This is a personal blog updated regularly by Professor Daniel Reed at the University of Utah.
These musing on the current and future state of technology, scientific research, innovation, and personal history, are my own and don’t necessarily represent the University of Utah's positions, strategies, or opinions.
If today's social media apps were wired to an old-fashioned audio VU meter, they would undoubtedly be pegged, deep in the red zone, the place where permanent hearing damage is imminent. (Insert obligatory image of an aging heavy metal rocker with hearing loss and artificial knees.) When coupled with the 24 hour news cycle, an amazing number of rumors, innuendos, retorts, memes, and yes, sometimes actual facts, buttressed by real evidence, echo and reverberate across the infosphere.
And in the "you can't make this stuff up" category, George Orwell'sNineteen Eighty-Four is now on Amazon's best seller list. One of my academic colleagues remarked wanly that he hoped it was selling as literature (doubleplusgood) and not as an instruction manual (doubleplusungood). I hope he is right.
The cacophony is enough to make one yearn for the good old days, when Uncle Walter and Huntley-Brinkley reported the news every night, and reputed Elvis and Bigfoot sightings were just supermarket tabloid fodder. D. B. Cooper and Mrs. Robinson, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. And for those of you too young to remember either Elvis or D. B. sightings, think of them as an inside joke we played on ourselves, and take a stroll down memory lane. (See Elvis, D.B., and the Red Caddy.) Thank you, thank you very much!
Broadband Communications
Now where was I, before my shrinking attention span was seized by another shiny object? Ah yes, I was about to opine that the declining signal to noise ratio haunting our public discourse is a deeply worrisome trend that endangers us all. Narrowcasting ideas to like-minded individuals simply reinforces predispositions and stereotypes. Broadband communication, with rich information content and diverse perspectives, requires – wait for it -- broad bands. (See Contemplative Reflection and Instantaneous Communication for other thoughts on this.) More generally, the purpose of new information is to make one think, even if in my case it leads to the sound of grinding gears and the unsavory smell of burning rubber.
Complex, wicked problems are, by definition, not amenable to simple, stereotypical solutions and 15 second sound bites, no matter what anyone may tell you. Nature has a way of punishing hubris. That brings me to the parable in this little essay.
Ultimately, the commission determined that the risks of catastrophic failure for each space shuttle mission were much higher than initially believed; the space shuttle was not a "space truck," as had been hyped and advertised, but a complex, delicate instrument. When coupled with management problems and "go fever," mission failure and loss of life were inevitable.
The commission, as these things always do, included several notables in aerospace, engineering and management; one of them was the Nobel Prize winning Caltech physicist, Richard Feynman. Dick drove home the O-ring failure in his own, inimitable way. First, he placed a piece of the O-ring in a glass of ice water; then he waited. After the O-ring had chilled, he pulled it from the water and showed that it had lost flexibility, which would create a porous seal for the hot gases of the SRB. (Watch him explain it here.) In a classic understatement, he said this might have "some significance" for the problem.
Dick later observed, "Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." I have never forgotten this message, and the Rogers Commission report still sits on my bookshelf as a reminder.
It's a simple, but powerful lesson – the facts do matter, and no obfuscation or doublespeak can change that. This is especially true in science and engineering. In the end, there is no spin; there is no truthiness; and there are no alternative facts. There are just the facts, something Joe Friday understood. Nature is pretty particular about that.
It's been said many times. The accelerating pace of change is challenging extant social structures, economic mobility in the United States is declining, and many millennials may never experience the economic success of their parents. Globalization and automation are increasing manufacturing efficiency and output while requiring fewer workers with different skills. We face continuing global population growth and demographic shifts; sectarian forces are creating a global diaspora; environmental sustainability and climate change are existential threats; health care costs continue climbing while accessibility recedes; and social justice and equality remain elusive. Unsurprisingly, people are deeply worried about their future and that of their families, regardless of political persuasion. In turn, this stress has stirred the cauldron of political rhetoric, while reasoned debate, political compromise, and purposeful, strategic action have become ever more difficult.
As states continue to grapple with revenue shortfalls and mandatory spending commitments, others are publicly questioning the value of higher education as an essential public good. Meanwhile, the great recession has accelerated the decline in state funding for public universities, limiting their ability to respond, and forcing rises in tuition to help offset declining state support. Given these challenges, how do we in academe address the wicked problems now facing our global village?
Public University Roles and the Social Compact
By analogy with William Jevons' four functions of money, let me suggest that we in research universities have three functions, each of which matters in equal measure. First, we create new knowledge; that is the essence of research and scholarship, the defining attribute of a research university, one that distinguishes it from institutions focused solely on teaching. Second, we transmit knowledge and skills to a new generation; we educate and inform, not just with long-known facts but also with fresh insights from recent scholarship. Finally, we engage society with our knowledge and expertise; at our best, we address societal issues and challenges with new found capability that enlightens, empowers and improves the lives of others.
