Document Type

Article

Date

2002

Keywords

Internet revolution, Internetics, Science curricula, Engineering curricula, Computational science

Language

English

Disciplines

Computer Sciences | Curriculum and Instruction

Description/Abstract

We describe how our world dominated by Science and Scientists has been changed revolutionized by technologies moving with Internet time. Computers have always been well-used tools but in the beginning only the science counted and little credit or significance was attached to any computing activities associated with scientific research. Some 20 years ago, this started to change and the area of computational science gathered support with the NSF Supercomputer centers playing a critical role. However this vision has stalled over the last 5 years with information technology increasing in importance. The Holy Grail of computational science-- scalable parallel computing-- is still important but is just one supporting component of the Internet revolution. We discuss the emergence of the field of Internetics-- bridging computer science and all application areas whether simulation or information based. Internetics is an exciting field, which seems complete and rich enough to be a lasting interdisciplinary area. Physics and other core science and engineering disciplines used to attract the very best minds but now their popularity is declining. We describe curricula initiatives that can reinvigorate these fields. This curricula turmoil must be addressed by our education infrastructure whose professional staff find it hard to develop courses to satisfy student and employer interests in times of such rapid change. Distance education is very relevant as it can be used to disseminate expertise to students and teachers in these new areas. All of this has implications for our educational institutions, which could be quite profound and will be

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

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