From: massaro@cats.ucsc.edu (Dominic W Massaro)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.elections
Subject: Might be of interest to internet users...
Date: 29 Jul 92 00:43:24 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: si.ucsc.edu


I thought that the following might be of some interest
- especially to those of us who make use of the internet...

======================================================================
=                                                                    = 
=   Dr. Michael M. Cohen                   mmcohen@dewi.ucsc.edu     = 
=   Program in Experimental Psychology     mmcohen@fuzzy.ucsc.edu    =
=   433 Clark Kerr Hall                    408-459-2655 LAB          = 
=   University of California - Santa Cruz  408-459-2700 MSGS         = 
=   Santa Cruz, CA 95064                   408-459-3519 FAX          = 
=                                                                    = 
======================================================================
=========================================================
scanned from...
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN September 1991 Page 150

=========================================
AL GORE was elected to the U.S. Sen-
ate in 1984, after serving eight years in
the House of Representatives as a con-
gressman from Tennessee. A 1969 grad-
uate of Harvard University, he also at-
tended Vanderbilt University Divinity
School and Vanderbilt Law School. Gore
is chairman of the subcommittee on Sci-
ence Technology and Space of the Com-
merce, Science and Transportation Com-
mittee. He also serves on Armed Servic-
es, Rules and Joint Economic committees.
Gore is the author of the High Perfor-
mance Computing Act of 1990, which
would create high-speed fiber-optic com-
puter networks, and has written legisla-
tion to encourage the development of
high-definition television.
=========================================

Infrastructure
for the Global Village

A high-capacity network will not be built
without government investment

by Al Gore

New technologies that enhance
the ability to create and under-
stand information have always
led to dramatic changes in civilization.
The printing press unleashed the forces
that led to the birth of the modern na-
tion state. It made possible the wide-
spread distribution of civic knowledge
that enabled the average citizen to af-
fect political decisions.

Now come distributed networks con-
necting a myriad of computers, ranging
from megaflop machines and work-
stations to desktop and personal lap-
top units. All are becoming less expen-
sive in each successive generation that
emerges. There is no longer any doubt
that such machines will reshape hu-
man civilization even more quickly and
more thoroughly than did the print-
ing press. Gutenberg's invention, which
so empowered Jefferson and his col-
leagues in their fight for democracy,
seems to pale before the rise of elec-
tronic communications and innova-
tions, from the telegraph to television,
to the microprocessor and the emer-
gence of a new computerized worldQ
an information age.

As in the past, original thinking is re-
quired to develop a system that will en-
able our civilization to make the most
sensible use of this potent technology.
There are valid concerns that computer
networks threaten the privacy and per-
sonal freedom of individuals. There are
equally valid worries that existing laws
do not adequately protect the rights
and liberties of computer users to ex-
press themselves in the new medium.

Even so, such concerns should notQ
and indeed, probably cannotQhalt the
sweeping changes that are already tak-
ing place. Just as information spewing
forth from the printing pre s was soon
protected in democratic states by a fair
and workable legal and ethical code, so,
too, a new body of common law is be-
ing built to cope with the new medium
of the computer network. Rather than
holding back, the U.S. should lead by
building the information infrastructure
essential if all Americans are to gain ac-
cess to this transforming technology.

The unique way in which the U.S.
deals with information has been the
real key to our success. Capitalism and
representative democracy rely on the
freedom of the individual, so these sys-
tems operate in a manner silIlilar to
the principle behind massively parallel
computers. These computers process
data not in one central unit but rather
in tiny, less powerful units distributed
throughout the computer.

Capitalism works on the same princi-
ple. People who are free to buy and sell
products or services according to their
individual calculations of the costs and
benefits of each choice process a rela-
tively litnited amount of information
but do it quickly. When millions of in-
dividuals process information simulta-
neously, the aggregate result is incredi-
bly accurate and efficient decisions.