Though basic research, by definition, often lacks immediate or obvious applications, when we fail to communicate and demonstrate the importance of research via clear and telling examples of past success or future possibility, we abrogate our support. (That indispensable smartphone rests on decades of basic research in physics and computer science.) When we fail to connect education to the needs and opportunities of our citizens, we lose our relevance. (Those pharmacists, nurses, dentists and medical doctors trained by universities serve our communities.) Most dangerously, when we fail to engage society in times of need, we sacrifice our place of honor and respect. (Our partnerships on flood management and our support for business startups help ensure the well-being and economic success of our communities.)
And the Horse You Rode in On
Polls show that professors still rank far ahead of used car salespeople and members of Congress in both respect and trust, but we have slipped a few notches in the public's eye. Sometimes, our language and mien often give credence to those who believe academics are the very embodiment of the Ben Franklin adage, "He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on."
When we take umbrage (a fine academic phrase, but one not commonly heard on any street non-adjacent to a university) at public questions and criticism, denigrating it as uninformed pique, we often confirm Franklin's caricature of one possessing knowledge but lacking wisdom. We must be willing to reflect on the reasons for criticism, engage in thoughtful discussion with our critics, and respond appropriately. As that old Scot, Rabbie Burns put it,
O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion: What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, An' ev'n devotion!
Collaborative Partnership: The Future
As academics, we must engage our stakeholders and partners in their context and address their legitimate problems and concerns, and we must do so honestly, humbly and thoughtfully. In so doing, we will help them and also help ourselves, educating one another. Solution to complex, wicked problems requires many insights, diverse perspectives, new ideas, and determined commitment. We in academia do not have all the answers, but we do have knowledge, skills and insights that are of value.
We begin by knowing ourselves, as Alexander Pope's timeless opening couplet from his Essay on Man suggests:
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan The proper study of mankind is Man
We abandon academic hubris and a sense of entitlement. We talk less and listen more. We roll up our sleeves, get our hands dirty, and engage society. When we do, the true conversation begins.
Now excuse me, while I go mount my bovine steed, er horse, and head into town.
Andy Warhol's aphorism on everyone experiencing fifteen minutes of fame, though presciently characterizing an accelerating world, was a perspective from a more languid and less peripatetic time. If you doubt this, look no further than a twitterstorm, when a tweet by or about a pop star or athlete triggers a viral response, first across social media and then the mainstream media; strum und drang rage, while nuance and perspective are lost.
As the means and methods of electronic communication exponentially expand, identifying and separating the factual, useful, and insightful from the erroneous, extraneous, and hyperbolic becomes ever more difficult. Alas, this is the human version of the Shannon-Hartley theorem, with the signal (news) often lost in the noise. I too am often guilty, tweeting, and retweeting memes and headlines with inadequate thought, contributing to the detritus of reasoned communication.
Individual thoughtfulness and perspective are the burden and responsibility afforded by ubiquitous, instantaneous communication. As we disintermediate communication and information sharing, we each must become thoughtful editors, deciding for ourselves what is newsworthy and shareable.
In the heat of the moment, with mounting pressure to respond to still unfolding events, it is tempting to offer hasty and ill-informed opinions. Commentators pontificate, sound bites are replayed, and social media storm, while memes ricochet through the global infosphere in an echoing cacophony. In such a cauldron, emotions rise, strong opinions form, and judgments are rendered, often in minutes or hours.
To Ponder and Understand
Few issues, even ones of principle, can be assessed and evaluated so quickly, nor are they so simple as to be reduced to a 140 character précis, no matter how wise or insightful the writer. Most topics, and certainly the important ones, warrant informed exploration, careful consultation, and thoughtful reflection. This takes time – days or weeks– and occasionally months or years. Indeed, the very act of preparing a response, whether a speech or an essay, forces one to contemplate and consider history, context, and multiple, sometimes discordant perspectives. Such is the nature of informed assessment and discourse.
Difficult though it is to believe, there was a time when the adiabatic compression of communication cycles and hyperkinetic velocity of information quarks did not seem like Brownian motion, induced by the heat of mutual interaction. Debates and perspectives could evolve over months and years, shaped by extended information gathering, rather than in minutes and days, driven by a ravenous demand for instant outcomes.
The Power of Informed Oratory
Long-form oratory once defined public debate, and in the hands of a skilled and informed speaker, it still can. Daniel Webster'sSecond Reply to Hayne transformed this country from an uncertain federation of states into a strong union. His ringing cry – union and liberty, now and forever, one and inseparable – became the defining statement on the limits of states' rights, rivaling in some ways that of the Federalist Papers. Such was the influence of Webster that in Steven Vincent Benét's fanciful telling, Dan'l bested the devil himself.
