<nettime> Gary Chapman: Consortium Sets Sights on a 'New Internet'

[Gary Chapman <gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu>]

	[via Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]


DIGITAL NATION

April 5, 2001

Consortium Sets Sights on a 'New Internet'

By Gary Chapman

Copyright 2001, The Los Angeles Times, All Rights Reserved

As the PC industry falters and attention shifts to new mobile computing
devices such as hand-held computers and Internet-enabled phones, a new
Southern California research consortium is setting up to ride the next
wave of the Internet economy.

The California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology,
abbreviated as Cal(IT)2 (http://www.calit2.net), launched last December,
has raised about $300 million for the next four years and has a very
ambitious agenda.

A "virtual collaboration" of UC San Diego in La Jolla, UC Irvine and
private-sector partners, Cal(IT)2 has its sights on developing a "new
Internet" built on high-speed wireless networks and computing devices. The
research program was jump-started late last year by a $100-million
contribution from the state when Gov. Gray Davis announced the new
venture. An additional $140 million came from industry partners, and $60
million came from individual donors and the two UC campuses.

Cal(IT)2 is directed by Larry Smarr, a founding director of the National
Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. During Smarr's stint in Illinois, several of today's
basic Internet technologies were developed there.  Smarr is now a
professor of computer science and engineering at UC San Diego.

His vision is for Cal(IT)2 to extend the Internet into its next phase,
beyond the PC and wired connections, and to build what he calls "the
Grid," a complex but seamless network of high-speed wireless nodes that
are cheap, prolific, always on and accessed through a variety of
technologies. These new devices will include not only palm-size computers
and telephones but sensors, processors embedded in physical objects, and
perhaps even microprocessors inside human beings -- doctors might
eventually be able to monitor cardiac patients all the time, wherever they
are, for example.

Cal(IT)2 will begin its work with projects such as wireless networks to
monitor the state's environment, artificial intelligence doing "data
mining" of immense databases, and research on intelligent transportation
systems, such as roadside sensors that collect data from passing vehicles
and report traffic patterns to computers in those vehicles.

Getting all the various technologies to work together reliably and
securely is a daunting challenge and beyond the capabilities of any single
company, Smarr says. That's the role of Cal(IT)2, he argues -- to
facilitate research and development in technologies five to 10 years ahead
of the current market.

Smarr and his colleagues, several of whom are veterans of fabled Bell
Labs, think the technology corridor between Irvine and San Diego is likely
to take off in the next decade, especially because of the Internet's
expected transition to wireless networks. Sorrento Valley just north of
downtown San Diego is already known as "Wireless Valley" because of the
presence of Qualcomm, Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and more than 400 other
telecommunications firms. Qualcomm was founded in 1985 by former
engineering professors from UC San Diego.

Of course, the sagging financial performance of these companies in recent
months -- most telecom companies are shedding thousands of jobs now --
suggests Cal(IT)2's mission is a gamble.

No one is sure that consumers or businesses will be willing to pay for
development of a new and as yet untested network of wireless devices and
services. Smarr says the economic slowdown has not affected Cal(IT)2's
prospects. "These companies can't afford to cut back on the one thing that
will bring them back to peak performance, which is R&D," he said.

Cal(IT)2 leaders are hoping they are building what's needed for the San
Diego-Irvine corridor to gain momentum with Silicon Valley in the decades
ahead. Smarr points out that the history of technology-led regional
economies is one of ascendance and then decline, and he and others think
there are signs that the halcyon days of the PC revolution are over for
Silicon Valley.

"I've seen this movie a number of times," Smarr said of the shifting
fortunes of technologies and regional economies. In his new movie,
however, the chips now being bet on for wireless and ubiquitous computing
will pay off big for Southern California.

Gary Chapman is director of The 21st Century Project at the University of
Texas at Austin. He can be reached at gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.





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