Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence in the Age of Information

Over the span of a few years, computers have moved from large, air-conditioned rooms to our laps and our pockets. While in 1980 NSF-supported scientists and engineers had only limited access to the highest levels of computational power, today they employ desktop systems of comparable power and have access to a collection of supercomputing facilities with capabilities they could only dream about a decade ago. Over this same period, the number of host computers on what is now the Internet has leapt from about 200 to over 10 million in 1996 - a 50,000 fold increase.

This rise in both power and connectivity has changed the face of science and engineering, just as it has generated new opportunities for all Americans. The challenge today is to realize the full potential of these emerging technologies for research, for education, and for our economy and society. This era is often referred to as "the information age," but that heading does not do justice to the possibilities and opportunities emerging today. The coming age is perhaps best described as an era of "knowledge and distributed intelligence" - an era in which knowledge is available to anyone, located anywhere, at any time, and an era in which power, information, and control move away from centralized systems to the individual.

Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) is an ambitious Foundation-wide effort designed to take information, communications, computing and networking to a new level of technological, economic, educational, and societal impact. It has the potential to revolutionize not only U.S. science and engineering, but also the way in which all Americans learn, work, and interact. It draws on past advances made in networking, supercomputing, and learning and intelligent systems. In FY 1998, NSF plans a focused, multidisciplinary program of activities totaling almost $58 million in support of KDI research, infrastructure development, and education, which builds on a base of existing KDI-related projects of more than $355 million.

For FY 1998, the investments in KDI fall into two basic categories:

• Multidisciplinary Approaches to Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence. This NSF-wide activity will provide researchers and educators an opportunity to link diverse components of the KDI framework, so that advances in one area work to the benefit of all. This approximately $48 million effort will span such activities as knowledge-based networking, learning and intelligent systems, and new approaches to computational tools important to many disciplines.

• Next Generation Internet. NSF is a key participant in the President's 5-year program to move toward the Next Generation Internet. The Foundation's role builds on its current programs of networking, infrastructure development, and research. NSF's $10 million contribution will be devoted to enhancing Internet capabilities for research and education at colleges and universities as part of this multi-agency program.

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