John D. MacCuish, Susan M. Mniszewski, Gregory E. Shannon, and Bonnie C. Yantis

he Digital Village Initiative is a telecommunity is a society that exists dependent of geography—global, inde- telecommunity-outreach project and functions through electronic com- pendent telecommunities exist for Tof the Laboratory’s Computer munication. There are two types of everything from auto repair to environ- Research and Applications Group. A telecommunities. The first is quite in- mental activism to molecular biology.

150 Los Alamos Science Number 22 1994 The Digital Village Initiative

The graphic at left and those scattered throughout this article are reproduced from a user-interface prototype for telecommunities that was developed at the Laboratory.

The second has its roots in a specific tional telecommunities. The outreach geographical location and is predicated initiative operates through collabora- on the notion that people who live in a tions between Laboratory personnel and particular town, or county, or region members of proposed or emerging naturally share many interests. Estab- telecommunities. That approach en- lished communities already have orga- sures that the technical choices associ- nized social and political structures, ated with telecommunity development such as local government, civic groups, meet the specific needs of each commu- and business alliances, but the introduc- nity within the context of its culture. tion of an electronic-telecommunity The collaborative work was motivated structure can facilitate and broaden priate-use policy, and the NSF network, by contact with a number of emerging many aspects of their interactions. or the Internet as we know it today, be- New Mexico telecommunities including Several technological, economic, and came an international research- and ed- those of San Ildefonso Pueblo, Taos, social factors were influential in bring- ucation-oriented network of over a Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Farmington, and ing about the emergence of telecommu- thousand government, academic and Los Alamos. In addition, the project is nities. Over the last thirty years com- commercial entities. a response to the current administra- puter hardware has become increasingly Once the strict usage policies were tion’s initiatives to develop and imple- more powerful and less expensive, and lifted, distinct cultures began appearing ment the technology for the National the personal computer is now ubiqui- on the Internet to address a vast array Information Infrastructure (NII), and it tous. Technologies and standards for of interactive human-communication complements the strategic shift of both connecting computer networks have be- needs (see Figure 1). Electronic mail— the Department of Energy (DOE) and come more efficient and robust. The now almost as essential as the telephone the Laboratory toward greater emphasis Internet, the computer network used by for electronic communication—is the on the nation’s economic security. most telecommunities, has its roots in spontaneous outgrowth of technology Rapid advances in hardware and the U.S. military’s desire for an elec- originally developed for transmitting software present emerging telecommu- tronic-communication infrastructure that nities with options that are often be- would survive a nuclear attack—the yond their resources to evaluate or im- system as a whole had to remain opera- plement. The Laboratory’s strong tional even if portions of it were de- capabilities as a premier computing, in- stroyed. In 1968, the Advanced Re- formation, and communications re- search Projects Agency (ARPA) search center are a valuable resource initiated a prototype system, ARPAnet, for evaluating available technology and with that design requirement in mind. recommending equipment and systems ARPAnet evolved as a research and to meet the needs of a variety of development tool used by military and telecommunities. Our abilities to test academic research centers around the equipment in various configurations, to country. In the mid-1980s the National model customer applications, to evalu- Science Foundation (NSF) assumed ate human-computer interactions, and to much of the responsibility for adminis- analyze the performance of prototype tration of ARPAnet. The NSF then systems will be a significant force in started its own network, NSFnet, for determining the overall scope and char- academic and commercial concerns, scientific data. People routinely use acter of the NII. and also linked together other networks e-mail for all types of communication Among the many applications being to form the NSFnet “backbone.” The from coordinating community calendars explored and modeled as part of the result was a matrix of powerful com- to writing their congressional represen- Digital Village Initiative are: puters with high-speed connections tatives. linking the various networks together. The Digital Village Initiative was * telemedicine, through which The NSF eliminated many of the re- launched to design and test infrastruc- doctors can consult with one an- strictions set forth by ARPAnet's appro- ture technologies for both local and na- other more effectively by sending

Number 22 1994 Los Alamos Science 151

The Digital Village Initiative

digital 1.adb 7/26/94 2.5 40

35 2.0 30

25 1.5

20 DOE Digital superLab. The goal of the superLab project is to facilitate col- 1.0 15 laboration among three National De- fense Laboratories (Livermore National 10 Laboratory, Los Alamos National Labo-