Nor can one ever read or listen to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's stirring I Have a Dream oration, with its haunting line, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," and not be moved by both the power and the content of the message. The speech defined an image of justice and equality that we still seek to realize, as recent events have reminded us.
Each spoke from prepared notes, but also felt free to expound extemporaneously. Both drew on a lifetime of study and experience, and from that preparation came rhyme and meter, cadence and timing, imbued with eloquence and power, grandeur and simplicity.
As perhaps the greatest orators of their respective centuries, the seminal speeches of both men warrant careful study. Robert Caro'sLyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate recounts Webster's oration and its immediate and long-term impacts on the country. Dr. King's speech, and the circumstances surrounding it, are powerful reminders of the inequality and injustice we have not yet addressed.
Final Reflections
I am a strong believer in the democratizing power of electronic media. Broader access has given a global voice to many who were heretofore disenfranchised and silenced. When egregious statements or acts warrant an immediate and unqualified condemnation, unfettered and uncensored communication is a powerful force for justice. As many have rightly noted, evil triumphs when the good fail to raise their voices.
Yet there is also a crucial place for long form oratory, as both Senator Webster and Dr. King showed us. Their voices and their messages echo across the ages. I cannot imagine any of our quarks of de minimis, instantaneous interaction – sound bites, tweets, texts, emoticons -- doing that.
The newspapers and airwaves are currently filled with talk of "network neutrality." Technically, it is about traffic – email, web queries, voice and video – and its possible prioritization on the Internet. Should Internet service providers and governments treat all data equally, or can they give preference to some content, sites, applications, users or devices based on defined criteria?
If you believe the pundits, network neutrality is about truth, justice and the unfettered right to watch YouTube videos. In reality, the network neutrality debate is a power and economic struggle between Internet service providers (i.e., mostly cable systems, telephone companies and wireless carriers) and those who provide content and services (e.g., movie and video services, search engines, social networks, web site hosts, email service providers and Internet businesses). Mediated by the U.S. government, the outcome of this battle has profound implications for all of us who consume content and use the Internet for work, recreation and social interaction. It will determine how much we pay for bandwidth, what services are available and how good they are.
To understand the net neutrality power struggle, it's instructive to consider an analogy with roads and traffic. Imagine a world where almost all roads were built, owned and operated by companies, rather than state and local governments. To recoup their construction costs and a profit, the companies charge tolls on all cars and trucks using the roads. To further complicate things, many of those road companies also operate their own fleets of cars and trucks, competing with their customers to deliver some goods and services.
The question is whether the road owners and operators can give priority to certain cars or trucks – their own or those of others -- based on how much the owners are willing to pay, the size of the fleets, and where the traffic goes. Superficially, the answer would seem to be obvious – yes, they should – until you realize that the goods and services on which individuals, businesses and governments all depend are being delivered by those cars and trucks. This conundrum is the balance of private enterprise and the public good.
One need look no further than the history of water companies, electric utilities, radio and television, and telephone companies to see the creative tension between regulation for the common good and stimulating free enterprise and supporting innovation. Many of us remember when the old AT&T (Ma Bell) was a regulated monopoly, with telephone rates and services subject to state and federal approval. The 1982 breakup of AT&T into a long distance company and a set of regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) led to an explosion of wired and wireless services, competition from Sprint and MCI, and much lower long distance rates.
However, those old telephone regulations also supported the public good, ensuring that inexpensive telephone service was available everywhere, whether one lived in an isolated, rural area or a large city. Why? Because the regulations included cross-subsidies to support rural service. For all the excitement about high-speed Internet access, it is not universally available because the revenue in rural areas does not cover the costs of service. (Think about the toll road analogy again. Private sector toll roads are only economically attractive where there is high traffic.)
This brings us back to the network neutrality debate. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is proposing to treat the Internet, both wired and wireless, as a telecommunications service, using the same legal authority it uses to regulate other telecommunications services – radio, television, and telephony. Under the proposed rules, Internet broadband would be treated as a "common carrier," meaning the network must be open for all without discrimination. In addition, the FCC has proposed to refrain (forbear) from enforcing those regulatory provisions not relevant to modern broadband services. Nor would the proposal regulate rates or mandate service.
The political and economic battle is raging over how much regulation would be applied and how those regulations would affect the players. Some argue that any regulation will stifle innovation and private sector investment, and bring us a step closer to big brother rate regulation and tariffs – in the spirit of Ma Bell oversight.
I think that is highly unlikely, as the Internet is filled with competing services and companies. Rather, the network neutrality debate is about balancing innovation, private enterprise and the public good, while ensuring fairness and equal access. Simply put, it is a debate about appropriate checks and balances for a critical service. It should not be a political issue.
