National laboratories; advanced scientific instruments and data analysis resources; high-performance computers; scientists, technologists, professors, and students: The vision suggested in the call for proposals is to combine all of these over the National Information Infrastructure in a way that makes distributed collaboration as useful to scientific experiments as being in the same location, thereby avoiding scenarios such as the following:
Jane read Brian's email and swore to herself. ``Looks like I'm going to have to fly out again. That same problem keeps cropping up.''
She sent followup email to the group, suggesting a time a week in advance. ``We'll have to set up a conference call for those of you who can't make it out for the rerun of the experiment,'' she wrote. ``It's on a Friday, so hopefully everyone can stay over Saturday for reduced air fares.''
She sighed. ``Why does it always go wrong as soon as everyone's back home?''
We feel that distributed collaboration over the Internet is critical to the success of today's scientific ventures, which are far-reaching and often require specialists from around the world to synchronize. We suggest that it is possible to provide a solution so powerful that it changes the way that scientists and researchers think about work and working together.
Jane read Brian's email and swore to herself. ``Looks like it's acting up again.''
She walked over to the group's elab meeting room. ``Brian, can you go get ready to start the experiment again while I get everyone together to monitor the start? This time, make the variation we discussed before.''
He nodded and disappeared from her workstation window.
She rounded up the rest of the team, which was easy, since most of them had read the email and immediately dropped in on the elab. One of them had even connected from Japan.
``Okay, I'd like everyone to look at the data on your screens and re-check that we've got it right, and that your own part makes sense. Brian, when you're ready, start it up while we monitor the early results.''