0.5 Number of data packets (billion) ratory, and Sandia National Laborato- Number of "host" computers (million) 5 ries) through the use of advanced com- putational and information-management 0 0 O N D JFMAMJJAS O 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 technology. Much of the software 1992 1993 being developed for superLab is object- Figure 1. Growth of the Internet oriented; that is, it makes use of a set The graph on the left shows, for a twelve-month period beginning October 1992, the of modules, or building blocks, that can number of computers (in millions) acting as “gateways” to the Internet, a system of be assembled in various configurations networks once shared by only a few thousand users. The graph on the right shows appropriate for specific applications. the dramatic increase in network traffic over the last five calendar years. Plotted in the Thus it can be reconfigured to meet the graph are the number of data packets (each equivalent to 200 typewritten characters) specific needs of a particular telecom- transmitted each month over the backbone of the Internet. munity.

medical records or x-ray images, tained by the people who “live” in Security and privacy. Security and for example, over the Internet; them. The members of the telecommu- privacy issues are fundamental to the nities must decide themselves how they successful implementation of telecom- * electronic commerce through will provide access, whether they will munities. Security is critical for elec- which almost any type of business guarantee universal access, how they tronic commerce and digital cash ex- can be conducted over a network will define appropriate use and content, changes. Furthermore, if medical such as CommerceNet; and how they will fund their “mile on records or other sensitive information the information highway.” will be accessible, privacy must be * digital libraries, which will make guaranteed. For example, a financial or local, national, and international medical system must guarantee that its libraries available to all members Technical Issues infrastructure and content will not be of the telecommunity; damaged, that no information is di- The Digital Village Initiative em- vulged during transmission, and that the * telecommuting, through which ploys a wide spectrum of dual-use tech- integrity of the information can be veri- more and more people will be able nologies originally developed through fied. Wireless telecommunication tech- to work from their homes; the Laboratory’s defense and nonprolif- nologies amplify security and privacy eration efforts—specifically, research in concerns because such transmissions * electronic classrooms, which will the areas of computer security and pri- are accessible to virtually anyone who free students and teachers from the vacy, high-performance computing, cares to “listen.” constraints of time and location; human-computer interaction, informa- The Laboratory has a long history of tion mining, and network navigation. contributions to computer-security tech- * and electronic government ser- Our collaborations with emerging nology. Our ability to evaluate and im- vices, which will provide informa- telecommunities are yielding many op- plement state-of-the-art encryption tion and facilitate many different portunities to assess interactions among codes and intrusion-detection methods types of transactions on a local, technologies, applications, and policies is being applied to the problem of safe- state, and federal level. as well as occasions to evaluate Labo- guarding information transmitted across ratory research within new contexts. the network. We are currently working The collaborative nature of the Digi- Technology transfer of software and with the Internal Revenue Service and tal Village Initiative is in harmony with hardware, for example, is central to the the Social Security Administration to the underlying philosophy that telecom- Initiative. A good prospect for transfer explore a variety of access-control and munities should be created and main- is software being developed by the user-identification techniques. In addi-

152 Los Alamos Science Number 22 1994 The Digital Village Initiative

tion, we are working with the Financial processing and a great deal of memory. Services Technical Consortium (FSTC) Our expertise in the parallel utilization, to examine the security issues related to scheduling, and allocation of distributed electronic commerce. FSTC is a coali- computing resources will help make tion of large banks, the Department of services of that kind a reality. the Treasury, the Department of Com- merce, and the DOE national laborato- Human-computer interfaces. Cre- ries. The coalition’s mission is to facil- ating effective human-computer inter- itate nation-wide electronic commerce. faces for the NII or for any particular telecommunity will be challenging be- High-performance computing. cause of the diversity within and among High-performance computing is funda- communities. To make telecommuni- mental to the NII and its support of ties accessible to the greatest possible the information about a specific topic telecommunities. The sheer volume number of people, we are implementing located in one place. The entire nation and complexity of data that will be an icon-based user interface with multi- faces the challenge of developing an in- made available over the Internet neces- media capabilities. That interface is frastructure that will allow efficient ac- sitates high-bandwidth communications also being developed in conjunction cess to and use of information. The and high-performance-computing re- with the superLab Project. The use of Laboratory is a leader in the manage- sources. Consider the staggering quan- simple pictures or symbols will accom- ment, visualization, and analysis of ex- tity of related but quite heterogeneous modate people who are unfamiliar or tremely large and complex datasets. information that would be necessary to uncomfortable with computers. Other The Laboratory’s IBROWSE project al- provide a U.S. geographic-information aspects of the interface might accom- lows doctors to view CT lung-scan im- database, the current conditions for all modate users who have various disabili- ages and search large databases for modes of transportation around the ties or who do not read or write Eng- similar lung-scan images. Other sup- country, and the current tariffs for all lish. For instance the interface might porting technologies include an innova- common carriers. Manufacturers, ship- include audio capabilities or Braille la- tive data-compression algorithm based pers, and service agencies would bene- beling to assist sight-impaired users. on a mathematical technique called fit tremendously from quick, easy ac- Interfaces that respond to voice com- wavelet transforms. The Federal Bu- cess to information through which they mands and furnish audio feedback reau of Investigation has adopted this could address a variety of user-interface technique as a national standard for issues. To build audio-driven systems, compressing digitized fingerprint however, we must deal with the techni- records. cal challenge of incorporating voice Several Laboratory research projects input/output into existing applications. involve the development of tools that As we plan prototype computer inter- will allow a user to put a query out on faces, we can take advantage of modern the Internet and receive replies from a design tools that allow us to iteratively variety of sources. The results of the present scenarios to potential users and query, “Tell me about the University of incorporate their evolving requirements New Mexico,” for example, might yield into the design. a video “tour” of the campus, a sound- clip from a radio interview with the Information mining and network president of the University, an under- navigation. The quantity of electronic graduate catalog, a tuition spreadsheet, information currently available through and an accreditation report—and each the Internet is overwhelming. More- might come from a different computer could determine the best mode of trans- over, the information exists in a wide system. Efficient information-mining port for their purposes. Such a system variety of formats, including video, techniques require that all of the arti- would require high-performance-com- sound, and text. It is not uniformly ac- cles, newsgroups, databases, and so puting resources including high-speed cessed, organized, or stored nor is all forth that are accessible through the