Internet access was once a luxury, but no longer. In a 21st century knowledge economy, high-speed Internet services are the roads, waterways and rail lines of trade and commerce. They are the successors to telegraphy and telephony, coupling individuals and families across time and space. They are society's essential services, especially in a state like Iowa, where we are deeply dependent on communication for our future.
We need policies that enable universal access, while also ensuring Internet service providers have the flexibility and freedom to innovate and the economic returns to make that attractive. We also need mechanisms and technologies that support both top down and bottom up network deployment, allowing new market entrants and existing companies to expand coverage.
Remember, network neutrality is not just about streaming high definition movies to your television or mobile device, or buying goods and services via an e-commerce site. It's also about broadband access for education, electronic consultation with a medical specialist to avoid a repeat visit to the hospital during a winter storm, small businesses marketing products globally, and precision agriculture that lets Iowa farmers maximize crop yields. In short, network neutrality is complicated, but it matters to all of us.
Warning: This is a long post, reflecting the complexity and nuance of Internet governance.
Just before the 2012 holidays, the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), pronounced as “wicket” by the cognoscenti, concluded in Dubai. In the buildup to the WCIT, there was much handwaving and fearmongering, political position jockeying, and backroom negotiations by multinational companies, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), technology policy wonks and political pundits. There were frequent stories in the trade and policy rags and the mainstream press, including the New York Times. How, you might ask, could such a seemingly obscure conference engender such an international frenzy?
In the spirit of full disclosure, I should reveal that I spent a good portion of the last three years working on this issue, while heading Microsoft's Technology Policy Group. I traveled the world, meeting telecommunications policy leaders, trade associations, companies and senior representatives of international governments, including ones from the United States Departments of State, Commerce and Federal Communications Commission (FCC). With that disclosure, as well as noting that what follows are my personal opinions, a bit of background and history is in order.
Telecommunications History
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which is a United Nations organization, organizes the WCIT. The ITU began as the International Telegraph Union, which suggests some its origins and history. Originally responsible for coordinating global use of the radio spectrum and, more recently, assisting in international assignment of satellite orbits, the ITU now operates under three units, the ITU-R (radiocommunications), ITU-T (standardization) and ITU-D (development).
As a UN organization, the ITU's members are countries, rather than individuals, companies or NGOs. Despite the one country, one vote governance model, there is multistakeholder participation in some informal aspects of the ITU. I was a frequent visitor to the ITU, and I participated in ITU retreats and CTO roundtables. I know the ITU leadership well.
Because major ITU policies and approaches, including tariffs, are codified as international treaties – the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) – policy changes are fraught with all the complexities that accompanies any international treaty. Indeed, before the 2012 WCIT, the ITRs were last updated in 1988. The languid pace of treaty change is but one of many challenges posed by the ITRs. It has also brought into question the relevance of the ITU and its policies and approaches. The country voting model and UN culture do not match the freewheeling Internet world.
Internet Time
Looking back twenty four years to the previous WCIT takes one almost to prehistory in Internet time. The TCP/IP protocols were in place, but international networking was largely a research or private network curiosity and dialup modems defined the consumer network experience. The World Wide Web was still a gleam in the eye of Tim Berners-Lee; the Mosaic web browser had not burst on the scene; the dot.com frenzy was yet to come; mobile phones were rare, expensive and bulky; and plummeting international telephony charges due to IP-based audio and video calling were still over the horizon. In short, the telecommunications world of 2012-2013 is radically different from the staid landscape of 1988.
The technological and economic changes wrought by the Internet in those fourteen years are equaled by the social and cultural changes. Geographically and politically separated regions are now digitally interconnected in ways unthinkable just a few years ago. The global flow of information has challenged governments, companies, NGOs and individuals to adapt legal frameworks, regulations, technical operations, social expectations and national security operations. (See Globally Connected, Globally Worriedand Information Privacy: Changing Norms and Expectationsfor a bit of perspective.)
Multifaceted Internet Governance
One can parse Internet governance challenges in several ways: technical, legal and economic, social and ethical and national security. Let's begin with the technical issues, which are perhaps the simplest. Operating the global Internet effectively requires de facto adherence to an evolving set of technical standards. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) manages the domain name system (DNS) and IP address blocks on behalf of the international community.
Although not without controversy, ICANN and its sister organization, the Internet Society'sInternet Engineering Task Force (IETF), have generally been effective in creating a multistakeholder governance model for Internet operations. However, the tizzy over generic top-level domain names (gTLDs) and intellectual property protection has heightened government desires to control ICANN.
Shifting to economics, companies, countries, NGOs and privacy advocates all worry about the transnational flow of data, differing laws and intellectual property protections, jurisdictional constraints and safe harbors. If you are a Kenyan national working for a German company with operations in Brazil, and you travel to India, just whose laws govern you and your company? The answer is murky, but generally all of the above, plus some others.
