local government institutions
become more efficient and responsive to all citizens through improved
information technologies. Challenges in this area include improvements
in systems and data access methods; high performance data storage; and
tools to locate and present information. Once again, to accomplish this,
robust, reliable, and secure networks are critical. Improvements must be
available to *all* citizens, and barriers to access must be surmounted.

# Priorities for Federally Supported Research:

Priorities for Federally-supported research to address these
transformations comprise software, including a close examination of
software R&D methods; fundamental research in component technologies;
R&D in information capture, management, analysis, and availability; and
human and computer interfaces and interactions. To accomplish these
aims, the Government will need to make software research a substantive
component of every major IT research initiative

In the area of high-end computing, the Government will support R&D in
innovative computing technologies and architectures and software for
improving high-end performance. Federally supported researchers will
also aim to achieve sustained petaops/petaflops performance on real
applications via software and hardware. The Government will support this
continued science and engineering research via continued acquisitions of
high-end systems.

The Government will also focus on crucial networking issues with an
emphasis on Scalable Information Infrastructure. Researchers will
attempt to more fully understand the behavior of the global-scale
network, including collecting and analyzing performance data and
modeling and simulating network behavior. Other topics will include the
physics of the network, with an emphasis on optical and wireless
technologies and bandwidth; R&D on scaling the Internet and creating
middleware to enable large-scale systems; and work on large-scale
applications and the scalable network services they require. Select
Government agencies will also create testbeds to support these efforts.

The Federal government will also address the socioeconomic impact of the
Information Age on average citizens who may, at times, feel as if new
technologies are passing them by and making their skills obsolete in the
world of tomorrow. Government/university/industry partnerships will
strive to increase information technology literacy, access, and research
capabilities; expand participation of women and minorities in IT
careers; and remove barriers to high-bandwidth connectivity for all
citizens. Federal technology investments will also aim to accelerate and
expand IT education efforts from K-adult, including the vital topic of
lifelong learning, thus strengthening the use of IT in education itself.

# Conclusion

Industry cannot, by its nature, fund long-term research due to
shorter-range goals and pressures of running a profitable business in a
highly competitive world economy. But it is abundantly clear that if the
private sector trend away from long-term, fundamental scientific R&D
continues, the flow of innovative ideas that formed the underpinning for
the economic miracle of the 1980s and 1990s will soon cease---or at the
very least, will slow to a trickle. Under such circumstances, it will be
difficult for the U.S. to maintain its technological leadership.

Fortunately, the Federal government is moving to increase funding in the
crucial science areas that form the underpinnings of these ten dramatic
transformations cited by the PITAC. In their view, the Government's
role, ultimately, is to retain and expand U.S. leadership in long-term
fundamental IT R&D. The societal gains from this kind of investment are
enormous. If we move ahead on the PITAC's vision of the future, our
international competitiveness will remain secure; educational levels
will be profoundly and dramatically improved for all citizens; and
societal problems and dislocations can be addressed, allowing the U.S.
to make dramatic advances in the new century---and allow those advances
to be shared by all.

# References

1\. The Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee,
*Information Technology Research: Investing in Our Future,* Washington,
DC, 1999.