adrion@SH.CS.NET (01/28/88)
I am on the NAS/COSEPUP Panel on Information Technology and the Conduct of Science. We are preparing our final report. One of the key recommendations will be for an expanded and stable internet. We really need some anecdotes on how networks have enabled scientific research. We need examples of how new research or breakthroughs are directly attributable to networks. There are numbers of examples to support our other recommendations, such as the isolation of cold viruses using supercomputers, how computer graphics have helped to discover minimal surfaces and aid in the design of new molecules and organisms, how special purpose architectures have aided in the real-time analysis of data, etc. We need similar examples for computer networks, even if they involve only mundane uses such as EMail. Any anecdotes will be gratefully accepted. Thanks in advance. Rick Adrion
stevens%antares@ANL-MCS.ARPA (01/29/88)
One Network story comes to mind here at Argonne. We have used the internet to demonstrate long haul distributed computing by running one large parallel program which used a set of parallel processors here in Chicago and a set of parallel processors at Los Alamos. This program was computing the solution to one problem by coordinating the work across the net. The actual problem was nothing impressive but it did prove the concept of using resources over the internet. --Rick Stevens Manager of Advanced Computing Research Facility Mathematics and Computer Science Argonne National Laboratory
ddc@LCS.MIT.EDU (02/02/88)
Rick,
In fact, I think E-mail is a great story. What seems mundane to
us is a great leap forward to the rest of the world. A spoecific
example just a few months ago: I am on a security working group
considering the problem of integrity in data processing systems. This
group has both military and commercial security people. When we
started to plan the followup to a workshop, we found ourselves in two
groups: those that could exchange netmail, and those who could not.
The military folks, by and large, had interconnected mail addresses,
and they started proposing actions and schedules that seemed silly to
those with telephone and postal services. At the end, some of the
commercial security folks asked how they could get netmail, as it
seemed essential if they were to keep up with the others.
Of course, the first netmail story is the building of the network
itself. The builders of the network were its forst users (as is only
fair; they get both the benefit and the pain). It is cldear to me, as
a member of that group, that the group effort necessary to build the
Internet simply could not have succeeded without netmail.
Another local example is the Clinical Decision Making group at
the Laboratory for Computer Science. They are concerned with computer
support for doctors. They work with computer professionals and, more
to the point, with doctors. The doctors are not at MIT, but at various
medical schools in Boston and elsewhere. Those folks make heavy use of
networks, and in fact caused some of the local med schools to get
attached to the MIT net. Theu use the net for mail, but also for
remote execution of programs, for exchange of data, and for
distributed program interaction. They assert (I just asked them) that
network technology is critical to the way theyu do their work, and
that the patterns of working with remote colleagues would not be
nearly as effective without nets.
There is nothing special about these stories; they a similar to
many others. But they are local, and real.
Dave Clarkdm@BFLY-VAX.BBN.COM (02/02/88)
``The development of COMMON LISP would most probably not have been
possible without the electronic message system provided by the
ARPANET. Design decisions were made on several hundred distinct
points, for the most part by consensus, and by simple majority ote
when necessary. Except for two one-day face-to-face meetings, all
of the language design and discussion was done through the ARPANET
message system, which permitted effortless dissemination of
messages to dozens of people, and several interchanges per day.
The message system also provided automatic archiving of the entire
discussion, which has proved invaluable in preparation of this
reference manual. Over the course of thirty months, approximately
3000 messages were sent (an averabe of three per day), ranging in
length from one line to twenty pages... It would have been
substantially more difficult to have conducted this discussion by
any other means, and would have required much more time.''
Guy Steele, ``COMMON LISP: the language'' (Digital
Press, 1984). pp xi-xii.ddc@LCS.MIT.EDU (02/02/88)
"All we know is the phenomenon: we spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information. This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with our lives." Lewis Thomas, "The Lives of a Cell"
LYNCH@A.ISI.EDU (Dan Lynch) (02/02/88)
Rick, I have to add in a story about the benefits of e-mail. A few years ago I was talking to a random seatmate on the Washington-to-San Francisco milk run and got around to asking her what she did. She was a geologist. She was on a post doc at Stanford. I asked how the field was progressing from her perspective. She said that the field was making dramatic advances in the past few years because so many geologists were using this new thing called electronic mail all over the world and they were using it to find out what others already knew! They used the mechanisms of e-mail to raise the level of common knowledge on the leading edge of the field. No one wants to spend years doing research in some part that has already been worked over and the usual method of writing/reading journals was too slow. I find that dramatic. And I find that they were mostly using the Arpanet without "full permission" to be a sad commentary on those of us who know how valuable this all is to humanity, because we have not found a way to fund the intellectual interconnection of all researchers in a straight forward manner yet. So, please thke this kind of "evidence" and build te case. Thanks, Dan -------
nomad@mist.cs.orst.edu (Lee Vincent Damon) (02/05/88)
Here's one. Someone was looking for anecdotes on how the I-net was
used, so they posted a message to a group called comp.protocols.tcp-ip
asking for them. With in days they had 5 very good responces (6?).
I know of lots of cases like that. Mailing lists and news, while they
could all be UseNet/UUCPed, are helped tremendously by the I-net, and they
in turn help speed the flow of information. Comp. Sci. at Oregon State
(CS.ORST.EDU) would be very much hampered w/o them, that is for sure.
nomad
---------------------
Lee Damon Internet: nomad@cs.orst.edu
nomad UUCP : {hp-pcd,tektronix}!orstcs!nomad
FidoNet: 152/201 (The Castle) - (503) 757-8841
Alt. UUCP: ...!orstcs!castle!nomad (A FidoNet gateway)
aliases: hostmaster, hpsysop, support, root
"Say what you like, the bicycle has a great past ahead of it!"