Nevertheless, Internet service operators must respond to civil and criminal legal requests for data every day. For those subject to multiple legal jurisdictions, it is sometimes impossible to satisfy the laws of countries involved. For those interested and suffering from insomnia, I highly recommend reading the Bank of Nova Scotia case (United States v. Bank of Nova Scotia, 740 F.2d 817 (11th Circuit, 1984).
Mixed with all of these legal and economic issues are elements of international trade, protectionism and economic development. The rise of cloud computing, whose economics have driven massive scale and data consolidation, has exacerbated these concerns about extraterritorial jurisdiction and control worldwide, particularly when U.S. companies dominate cloud computing and many fear the U.S. PATRIOT Act.
Then there are the crucial issues of human rights and free speech. How does one reconcile global communication, which brings differing international norms and expectations for freedom of speech into direct and day-to-day conflict? It is more than an abstract question for millions of Internet users, and one with no simple answers.
One can debate the ethics, human rights records and legitimacy of certain governments, but the sovereignty of nations and their right to establish laws within their territory is an unquestioned aspect of international law. I have seen senior representatives of governments with widely divergent views on freedom of expression all agree that their governments have a critical role to play in Internet governance. Those same representatives differed markedly in their delineation of appropriate governmental roles, their definitions of free speech and its appropriate limitations.
Finally, there are issues of national security, information security and cyberwarfare that are beyond the scope of this essay. In a knowledge economy, information is advantage, and economic or technical disruption via the Internet itself can be a form of low-grade warfare. Likewise, with military capabilities themselves increasingly dependent on smart, network-connected weapons, they are themselves objects of defense and attack.
Back to the WCIT
This interplay of technology, international law, economics and trade, social norms and human rights, and national security is a witch's brew of complexity, with diverse stakeholders and perspectives. Many of them encamped in Dubai at last December's WCIT.
Thus, it is not surprising there was acrimony and controversy, with claims and counterclaims; one could hardly expect otherwise. Central to these debates were concerns, some say unfounded, though others disagree vehemently, that the U.N., via the ITU, might assume greater control of Internet governance, shifting from the multistakeholder model toward greater centralization and government control.Some of this was also tied up in the ITU’s own search for new relevance.
What emerged from two weeks of painful negotiations was what can best be described as an uneasy peace. After much debate, 89 of 152 countries signed an amended version of the ITRs. The U.S., Japan, Canada, Germany, India, and the U.K. were not among the signatories, objecting to attempts to curtail multistakeholder governance. In short, it was an ugly mess.
Futures
What's next? The global community is strongly divided along ideological lines. Thus, we are likely to see even greater dichotomy in government intervention, more uncertainty in international law, and limits on global information flow. Despite this, I believe the Internet will continue to grow and evolve organically. Too many stakeholders want that to happen, and their voices must be heard.
Thus, I am a strong proponent of the multistakeholder model. I do recognize, though, that governments have an important role to play, just as they do in other domains. This is a messy process, and it will undoubtedly continue that way. Such is the nature of debate.
This year, I again have the honor and privilege to chair the selection committee for the Seymour Cray and Sidney Fernbach awards. I will also be hosting the presentation ceremony at SC12 in Salt Lake City for these two awards, along with the Ken Kennedy award. (My former colleague at the University of Illinois, Professor David Padua, chaired the Kennedy award selection committee.)
These eponymously named awards recognize truly outstanding contributions to high-performance computing, in honor of three leaders of our field. The Seymour Cray award recognizes individuals whose innovative contributions to high performance computing systems best exemplify the creative spirit demonstrated by Seymour Cray. In turn, the Sidney Fernbach award is given to foroutstanding contribution in the application of high-performance computers using innovative approaches. Finally, the Ken Kennedy award recognizes outstanding contributions to programmability or productivity in high-performance computing, together with significant community service or mentoring contributions.
I am delighted that the 2012 Seymour Cray Award will be presented to Peter Kogge, who is currently a professor at the University of Notre Dame. Early in his career, Peter developed parallel algorithms for recurrence solutions and parallel prefix operations, resulting in what is now known as the Kogge-Stone adder, the gold standard for fast addition. While at IBM, he also developed a series of HPC systems for military and space applications, including some that were key elements of the U.S. space shuttle. For many people, that would define a career. However, Peter has also been a pioneer in multicore and multithreaded processor design; he was also one of the creators of what we now call "Processor in Memory" (PIM) computing. Today, he is a leader in exascale initiatives.
I am equally pleased that Professors Laxmikant "Sanjay" Kale and Klaus Schulten, developers of the NAMD biomolecular simulation software, are joint recipients of the 2012 Sidney Fernbach Award. Their collaboration combines the best of computer science and computational science. Utilizing Kale's insights in fine grained parallelism and load balancing, embodied in the CHARM++ library, and Schulten's insights into biophysics, NAMD transformed high-speed molecular dynamics simulations, allowing the motions of large biological systems to be simulated for longer periods of biological time than were previously feasible.
