IP: Comments on Federal Support of Information Technology Research

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

This is a handout given to the Vice President during a meeting of representatives from the PITAC and senior industrial people with  VP Gore. I was amassed at the insight that the Vice President had into the technology and its implications. Would be nice to have a future President with such a perspective .

Dave

Comments on Federal Support of Information Technology Research

(Meeting with Vice President Al Gore and Presidential Science Advisor Neal 
Lane, 11/30/98)

Prepared by Edward D. Lazowska from the PITAC Interim Report

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Information technology is transforming all aspects of our lives: commerce, 
education, employment, health care, manufacturing, government, national 
security, communications, entertainment, science, and engineering.

Information technology also is driving our economy - both directly (the IT 
sector itself) and indirectly (all other sectors that are "powered" by 
advances in IT).

Thus, leadership in information technology is essential to the nation, 
economically and socially.

Past returns on federal investments in information technology research have 
been extraordinary. The National Research Council's "Brooks/Sutherland 
Report," Evolving the Nation's High Performance Computing and Communications 
Initiative to Support the Nation's Information Infrastructure, documents the 
essential role played by federally-sponsored research in fields such as 
computer graphics, database systems, computer networking, artificial 
intelligence, computer architecture, user interfaces, and VLSI design.

Current federal investment has not kept pace with the importance of the 
field. The annual federal investment in fundamental research in information 
technology is between $500M and $1B, depending on what you count. No matter 
what denominator you choose - economic and social importance, contribution 
to the GDP, annual federal IT procurement expenditures, levels of investment 
in other fields - this is way too small.

Companies don't invest significantly for the long term - nor can they, nor 
should they. The vast majority of corporate R&D has always been focused on 
engineering: on identifying highly promising ideas and creating great 
products from them. This is what shareholders demand. Microsoft has 
established a world-class IT research organization in the past 7 years, but 
of Microsoft's $3B R&D budget, only about $100M - 3% - supports Microsoft 
Research, and much of the work in Microsoft Research is not truly 
"fundamental." Most leading IT companies invest far less. When companies 
create products using ideas and people from federally-sponsored research, 
they pay back the nation handsomely: in jobs, taxes, productivity increases, 
and world leadership. Government, industry, and academia are engaged in a 
true partnership.

As remarkable as progress in information technology has been, the best is 
yet to come - if we invest adequately. The power of information technology 
as a human enabler is just beginning to be realized.

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The power of information technology is its role as a human enabler - 
transforming all that we do. Information technology is far more than "just" 
the key enabling technology for all of science and engineering. Information 
technology is transforming all aspects of our lives: commerce, education, 
employment, health care, manufacturing, government, national security, 
communications, and entertainment.

Even science and engineering need far more from information technology than 
just high-end computing. Examples include datamining, the web, algorithms 
for computational astrophysics, and the deep intellectual partnerships that 
characterize the confluence of biology and computation ("the genome is just 
bits"). And high-end computing is far more than just hardware: it is 
algorithms, software, visualization, computer architecture, and more.

Thus, it is a mistake to equate IT research with high-end computing, or with 
the enabling of science and engineering. To do the former will under-value 
(and under-support) many aspects of IT beyond high-end computing that are 
crucial to the transformation of science and engineering. To do the latter 
will under-value (and under-support) many aspects of IT that can bring about 
revolutionary and transformational changes in other fields.

Across the board, tomorrow's "killer applications" will be ones that we 
cannot even envision today. They will be totally new applications made 
possible by extraordinary advances at the core of the information technology 
field. More than looking beyond science and engineering, we must look beyond 
extrapolations of today's applications - beyond the needs that we can 
currently envision. Only in this way, will the potential of information 
technology for revolutionary and transformational change be realized. A wise 
research investment strategy will balance support for the needs of today's 
applications and their extrapolations, with support for the core of the 
information technology field.

Thus, the PITAC Interim Report recommends a significant increase in 
fundamental research at the "core" of the information technology field. 
That's the only way that the revolutionary and transformational potential of 
information technology will be realized. For the health of the nation, 
support for fundamental research at the core of the information technology 
field must be dramatically increased. Today's investment strategy is not 
balanced: it badly under-supports fundamental research at the core of the 
field.

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lazowska@cs.washington.edu
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/