Similarly, representative democra-
cy relies on the still revolutionary
assumption that the best way for
a nation to make political decisions is
for all its citizens to process the infor-
mation relevant to their lives and to ex-
press their conclusions in free speech
and in votes that are combined with
those of millions of others to guide the
-system as a whole. Communism, by
contrast, attempted to bring all the in-
formation to a large and powerful cen-
tral processor, which collapsed when it
was overwhelmed by ever more com-
plex information.

Computers are providing people all
over the U.S. with the ability to process
information and to use their creativity
to challenge the world around them in
ways never before imagined. More and
more, computers are replacing tele-
phones; more and more, computers are
able to communicate as well as calcu-
late. To realize the full benefit of the
information age, we need to take the
next step: high-speed networks must
be built that tie together millions of
computers, providing capabilities that
we cannot even imagine. Consider su-
percomputers. Although they are far
more valuable than their weaker pre-
decessors, they cannot be effectively
linked together over existing networks.

In laboratories across our country,
scientists and researchers armed with
powerful supercomputers are using
them to design more effective medi-
cines, safer aircraft and automobiles
and more efficient products. Scientists
studying the earth's environment can
produce complex climate models to
help understand global warming and
other critical atmospheric trends.

Suppose that we had a national "co-
laboratory" linking teams at different
geographic locations so that research-
ers could work together on projects in-
volving computational science. Suppose
that a scientist or an engineer design-
ing a product could immediately trans-
fer a design to the manufacturer, who
in turn could transfer it instantly to
computer-operated machines ready to
turn the idea into reality. The benefits,
both intellectual and economic, would
be phenomenal.

There have been advances in network-
ing technology. We have the technical
know-how to make networks that would
enable a child to come home from
school and, instead of playing Nintendo,
use something that looks like a video
game machine to plug into the Library
of Congress. It could be possible to gain
access to the most powerful supercom-
puters in our nation from every PC in
AmericaQand to gain access to digital
libraries, another key part of the nation-
al information infrastructure we need.

It used to be that a nation's trans-
portation infrastructure determined
success in international economic com-
petition. Nations with deep-water ports
did better than nations unable to ex-
ploit the technology of ocean trans-
portation. Canals, railroads, highways,
water and sewer systemsQthe list is a
long oneQwere infrastructure invest-
ments found, through experience, to
provide tremendous leverage for im-
proving a nation's competitiveness.

Today transportation is less impor-
tant compared with other factors, such
as the ability to move information and
to increase the value of this informa-
tion. At the same time, however, we are
confronted with massive and rapidk
multiplying quantities of information.
We are forced to deal with what I call
"exformation"Qaccumulated surpluses
of data that we know exist but are out-
side our conscious awareness.

Fields of specialization are becommg
narrower and narrower as the amount
of information continues to explode,
doubling every six months in some dis-
ciplines. In a sense, we have automated
the process of gathering information
without enhancing our ability to absorb
its meaning.

Our current national information pol-
icy resembles the worst aspects of our
old agricultural policy, which left grain
rotting m thousands of storage silos
while people were starving. We have
warehouses of unused mformation "rot-
ting," while critical questions are left
unanswered and critical problems are
left unsolved. For example, the Landsat
satellite is capable of taking a complete
photograph of the entire earth's surface
every two weeks. It has been operating
for nearly 20 years. Yet more than 95
percent of those images, which might
be invaluable to farmers, environmen-
tal scientists, geologists, educators, city
planners and busmesses, have never
been seen by human eyes.

Luckily, just as we confront this fan-
tastic problem of so-called exforma-
tion, all these silos filled with "rotting
data," we see the appearance of the su-
percomputer. These machines promise
the ability to configure or organize in-
formation into a form easy for us to
absorb. They can search through vast
fields of data to find those bits that
have special relevance at the moment.

But first we must build a way to use
it effectively. Typically, software de-
velopment follows hardware develop-
ment, and policy lags behind both. Yet
it is policy that can determine whether
we reap the benefits of this new tech-
nology. In too many cases, we have
mastered the technology but failed to
muster the political commitment and
the appropriate policies.