The third of these awards, the Ken Kennedy award, recognizes Professor Mary Lou Soffa for "contributions to compiler technology and software engineering, exemplary service to the profession, and lifelong dedication to mentoring and improving diversity in computing." As the award citation notes, her work spans optimizing compilers and software engineering. Among her many contributions are key insights into quantifying the value of code optimizations within a coherent framework and on register optimization. In addition to seminal contributions to compiler technology, Professor Soffa has also been instrumental in mentoring women in computing and raising awareness of the need for our culture to be more inclusive and supportive.
My thanks to Satoshi Matsuoka for the photographs of the plenary program award presentations.
Over the past year, I have been ruminating the seismic shifts rocking public higher education in the United States. The compact between our society and its public research universities is being renegotiated in ways that are as deep as anything seen in the past forty years. State support continues to decline, accelerated by the economic downturn. In turn, a public backlash is building against rising tuition. There is an increasing need for lifelong learning and skills refresh, and new technologies are challenging historical modes of content delivery.
There are also new expectations for research discoveries to stimulate innovation, coupled with often-unrealistic hopes for short-term economic payoffs from basic research. Amidst all of this, globalization and rapid technology shifts are forcing us to address complex societal issues in new ways. Finally, the nature of scientific discovery itself is in flux, with high-performance computing and big data reshaping research in the physical, biological and social sciences, and even in the arts and humanities.
Late last year I decided it was time to return to academia, taking what I have learned at Microsoft back to the university and laboratory world to help address these challenges. Since that time, I have been working quietly to ensure a smooth transition within Microsoft and working with the leadership of several universities and institutions to define the roles I would take on this fall.
Reflecting on Change
Our personal and professional lives are defined by a series of inflection points – graduation, marriage, career choices – shaped by shifting technology and societal norms. Each of us also faces the age-old question. How and where can each of us most make a difference in addressing the big issues and the complex problems surrounding them? How do we build on our experiences while also challenging ourselves to learn new things?
Before I came to Microsoft in late 2007, for me it was nearly twenty-five years of academic roles at the University of Illinois and the University of North Carolina, first as a computer science professor, then department head, supercomputing center director (NCSA), founder of a multidisciplinary research center (RENCI), and finally as a vice-chancellor. Where and how could I best build on that experience, plus insights gained at Microsoft? Was it technology or policy centric, or some combination of both?
Iowa: Research and Education
After weighing several university offers, spanning big data, HPC and policy, I am delighted to be returning to the Midwest. In October, I will be joining the University of Iowa as Vice President for Research and Economic Development and holder of Iowa's inaugural University Computational Science and Bioinformatics Chair, with joint appointments in Computer Science, Electrical and Computing Engineering and Medicine. For details on this, see the University of Iowa announcement.
Many things attracted me to Iowa. First, it is one of this country's great public universities, spanning, as all great universities do, the arts and humanities, science and engineering and associated professional schools. The university is also home to the famed Iowa Writers Workshop, something the aspiring writer in me prizes greatly. It also has a large and highly ranked health care system and a great medical school. (More on that research opportunity in a bit.)
Finally, the University of Iowa is anchored in the Big Ten, where I spent most of my academic career (Illinois) and time in graduate school (Purdue). Yes, it is football season in the U.S., but the Big Ten is more than an athletic conference. The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), which consists of the Big Ten schools plus the University of Chicago, is a collaborative vehicle for shaping national higher education policy and helping define the future on research issues ranging from institutional data repositories to intellectual property management.
In addition to my role in the university leadership team, as my new title suggests, I will also be delving into computational science and big data, helping the campus address research opportunities and health care futures. It is no secret that the rising cost of health care in the United States, coupled with an aging population and the not yet fully realized potential of personalized medicine, are both challenges and major opportunities. In that spirit, I am delighted that the chair of the University of Washington Department of Anesthesiology, Dr. Debra Schwinn, is joining Iowa as the new Dean of the Carver School of Medicine. I am looking forward to working with her and the rest of the campus.
Whether identifying predictive patterns from clinical records (e.g., predictors of hospital readmission), correlating and extracting insights from massive amounts of new bioinformatics data, or leveraging new sensors and devices for disease and lifestyle monitoring, large-scale data analysis and machine learning are crucial. Likewise, multidisciplinary computational models of biological processes with predictive power are now realizable. Simply put, these are big data and technical computing problems par excellence.
Finally, I will also be keeping my hand in high-performance computing and national policy. I will be spending time in Washington, DC, as a consultant, focusing on issues related to big data and exascale computing.
For me, all of this is very exciting. It is a new adventure and an opportunity to help define higher education in the 21st century. As Theodore Roosevelt said, it is an opportunity to "dare mighty things," working together.