Number 22 1994 Los Alamos Science 153 The Digital Village Initiative

network have some form of quantitative Vice President Gore’s National Perfor- Undoubtedly, local telecommunities descriptor, perhaps obtained by an mance Review, the Laboratory is collab- will provide some form of access to analysis of patterns of characters (see orating with a wide variety of federal public-sector services and private-sector “Concept Extraction—A Data-Mining agencies to develop systems that pro- commerce. Students living in rural Technique”). Statistical clustering tech- vide access to government information. communities will have the opportunity niques could then be used to sort Local telecommunities might choose to to take courses and “attend” lectures at through the entire available dataset and collaborate with these agencies and in- universities around the country. “Elec- obtain only the desired information. corporate government services into a tronic visits” to the local Department of Network navigation tools, which will network of kiosks in locations suited to Motor Vehicles to renew registrations help users “move” through the Internet, the needs of the community. A kiosk- or transfer titles will reduce administra- are being developed as part of the Lab- based telecommunity is the most feasi- tive costs—and there will be no need to oratory’s Sunrise Project. One such ble means of guaranteeing universal ac- stand in line! Telecommunities are a navigation tool presents a visual repre- cess to the information superhighway at natural conduit to a dynamic and com- sentation of the “path” a user is taking a modest cost. Of course, any personal petitive global marketplace where com- through the Internet and also initiates computer will be an “information por- merce flows freely among local, nation- Internet searches by communicating tal” to the National Information Infra- al, and international communities. with WorldWideWeb servers and Mo- structure. However, if local telecommu- “Electronic showrooms” connected to saic (an Internet information-browser nities install kiosks in public places, the the Internet will be perpetually open to interface). That tool allows users to kiosks will serve as information portals world markets. With a greatly expand- search and navigate the Internet more for those who do not have access to per- ed customer base but no need for the easily and to document the paths of sonal computers. traditional showroom expenses, small their searches for future reference. businesses will have more opportunities for growth. Telecommunity Applications The development of individual, local telecommunities as a series of pilot pro- A wide range of applications are al- jects offers an innovative approach to ready in use in a limited form and are designing the nation’s Information Su- only awaiting advances in technology perhighway. Communities can deter- before their full potential can be real- mine their own needs, make their own ized. For example, we are currently choices, and ultimately serve as a mar- working with the Indian Health Service ket force that will shape development at (IHS) to establish a wireless “healthnet” the national level. New Mexico in par- among Native American communities ticular provides a rich testing-ground in New Mexico. The network will con- for the development of telecommuni- nect mobile units with regional clinics ties. Here in New Mexico there are and the medical center at the University both rural and urban areas, there are of New Mexico. To bring additional networks of small communities separat- medical expertise to this isolated, rural ed by considerable distances, and there health network, we are also teaming are several distinct cultures throughout Kiosks and universal access. The with National Jewish Hospital in Den- the state. concept of installing kiosks to provide ver. National Jewish is the recognized The Clinton administration’s goal for information and services was first real- leader in pulmonary-disease research. the NII is that all people have access to ized in the early 1980s with the advent Drug-resistant tuberculosis occurs fre- the Information Superhighway. As the of the automated teller machine, or quently in reservation populations, and technology advances, there is growing ATM. More recently a variety of gov- we believe that the collaboration be- concern that the design and structure of ernment agencies have become interest- tween the IHS and National Jewish the coming web of communication ed in installing kiosks as a means of Hospital will have immediate positive technologies will be driven primarily by cutting costs while making services effects. The IHS healthnet can serve as commercial interests and thus exclude more readily available. In support of a prototype for a national healthnet. large sectors of the population through