Federal policies can make a differ-
ence in several key areas of the com-
puter revolution. The U. S. Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA), the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, the National Sci-
ence Foundation and the Department
of Energy have all spent millions of
dollars developing the next generation
of supercomputers. It is safe to say
that without federal seed money, Cray
Research and otber American firms
would not now dominate the world
market for supercomputers.

The funds from those agencies have
also built today's research computer
networks, such as NSFNET, and under-
written the development of software
for top-of-the-line machines. Additional
federal research funding is also needed
to develop easy-to-use applications for
supercomputers and networks (espe-
cially in mdustry and medicine) and
to tram people in computational sci-
ence. The massive amounts of data in
our information silos, much of it in
electronic form, could be made avail-
able to researchers over networks. But
resources are needed to put the data in
a useful format and to catalogue and
distribute them.

Most important, we need a com-
mitment to build the high-
speed data highways. Their ab-
sence constitutes the largest single bar-
rier to realizing the potential of the
information age. Present policy, which
is based on copper-wire networks, is
hindermg deployment of the new fiber
technology. There is a policy gridlockQ
some say a "graphic jam"Qbecause the
interests that built and still run our ex-
isting infrastructure resist changes that
might intensify competition.

Other countries, including not only
advanced nations such as Japan and
Germany but also many countries in
the developing world that are just now
building a universal telephone system,
do not have this problem. If we do not
break the communications gridlock, our
foreign competitors could once again
reap the benefits of U.S. technology
while we remain mired in the past.

The most effective way to break the
stalemate would be to show the Ameri-
can people what fiber-optic networks
could offer them. Most Americans are
only vaguely familiar with even existing
networks, yet they rely on networks
every day. Everyone, from shoppers at
the checkout counter to consumers
making a withdrawal from an automat-
ed teller machine, is dealing with a com-
puter through a network.

Thousands of researchers now use
megabit-per-second networks to com-
municate with computers a continent
away. A few hundred people, exempli-
fied by Robert E. Kahn, president of
the Corporation for National Research
Initiatives, are building even faster,
gigabit networks to link supercomput-
ers, allowing two, three or more super-
computers to work together as one.

Slower networks that operate at 45
megabits a second or less, like NSFNET,
are being used by more than half a
million researchers, educators and stu-
dents at colleges, universities and fed-
eral and private laboratories to commu-
nicate with their colleagues, to access
data bases and to collect data from
remote instruments. Several high-tech
enterprises, such as IBM and AT&T Bell
Laboratories, also depend on such net-
works. Banks and other financial insti-
tutions, many factories and other busi-
nesses now rely on networks that oper-
ate in the range of 50,000 to 100,000
bits per second to exchange electronic
mail, financial transactions, stock quo-
tations and other types of information.

Services like Prodigy, GEnie and Com-
puServe are now in use in almost half a
million homes. Children can use "elec-
tronic encyclopedias" to finish their
term papers, and their parents can
keep up with the news, check bank
balances and get consumer tips. Hun-
dreds of schools are linked by low-
speed (1,200- or 2,400-bit-per-second)
networks, such as Kids' Net, that allow
students to exchange electronic mail.

Networks thousands or even mil-
lions of times faster would offer
greater benefits. Today a child
can go to a library and use a computer
to get the title of a book. A faster net-
work would bring the book to the child
at home, pictures and all. But how do
we get there? It is estimated that more
than $100 billion of private invest-
ment would be needed to connect op-
tical fiber to every home, office, facto-
ry, school, library and hospital. Unfor-
tunately, the onslaught of technology
is causing fierce competition between
once separate entities in telecommuni-
cations. The telephone companies want
to transmit entertainment; the cable
carriers are asking to get into the com-
munications business. And businesses
are turning to satellite communications
carriers or installing private fiber-optic
networks.

All are regulated by vague, outdated,
conflicting, constantly changing gov-
ernment telecommunications policies.
The result is that the private sector
hesitates to jump in and make the in-
vestment. We face the classic "chicken
and egg" dilemma. Because there is no
network, there is no apparent demand
for the network; because there is no
demand, there is no network.

