CENIC News

I always find it interesting to consider the many new and creative ways that the Internet is being put to use in today's world and compare the uses to various predictions made years earlier.  For example, many will remember that when PCs were first becoming available and considered for home use, they were touted for their ability to store and maintain recipes.

Now, I'm sure there are those who use their PCs to maintain recipes, but certainly unforeseen by PC manufacturers, not to mention just about everyone else, was how thoroughly these devices would change the landscape of modern society through being interconnected with one another. One lone PC might be a recipe storage box. Thousands or millions sharing information and connecting their users in an always-on world has revolutionized content creation, collaboration, and daily life thanks to the Internet.

However, one fundamental component of society has remained relatively uninfluenced by broadband networking, despite many confident predictions: government. In an article by Bill St. Arnaud, Senior Director of Advanced Networks for CANARIE Inc., titled Government 2.0: The Next Generation of Democracy, I was reminded of another prediction, not yet fully realized.  For years, experts predicted that a driving force for broadband usage would be the provision of government services, from the ability to pay property and income taxes on line to renewing driver's licenses, auto registrations, and such.  Though slow in coming (for example, the state of California until relatively recently charged more to reregister a vehicle online than in person), certainly none of our lives have been changed significantly thanks to government use of the Internet.

It may be illuminating to consider the ways in which Internet-based collaboration might be used to provide or reshape government services. St. Arnaud posits three possibilities, made far more powerful by broadband networking: competitive governments, direct control of tax allocation, and what he calls "neighborhood" or "personalized" democracy. The second possibility rests on the hope that greater communication will create greater transparency in government, but the first and third rest on a more exciting foundation: the fact that the Internet, empowered further with broadband, redefines the entire notion of boundaries of all kinds. And what human invention depends more for its self-definition upon boundaries than governments?

Central to many technology-based revolutions is the unstated assumption by contemporary thinkers that they will simply empower faster or more efficient ways to do what is already being done. What usually happens however, is quite different and much harder to predict: truly watershed technologies create completely new ways of doing things and completely new things to do. The Industrial Revolution did not replace the carriage's living horses with mechanical ones nor did it mechanize ice delivery to people's homes; it obviated carriages and iceboxes entirely and thus created modern society, shaped largely by the innovations that replaced them.

Obviating the boundaries between people is what broadband networking is all about -- breaking down barriers that separate researchers, educators, and people in general from one another. Yet, these barriers often define governments and their spheres of operation. This makes it extremely difficult to predict the ways in which governments can use broadband networking and may go far to explain why the promised predictions of yesterday about government and the Internet have not yet come to pass.

However, unpredictability is not the same as impossibility. The Internet hasn't failed to revolutionize government; it has simply failed to do so in the time and manner we imagined it would. Twenty, or even ten, years ago, people would never have imagined that they would take for granted such things as instant access to enormously detailed global geographical information at any time and place, and yet thanks to Google Earth this has come to pass. Educators and students would never have imagined live telecourses linking classrooms around the world, but UCLA and Kyoto University achieved exactly that in 2004 and hope to do so again, and that is only one such example in a wealth of similar achievements in the CENIC community. Storing vast amounts of high-quality rich media for instant statewide access by learning institutions at any time of the day or night may have been wishful thinking in the past, but California's community colleges made that wish come true with their EduStream.org program. Historians might have dreamed of instant access to tens of thousands of eyewitness accounts of crucial periods in world history; the Shoah Foundation Institute headquartered at USC has made that dream a reality. Other examples abound in telemedicine, distributed education, the arts and humanities, and more.

Taking these unexpected innovations as examples, I'm confident that creative minds, empowered with broadband networking, can contribute to a revolution in government even if it will be beyond what we can currently imagine.

Closing the digital divide in California goes only part of the way toward ensuring that all of the Golden State's 35 million citizens enjoy the maximum benefit from advanced technologies. In closing that divide, a necessary step is making sure that what was once a chasm is crossed regularly and with confidence by all those previously on the far side.

This is the definition of digital inclusion: making sure that all Californians enjoy not only access to advanced technology but awareness of the ways that their lives can be improved by it, knowledge of how to use it, and the confidence to do so. Digital inclusion is the acknowledgment of the human part of the equation we must solve in order to close the digital divide and make sure it stays closed.

At the forefront of addressing these issues is the California Community Technology Policy Group (CCTPG), which has spent the past nine months engaged in the Wireless Comparative Analysis and Best Practices Education Project, an aggressive effort funded by the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) to identify and promote lessons learned and promising practices in the area of government-led wireless networks. The results of this research project will help to enrich the public discussion on government-led wireless projects in California and nation-wide. In addition, the results will also be valuable for jurisdictions in California in future planning, development, and implementation of wireless projects.

The final report of the project will be available for distribution in summer 2008, but in the meantime, the CCTPG has solicited feedback from expert advisors and other stakeholders throughout California -- and high-quality videoconferencing is one of the means by which this process has been made easier, more inclusive, and more convenient. CENIC was pleased to help facilitate this in a May 21, 2008 videoconference taking place over CalREN Video Services, which linked participants at (list the sites here) to presenters including CETF President & CEO (and former CENIC Annual Conference keynote speaker) Sunne Wright McPeak, CCTPG Policy Advisor Richard Chabrán, and Broadband Institute of California (BBIC) Director Allen Hammond, who addressed the initial objectives of the report, its findings, and various case studies.

The digital divide cannot be closed without addressing the concerns described under the rubric of "digital inclusion," wherein the dissemination of information necessary to take full advantage of the technology is addressed. Similarly, the dissemination of such valuable reports as that generated by the CCTPG is a vital part of making sure that as many people benefit from their expert findings as possible.

CENIC is proud to have helped facilitate the CCTPG's valuable work through CalREN Video Services and looks forward to the release of the CCTPG's final report, which will be announced in a future issue CENIC Today.

In the October 2007 issue of CENIC Today, readers were introduced to the K-20 California Educational Technology Collaborative, a collaborative organization with the purpose of leveraging the individual education technology innovations and experience of California's K-20 education communities for the benefit of all. Sponsored by CENIC and headed by Catherine McKenzie, Technology Unit Director at the CCC System Office in Sacramento and CENIC Board member, the K20CETC consists of K-20 education leaders from across the state (including the K-12 community, higher education, and informal education partners such as libraries and community-based organizations). The organization's stated mission is to support highly effective, innovative, network-enabled teaching and learning opportunities.

In short, we're all learning a lot about how to enhance teaching and learning through network-based technology. Why not get the biggest "bang for the buck" and ensure that as many people as possible benefit from everything that California's K-20 education community has learned and created?

Last week, the California Community Colleges System Office hosted a day-long series of meetings and working groups that brought together expert educators and technologists based throughout the state and from all segments including corporate partners, community-based organizations, and informal education organizations such as the California State Library. The meeting kicked off with a general overview of five of the eight Project Areas of the K20CETC, which can be found on the organization's website, and followed up with breakout sessions which allowed the experts in attendance to meet and share ideas and planning with others across the state from various projects on the following five topic areas:

1. Career Exploration/STEM Pathways
2. New Media
3. California Accelerated Pathways
4. Functionality Across Segments/ePortfolios
5. Communities of Interest & Practice

Following on the heels of the working group breakouts were group reports and discussions of featured educational resources. Featured resources for the May 21 meeting included a discussion of UC Irvine Extension CSET teacher preparation given by UCI UNEX's Larry Cooperman and Murugan Pal of cK-12, a non-profit organization launched in 2006 which aims to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the US and worldwide. Using an open-source, collaborative, and web-based compilation model that can be manifested as an adaptive textbook -- termed the "FlexBook", cK-12 seeks to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational web texts. Interest in the cK-12 product was particularly high, and we encourage interested parties to check out their website.

At the moment the K20CETC website has the potential to deliver information on all of these sessions, and attract other stakeholders and interested parties, so be sure to check back and sign up for the quarterly K20CETC Bulletin. At the moment, interested parties in all segments, community-based organizations, information education organizations, and corporate education partners are invited to contact Stephanie Couch at SCouch@cenic.org or (916) 440-8800 to learn more.

As the capital city of one of the most vibrant societies in the world, Sacramento often plays host to the best and brightest in all areas of endeavor, and technology is one of the most prominent. Within technology however, multiple universes exist, each of which is often compelled to examine just how they can take advantage of the exciting revolutions in technology that California's innovators and creators bring to life every day.

From May 12-16, 2008 at the Sacramento Convention Center, all these universes came together at the Conference on California's Future, which boasted training classes, a lively and crowded show floor where vendors and technology specialists demonstrated their wares to interested attendees, and keynote addresses by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Teri Takai, the state's Chief Information Officer, and Chris Andersen, Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine. Scott McNealy, Chairman and Co-Founder of of Sun Microsystems and Vinton Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, rounded out the list of stellar featured speakers. All addressed packed houses, talking about the ways in which technology could and would help California meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Among the presenters in the Education Seminar Series was CENIC's Publicity and Communications Manager Janis Cortese, who gave attendees a look at The Virtuous Cycle of educational broadband in California. After addressing the value of ubiquitous broadband availability and use to California, her presentation moved into the three parts of the Virtuous Cycle: educational broadband providers such as CENIC, innovations created by the research and education community with access to broadand, and lastly how to make sure that as many people as possible can benefit from these innovations, which would itself drive broadband availability and use. The presentation listed many examples of educational innovations based on broadband networking among the CENIC community, many of which were CENIC Innovations in Networking award winners.

This presentation can be found online at CENIC's website.

USC's Viterbi School of Engineering has won a $4.3 million contract to boost research into photonics, optically-based data processing. With the help of the contract, researchers Alan Willner and Robert Hellwarth of the USC Viterbi School's Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering hope to develop "optical delays" which they hope will change the rules of manipulating photonic data at ultra-high speeds.

Currently, data transmission on networks like CalREN takes place via lightwaves. Information is turned into tiny light pulses or "photons" and sent down a data network along glass optical fibers, which permit enormous amounts of data to be transferred literally at the speed of light. Using multiple different colors or wavelengths of data, even more information can be packed onto a single fiber, dramatically increasing the bandwidth of fiber-based networks. CalREN itself makes use of this technology, known as wave division multiplexing, in order to maximize the amount of data that can travel along its backbone.

This is in contrast to the processing of data -- adding, subtracting, multiplying, and all of those other things that computers carry out with relentless precision. Such processes, the manipulation of data as opposed to its transmission, are still carried out via electronics. Instead of sending photons, or light particles, along optical fibers, tiny particles of electricity or "electrons" are shuttled back and forth through precise mazes and pathways, and in the process, data processing is carried out.

So numbers are processed using electrons ("electronics") and on networks such as CalREN, sent between users via photons. But suppose we could process the data using photons as well, via "photonics?" Optically-based equipment runs much cooler than electronically-based equipment. Moving electrons generates enormous amounts of heat, and the cooling of modern data centers and processors is a serious consideration both for computer engineers and environmentalists concerns about heat generation and clean energy. Photonic data processing would help humanity meet computer-based power needs in a cleaner and more sustainable way. The use of separate colors of light for different types of processing could also enable processors to carry out multiple calculations at the same time.

Research such as that being carried out at USC by Alan Willner and Robert Hellwarth could make it possible for data processing and transmission to be carried out entirely with light waves, from end to end. All parts of the computing process could benefit from the speed, relative ease, and energy efficiency of using light. Keep an eye out here and at USC's Photonics Center for developments on this exciting new technology that could make such a significant difference in modern life.

US & World Networking News:

As far as vacation destinations go, popular hotspots such as Honolulu and California's Wine Country have nothing on British Columbia's Okanagan Valley.

The area offers award-winning vineyards, tasty organic produce, a 68-mile freshwater lake and nearly 50 golf courses, all within an hour's drive. The city of Kelowna, the de facto capital of the region that boasts gourmet restaurants, world-class real estate, an international airport and a cultural district complete with museums, theater groups and a ballet.

But what most tourist brochures don't mention is that the Okanagan also is becoming known in IT spheres for something else: data processing and storage.

The IPv6 Forum welcomes you to a new and exciting experience in online communications. To address the needs of our members and to facilitate collaboration and innovation, the IPv6 Knowledge Base has been created to act as a central source of quality, accurate information about every aspect of IPv6. In cooperation with its affiliates, the IPv6 Forum is providing this capability to the global IPv6 community.

Expert volunteers associated with the IPv6 Forum, the NAv6TF, and NAv6TF sub-chapters will be helping to ensure that the data within the knowledge base is useful and objective.

We encourage you to take full advantage of all of the information, education and services available to advance the adoption of IPv6. Please visit the website linked above for more information.

A team of researchers at the University of Washington are putting a genomics project on the World Community Grid in the computational search for strains of rice that have traits like higher yields, disease resistance and a wider range of nutrients.

Ram Samudrala, the principal investigator at the University of Washington, describes the goal of the project as the pursuit of "super hybrids."

The purpose is to hasten the pace of modern rice genetics, which since the 1960s has delivered a series of new strains, starting with higher-yielding semidwarf varieties, a breakthrough that was hailed as the Green Revolution.

A survey into ways in which colleges and universities can make computing greener and more sustainable is about to publish its preliminary findings.

Higher Education Environment Performance Improvement (Heepi) and SustainIT, an NGO set up to focus on the environmental and social impact of IT, are researching how sustainable further and higher education IT is, and how education best practice compares with the private sector.

The report being written for the Joint Information System Committee (Jisc) says green IT is best achieved through the collaboration of IT and estates management. It finds that increased energy and computing costs can be offset by technologies such as grid computing and virtualisation.

On May 7th, NEES@UC San Diego conducted a test of a one million-pound precast concrete structure with the largest footprint of any structure ever tested on a shake table in the United States. This structure tests the seismic response of precast concrete floor systems that are used in parking garages, college dormitories, hotels, stadiums, prisons and increasingly in office buildings. The tests of the one-half-scale structure are part of a collaborative project between the University of Arizona, University of California at San Diego and Lehigh University. The $2.3 million project is being funded by the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute and its member companies and organizations, the National Science Foundation, the Charles Pankow Foundation, and the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES).

The goal of the project is to advance the state of knowledge of precast concrete building construction. The ultimate goal is to enable the construction of fully precast concrete buildings in all seismic regions of the nation. The research consortium has embarked in this advanced research program because of the speed of construction and quality associated with precast concrete.

On May 13, the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) announced the availability of a new world map that showcases its advanced research and education multi-gigabit optical network infrastructure. The infrastructure has grown since the previous map was created a little more than two years ago, with participation from more National Research & Education Networks, countries, consortia, institutions and individual research initiatives, on more continents. These participants provide the physical lambda networks that are interconnected at GLIF Open Lightpath Exchanges, or GOLEs. GOLEs have the equipment necessary to interconnect and establish end-to-end lightpaths, which are used by international research teams who are working together to discover innovative solutions to complex problems of global importance -- from biodiversity, to global climate change, to health issues, to the origin of life itself.

About CENIC and How to Change Your Subscription:

California's education and research communities leverage their networking resources under CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, in order to obtain cost-effective, high-bandwidth networking to support their missions and answer the needs of their faculty, staff, and students. CENIC designs, implements, and operates CalREN, the California Research and Education Network, a high-bandwidth, high-capacity Internet network specially designed to meet the unique requirements of these communities, and to which the vast majority of the state's K-20 educational institutions are connected. In order to facilitate collaboration in education and research, CENIC also provides connectivity to non-California institutions and industry research organizations with which CENIC's Associate researchers and educators are engaged.

CENIC is governed by its member institutions. Representatives from these institutions also donate expertise through their participation in various committees designed to ensure that CENIC is managed effectively and efficiently, and to support the continued evolution of the network as technology advances.

For more information, visit www.cenic.org.

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