Founders Day Symposium
University of Pittsburgh
27 Feb 1995

It's Bottom-Up Information Infrastructure, Stupid
A.M. Rutkowski
Executive Director
Internet Society



Introduction

I am pleased and honoured to be here at the University's Founder's
Day - this year focussed on the Internet.

We should note at the outset that on the global map of Internet
network density, Pittsburgh ranks 21st in the world with 235 registered
networks as of the middle of last year.  Of course, the University
of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon with the Pittsburgh Supercomputing 
Center, the Software Engineering Institute, and the US 
Computer Emergency Response Team.  Even a casual query of Whois directory
service also reveals smaller insitutions like the Pittsburgh Regional Library,
the Post-Gazette, and Pittsburgh OnLine.  It was rather irresistable
yesterday - as well as fun and informative to have "visited" several of
these sites via the World Wide Web prior to actually come here.

I even garnered what must be one of the local trivia factoids - that
PittState is NOT in Pittsburg PA, but in Pittsburgh Kansas!

Last year, Fortune magazine covering Internet developments dubbed 
locations like Pittsburg as "Netplexes" - something equivalent to
virtual metropolitan areas on the world's Information Infrastructure. 
Fortune writer Rick Tertzelli was fascinated with the seeming irony
that a technology that could support complete diffusion of people
and institutions could at the same time produce these concentrations.

The answer, of course, is that in the final analysis, it is people
and local environments that spawn cybercities, not technology or
machines.



PittInfo

I don't know what spin you intend to give all this stuff.  I suppose
one doesn't want to get too abstract with general audiences.
However, the really interesting meta-revolution unfolding isn't
so much the Internet, but what's becoming known as "bottom-up
information infrastructure."

Prior to the last few years, networking and computers were pretty
in the hands of only the institutional elite.  PTTs/ATT, IBM,
the government, or the computer departments of big organizations.

Even the dialogue about national information policy was always
framed around government or big organization activities and 
programs - something that has recently become known as "top
down" infrastructure.  The Information Superhighway metaphor
was an unfortunate throwback to this old pattern - which is why
the Administration switched quickly to "infrastructure."

It's pretty obvious that things are now dramatically different.
It stares you in the face every time you open the NYTimes in
the advertisements.  PCs, workstations, local area networks,
Internet, enterprise internets.  There's a local computer supermarket
down here where you can go and get all this stuff with a shopping
basket.  Even many of the networking tools, equipment, cables,
etc.

The same is now true in organizations of all kinds (probably even
CBS :-) ) where it's individual people and workgroups who are fighting
the "computer departments" for control over information and networking,
and where those same individual and groups often know a lot more about
what's going on than the old duffers.

The Internet "happened" at just the right time as all these other
things were occurring, so that anyone with a PC or workstation or
LAN or modem - like R2D2 in StarWars - just jacks into "the net" to
become part of this larger human and machine consciousness.

Part of the larger policy and societal revolution is realizing and facilitating
this whole bottom up information revolution now unfolding.  What you see
on the WWW is a kind of virtual manifestation of this revolution where
people have jacked in and turned on to the world with their own ideas
and creations put together right in their own houses or schools or offices.

One of the more subtle and potentially powerful activities ongoing in the
Internet community is "distributed resource discovery."  That is the ability to
figuratively say "I want information about XYZ" and have network agents
or inexpensive intermediaries go among all 5 million Internet connected computers
and the manifested creations of untold millions of individuals and organizations,
and gather a collective knowledge in a few seconds.  And, to have that knowledge
constantly evolving and expanding - minute after minute, day after day.

There is nothing in human societal or communication history that even approaches
such a capability.  It rather reminds me of early 20th century metaphysical
philosopher Teilard deChardin's end point in collective human consciousness.

(I  have to give a speech to the Univ of Pittsburg Founders Day gathering
next week - so this also serves to prime some mental juices!)

cheers,