Finally, Thanks to Microsoft
I want to express my deep thanks to Craig Mundie, Rick Rashid and a host of friends at Microsoft for a great five years. When I first joined Microsoft Research, it was to work on new technical approaches to cloud computing hardware, software and applications, drawing on ideas from technical computing. Seeing the scale and scope of truly large-scale infrastructure, far larger than our research high-performance computing systems, was amazing. That eXtreme Computing Group (XCG) activity later morphed into an equally exciting technology policy agenda that has spanned topics as diverse as the application of clouds to scientific and engineering research through telecommunications to Internet governance and digital privacy.
My time at Microsoft has been a truly wonderful experience, working on important problems with talented and passionate people. I have made new friends, built new relationships and learned an incredible amount.
Last week, I had the privilege to participate in the B20 meetings in Los Cabos, a prelude to the G20 economic summit. For those of you who do not know, the B20 is a meeting of international CEOs who gather to discuss economic issues and provide suggestions to the G20 leaders. I was there representing Microsoft and substituting for Steve Ballmer.
The B20 meeting opened with a plenary presentation by the Mexican President, Felipe Calderón, who was also chair of this year's G20 meeting. The President gave a rousing speech advocating free trade and the economic benefits. This was followed by a rather sobering panel conversation with Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, Bob Zoellick, head of the World Bank, and Angel Gurria, secretary general of the OECD.
Not surprisingly, the Eurozone crisis and the then ongoing Greek elections dominated conversation. The frustration and near despair was palpable, with Gurria noting that fiscal union without effective governance was the root of the problem. I found myself thinking that this as an old story. After all, the U.S. fought a civil war to resolve, among other issues, the relative power of states and the Federal government. In any case, there were repeated pleas for strong and consistent action the resolve the financial crisis permanently, but limited faith that would happen.
The spirit of the conversation was captured succinctly in an exchange with a B20 delegate from Africa, who rose to ask why the conversation was dominated by European concerns. It was a quite reasonable and appropriate question at a global economic panel. Each of the panelists smiled wryly and said, in their own words, "In this context, no mention is good news."
My takeaway is that the global economic situation is not going to get better any time soon. The Chinese economy is clearly slowing, the Eurozone crisis seems endless, and the U.S. situation is tenuous at best.
ICT Recommendations
As I mentioned at the outset, I co-chaired the B20 ICT and Innovation task force. The core recommendations focused on broadband access and digital inclusion, with four main pillars, and they were presented in a panel discussion, with comments from the Chilean President, Sebastián Piñera.
Enabling Broadband for All.
This recommendation is an extension of the work I have been doing on spectrum and telecommunications policy, including white spaces. The economic and political circumstances in each country and region are different, with different regulatory regimes and wired and wireless incumbents. However, the economic data are clear and unmistakable. When broadband – at affordable rates – is available to a substantial fraction of the population, net economic growth is higher. The details of the recommendation are in the report, but the focus is on removing regional and national regulatory restrictions, stimulating competition, supporting new business models, and making devices available to stimulate deployment and access.
Developing Content and Applications for the Public Good.
Those of us in developed countries, and particularly English-speaking ones, tend to forget that access to local content and software, in one's native tongue, is more limited in other parts of the world. Local content and services, including government data and transparency, can increase citizen participation in government, increase political transparency and stimulate economic growth.
Ensuring Cybersecurity for All.
These recommendations centered on uptake of best practices globally and public-private partnerships to ensure security access to services.
Promoting Innovation in ICT.
These were the standard, oft-repeated pleas for appropriate support for innovation and risk tasking.
Personal Reflections
Over the past six months, have I had several opportunities to have small group conversations with President Calderón. I have been impressed by his sincerity and commitment to collaboration and open government. It will be interesting to see what happens to Mexican policies after the Mexican President elections in a few months.
As one would expect, there was intense security around the leaders. From this event, my earlier participation in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APAC) meeting and visits to the White House, I have come to realize that security details for senior government officials all look very similar. There are dark suits, the subtle but clear bulges of weapons, and the constantly searching gazes.
Finally, the gala events provided an opportunity mingle and discuss politics, economics and policy with a diverse and interesting group. There are not many places where one can first discuss social inclusion with a Peruvian cabinet minister, then join a dinner conversation with the South African ambassador and two CEOs. In addition, of course, there are the obligatory photographs of me in a guayabera.
Today, in Cambridge, UK, we celebrated the ten months of experiences and successes from the Cambridge white spaces trial, which was organized by a consortium of companies, including Microsoft. The event brought together telecom regulators from around the world, hardware, software and content providers and interested parties to discuss the potential and the reality of dynamic spectrum management. The "white spaces" – the unused channels in the TV bands at each location – can be used for wireless communication as long as there is no interference with the primary (television broadcast) usage.
