How high bandwidth will change access to science

Posted by Peter Suber on Open Access News

Richard Katz, The Future of Networking in Higher Education, Educause Review, July/August, 2005.

Excerpt:

The scale of computing, storage, and networking is changing profoundly. Two University of Houston engineering professors recently won a $1.1-million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a storage device using nanotechnology. This technology could allow the complete contents of the Library of Congress to fit on a handheld computer. Doug Van Houweling describes the era of data-intensive scholarship in terms of "disruptive applications," which by themselves can take much of any shared bandwidth that is available. Such applications include [1] real-time access by physicists to particle collisions at CERN, FermiLab, and elsewhere that require 6- to 7-gigabit throughput; [2] access to pathology tissue banks for telemedicine, requiring gigabit speeds per simultaneous user; and [3] access to data from distributed radio telescopes, microscopes, and other high-performance instruments.