Consider the interstate highway sys-
tem. It made sense for a postwar Amer-
ica with lots of new automobiles clog-
ging crooked, two-lane roads. But who
was going to pay for it? There was no
private business that could afford it
and no entrepreneur convinced it was
worth it. Similarly, the private sector
cannot afford to build the high-speed
computer network we need and may
not even be convinced of its value.

But, like the interstate highway sys-
tem, once this network is completed
the demand for its use will skyrocket.
We are already seeing private and pub-
lic concerns building feeder networks
that, just as state roads feed into the
interstate highways, could make the net-
work more effective. More than 2,000
separate networks make up the Inter-
net, the largest national research net-
work. The amount of traffic is growing
at the rate of 10 percent a month.

For almost 15 years, I have been
working to change federal policy so that
as a nation we will invest in the criti-
cal infrastructure of information super-
highways. I have fought for funding for
the Internet and its successor, the Na-
tional Research and Education Network
(NREN), which will be almost 100 times
faster. Its development costs, about
$390 million in federal funds over the
next five years, represent less than 1
percent of federal research and devel-
opment expenditures, yet this network
could greatly enhance the productivi-
ty and value of the other 99 percent
of the research and education dollars
we spend.

The national network represents a
demonstration project that should build
public support and influence public
policy. I see it as an electronic battering
ram to knock down obsolete policies
and outdated skepticism. Already the
national network as an idea is serv-
ing as a catalyst for action by schools
and universities, businesses and re-
search centers and even state and local
governments.

Adequate federal investment and
leadership will give us the power to
leverage the millions of dollars into
something greater than the sum of its
parts. Federal leadership is needed to
provide direction and coordination. Fed-
eral dollars represent an initial, rather
than an ongoing, investment, intended
to spark the development that will cre-
ate the demand for this network as a
commercial enterprise.

The "demonstration effect" of the
national network will rapidly develop
enormous demand for the new infor-
mation services its high capacity will
make possible. It will link the humdreds
of computer networks, operated by
state and local governments, nonprofit
and for-profit corporations, universi-
ties and others, to a federally funded
"backbone," capable of transmitting
billions of bits of data per second.

Without federal funding for this na-
tional network, we would end up with
- a balkanized system, consisting of doz-
ens of incompatible parts. The strength
of the national network is that it will
not be controlled or run by a single en-
tity. Hundreds of different players will
be able to connect their own networks
to this one.

The potential benefits of a high
speed network are so obvious and so
great that a strong, broad coalition has
formed in support. The research and
education community, the telecommu-
nications mdustry, the computer indus-
try and other high-tech industries are
all enthusiastic.

But although there is much agree-
ment on the need for the national net-
work, there is still controversy over the
next step, the creation of a commercial,
ubiquitous, fiber-optic system that can
reach into almost every American home.
Various sectors of the communications
industryQthe long-distance telephone
companies, the regional Bell operating
companies, the cable companiesQeach
want a central role.

It will be up to federal and state pol-
icymakers to determine how best to
build a universal, high-speed network,
to reconcile the competing corporate
interests and to create a network that
maximizes the benefits enjoyed by all
Americans. Given the pace at which
networking technology is changing, our
efforts will demand more than just vi-
sion, leadership and commitment. Flex-
ibility and a willingness to change the
details of the plan while constantly
moving forward will be required.

Building the national network will be
only the first step. That done, we could
focus on a telecommunications policy
that would resolve the telephone-cable
debate, decide what the Baby Bells can
and cannot do and confront the chal-
lenge presented by other telecommuni-
cations issues. We cannot afford to re-
main deadlocked. The alternative is to
wait until other nations show us how
to take advantage of this technologyQ
and they will. We must move first.

-- 
-- 

======================================================================
=                                                                    = 
=   Dr. Michael M. Cohen                   mmcohen@dewi.ucsc.edu     = 
=   Program in Experimental Psychology     mmcohen@fuzzy.ucsc.edu    =
=   433 Clark Kerr Hall                    408-459-2655 LAB          = 
=   University of California - Santa Cruz  408-459-2700 MSGS         = 
=   Santa Cruz, CA 95064                   408-459-3519 FAX          = 
Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle