An op-ed by UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska and Sun Microsystems’ Bob Sproull appears today on the website of Scientists and Engineers for America. They write:
“Congress is now debating the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Included in this package is over 10 billion dollars for science facilities, research, and instrumentation.
“The reason for this inclusion is simple: today’s research is tomorrow’s infrastructure.
“When our nation faces immediate challenges, the feasible solutions depend upon the ideas, resources, and designs that are “on the shelf,” ready to deploy …
“Increasingly, information technology is the cornerstone of America’s infrastructure. Today’s information technology research is a cornerstone of tomorrow’s infrastructure.”
Read the full editorial here. A set of white papers describing the role of computing research in meeting the challenges of the 21st century is available here.