1 From National Information Infrastructure To Global Collaboration Infrastructure

Today, the information infrastructure within the United States provides individual users with wide access to a growing, diverse population of information sources. The emergence of Web technology attracts additional users onto the information infrastructure every day. As the population of cyberspace users increases, traditional forms of computer-based communication, such as electronic mail, become more widespread and users begin to experiment with newer forms, such as digital phones, chat groups, and video conferences. One day, soon, the national information infrastructure might be transformed into a global collaboration infrastructure. The essential underpinnings of such a transformation exist in the form of advanced research in networking, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, and digital libraries. To these underpinnings, we must add research in distributed collaboration technology, research that addresses the concept of groups and teams pursuing tasks and sharing information within virtual spaces while separated in time and in physical space. The successful outcome from such research could provide tomorrow’s citizens with an electronic community through which computermediated collaboration can occur on a global scale. This paper describes the current state of the national information infrastructure, reviews some of the key technologies, both those subject to current research and those requiring new research, that could transform the national information infrastructure to a global collaboration infrastructure, and closes with a vision of tomorrow’s electronic community.