This white spaces spectrum is particularly valuable due to its signal propagation characteristics. Sometimes called "Super Wi-Fi," it can provide broad wireless coverage with relatively few access points, for rural areas that are often digitally disenfranchised, for machine-to-machine communication that can enable smart grids, smart cities and intelligent transportation systems, and for mobile data traffic offload in urban areas.
White spaces use has been approved by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and approval by the U.K. regulator (Ofcom) is near. Other regional and national bodies are also moving forward. In this spirit, today, we also announced formation of a new consortium to launch a new trial in Singapore. Details on all of this can be found on the Microsoft on the Issues blog, where I wrote about Broadband White Spaces – Ready to Go Global. For more details and news coverage, type the words, "white spaces" and "Cambridge" into your favorite search engine.
In hindsight, it seems obvious that elevating the profile of computing and networking and coordinating activities across the research arms of the Federal government was a great idea. It was far less obvious at the time, as former Vice-President Al Gore reminded us during an anecdote-filled lunchtime reminiscence. There were several hearings over multiple years, with many doubters.
Yet only two years later, the Mosaic web browser was born at NCSA at the University of Illinois, helping birth the Internet revolution and the original dot.com boom. Some of you may not know that Mosaic was intended as a collaboration tool, itself the successor to another NCSA collaboration tool called Collage. Anyone see a naming pattern there? It was all about bringing people together who were otherwise separated by time and space.
At the time of Mosaic's release, NCSA was an anchor site of the NSFNet, the nascent backbone of the Internet we know today. Given the popularity of Mosaic and the fact that NCSA's web site was Mosaic's default home page, the NCSA site, hosted by NCSA HTTPd, was the world's busiest. (Bob McGrath, Thomas Kwan and I wrote an early paper on web traffic analysis, and Will Scullin, Steve Lamm and I developed some real-time traffic visualization tools for the CAVE.)
It was also a time when Illinois undergraduates were asking me if a $250K signing bonus was too small, and the startup mantra was "get big fast," focusing on number of page clicks and customers. Eventually the old economics – the one based on profits – demanded its due, and the crazier startup ideas died. For the record, selling dog food (a low cost, high weight item for shipment) on the Internet may not have been the best business plan, though a few succeeded. More rational business models emerged, today it is hard to imagine the world without e-commerce.
Looking Forward
As the NITRD celebration, I was reflecting on all of this, as well as digesting the technical content of the presentations, which spanned topics as diverse as computational science, the economic impact of computing and the rise of big data. It was in this context that I posed a question to the final panel, a question grounded in the ever-rising importance of information technology and innovation to global economic competitiveness: What national research strategy should we pursue in light of the coordination now present in other parts of the world?
The question was really about whether the HPCC initiative, with all of its economic, scientific and cultural benefits, was a singular event or something replicable in today's political environment. It was a bit of a rhetorical question, but one that seemed appropriate to frame the celebration's context. The unflappable and always thoughtful Chuck Vest gamely responded with some thoughtful observations on the importance of educational investment for the future.
Burnham and Sandburg
Former Vice-President Gore didn't invent the Internet, but fully deserves all the fulsome praise he has received for raising the issues and helping creating the conditions that let it grow and flourish. Musing on this and the NITRD discussion, I found myself thinking about another Illinois story, one that captures the tumultuous change of another century and the singular contributions of another individual.
It's the story of Daniel Burnham and the birth of modern Chicago. Daniel Burnham didn't invent Chicago, but he might as well have, for it bears his indelible stamp. He one of the driving forces behind the 1892 Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the Americas. The Columbian Exposition and the "White City" was Chicago's coming of age party, elevating Chicago in stature as one of the world's great cities. Mind you, this was a mere twenty years after the Great Chicago Fire, which had destroyed much of the city.
One element of the story has Burnham standing on the shore of Lake Michigan on a cold, winter day, pointing into the distance and describing the buildings and the city that would rise from the windy desolation. A visiting architect turns to Burnham and asks, "How can this be?" To which Burnham is reputed to have replied, "It is already decided." And so it was.
The anecdote is probably apocryphal, but the vision and the outcome were decidedly not. As Burnham himself wrote,
Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.
It's the emotion Carl Sandburg also captured in his Chicago poem about Chicago as the tool maker, stacker of wheat and player with railroads, the city of big shoulders. It was the spirit of a city and a young nation, confident and excited about the future. It's the same spirit we all felt in 1991 at the beginning of the HPCC program and then in the web revolution.
No Little Plans
As we look to the future, I believe Burnham was right. It's time to make big plans, defining a truly compelling research and education strategy for the 21st century knowledge economy, one that inspires and compels us all to action. We need not be riven by doubts and troubled by today's financial research malaise. There is another way, one that rebuilds our research institutions, empowers our citizens and creates new opportunities for all. Amazing and transformational things are within reach.
How can this be? The lessons of NITRD and Burnham's Chicago point the way, working together.
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