But with the advent of the web, the marginal cost is essentially zero. Government will continue to charge the marginal cost, but the marginal cost is near zero. While we are here these two days, you will hear about path-breaking information systems from several stakeholders from DOE and others around the room. But text is just the beginning. Once text is conquered, there are domains of images, video, and audio.
Text is but the low-hanging fruit.
Additionally, the Infrastructure is envisioned to fulfill real-time communication needs of scientists as they are in the midst of the research process. Today Greg Wood will talk about the advances in communication to speed the sharing of knowledge. The Infrastructure would satisfy the expectations for access on demand. The goal of having such a comprehensive collection easily available has been expressed repeatedly for decades. It summarizes a few of the calls for a comprehensive collection of information in the physical sciences.