The infrastructure for traditionally distinct technologies, including telephones, radio, television, fax, and computer networks, is undergoing dramatic change as it becomes increasingly more economical to provide all of these services with high speed digital networking technologies. Very high speed network connections to homes will be common within five years, and as ubiquitous as cable TV within the next ten.
Long term planning in this context is challenging. Without some foresight, in the next few years, UMBC may be faced with the prospect that the average home will have access to orders of magnitude more network bandwidth than the average UMBC faculty member.
A high-speed network is an increasingly essential component in many fields of research. Numerous forces are converging to bring this about. These include the obvious technological advances, but also the increasing trend for collaboration among physically separated research groups. In addition, modern scientific instrumentation can record immense amounts of data very quickly which are then shared with other researcher over the network. Probably all fields of science and engineering depend to some degree on large national databases that are accessed over the network.
The unprecedented growth of the Internet has made it an absolutely invaluable tool for almost any researcher in any field. Specialized databases, electronic mail, electronic journals, original material on current affairs, and a very wide range of conferences on every imaginable topic, are a small part of what is available. Software tools to access this information are currently provided by ACS, and both software and hardware support for Internet services will become an increasingly important part of the services provided by ACS. Easy graphical user interfaces to Internet tools are just now (March 1995) being made available to faculty at their home via modem connections.
UMBC is already slightly ``behind the curve'' in providing network access to all faculty members. Only recently have the vast majority of faculty members received high-speed network connections. We now need to make sure faculty can utilize these connections by providing the proper computers on their desktops, and the training to access services. Faculty also need training in how to provide services, data, papers, classnotes, etc. to colleagues, students on the network.
For some faculty, a simple text-based interface to the network/internet is sufficient. Others, depending on their research and teaching duties, will need fairly current computer hardware on their desks, or at home. This will require a plan to systematically upgrade computer hardware on the faculty desktop in accordance with their needs on a regular basis, something on the order of every 3 years, if there is a demonstrated need for the upgrade. While many researchers in science and engineering can afford desktop machines using research grants, others cannot. If every faculty member needed an up-to-date computer, a 3-4 year upgrade fund should only cost roughly $500 per faculty member. A small competitive internal grant program, modeled on the graduate school DRIF initiative, could provide more powerful and expensive machines/software for faculty who can make a strong case for additional resources. Most likely this program would probably be oriented more towards instruction than research.