154 Los Alamos Science Number 22 1994 The Digital Village Initiative

economic and educational barriers. The 1993 National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) re- port concludes that:

An advanced information infra- structure will enable U.S. firms to compete and win in the global economy, generating good jobs for the American people and eco- nomic growth for the nation. As importantly, the NII can trans- form the lives of the American people—ameliorating the con- straints of geography, disability, and economic status—giving all Americans a fair opportunity to go as far as their talents and am- Gregory E. Shannon, Susan M. Mniszewski, Bonnie C. Yantis,.and John D. MacCuish bitions will take them. Further Reading John D. MacCuish received his B.A. in philoso- For such a vision to be realized, we phy and fine art from the University of Califor- Brendon P. Kehoe. 1994. Zen and the Art of the nia, Santa Barbara, in 1978, and his M.S. in com- must strike a balance between commer- Internet: A Beginners Guide. Prentice Hall. puter science from Indiana University, Blooming- cial interests and the government’s goal ton in 1993. He is currently enrolled in the com- of universal public access. Through the Ed Krol. 1994. The Whole Internet: User’s puter science doctoral program at the University Guide & Catalog. O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. of New Mexico, Albuquerque. MacCuish joined Digital Village Initiative the Laboratory the Laboratory in 1993 as a graduate research is helping the nation realize this vision Hans Klein and Coralee Whitcomb. 1994. De- assistant in the Computer Research and Applica- veloping an equitable and open information infra- tions Group. by facilitating the development of local structure. In Proceedings of A Directions and telecommunities in which broad-based Implications of Advanced Computing Symposium. Susan M. Mniszewski joined the Laboratory in community agendas can flourish. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. 1978 as a staff member in the Computing Re- search and Applications Division. Her research Office of President Bill Clinton. 1993. Technol- interests include distributed computing, object Acknowledgements ogy for Economic Growth: President’s Progress oriented systems, and network simulation and Report. U.S. Government Printing Office. modeling. Mniszewski earned her B.S. in com- puter science from the Illinois Institute of Tech- Contributors to the Initiative include: Stephen J. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Develop- nology in 1976. She received a patent in 1988 Adelson, Linda K. Anderson, Christopher Barnes, ment, Office of Community Planning and Devel- for encryption and transmission of digital keying Nathaniel M. Bobbitt, William E. Bostwick, opment. Building Communities: Together. Guide- data. Aaron C. Coday, James M. Cruz, John R. Deal, book for Community-Based Strategic Planning for Vance Faber, Patricia K. Fasel, David W. Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communi- Gregory E. Shannon received his B.S. in com- Forslund, Anne T. Gilman, Diane M. Gonzales, ties. U.S. Government Printing Office. HUD- puter science from Iowa State University in 1982, Judith G. Hochberg, John A. Hopkins, Kathleen 1442-CPD. and his Ph.D in computer sciences from Purdue A. Jackson, Patrick M. Kelly, Robert L. Kelsey, University in 1988. He joined the Laboratory’s David G. Kilman, Kevin S. Klenk, Emanuel H. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Small Computer Research and Application Group in Knill, Patrick S. McCormick, James P. McGee, Community and Rural Development. 1994. 1993. His research interests include empirical Allen L. McPhearson, Donald R. Montoya, Building Communities: Together. Empowerment analysis of discrete algorithms, problem-solving Gerald D. Morris, Ronald T. Pfaff, Richard L. Zones and Enterprise Communities Application environments, and information mining. Phillips, Reid D. Rivenburgh, Torrin D. Sanders, Guide. U.S. Government Printing Office. HUD- Timothy R. Thomas, Richard A. Ulibarrim, and 1445-CPD. Bonnie C. Yantis joined the Laboratory in 1986 Arthur L. Wilson. to work on functional language research. She has Office of Science and Technology Policy. 1994. been deputy group leader for the Computer Re- We would like to thank our management and the High Performance Computing and Communica- search and Applications Group since 1991. She people supporting the initiative: William L. tions: Toward a National Information Infrastruc- received her M.S. in computer science from the Thompson, Andrew B White Jr., Hassan A. ture. U.S. Government Printing Office. University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Yantis has Dayem, Hans M. Ruppel. We would also like to been the general chair for the Computational Sci- thank Bill Enloe of Los Alamos National Bank ence Workshop for the past three years. and Jane Proudy and Marcia Martinez from the State of New Mexico.

Number 22 1994 Los Alamos Science 155