techpolicydaily.com

WASHINGTON – As the Federal Communications Commission works on developing a national broadband plan, it invited a group of Internet heavy-hitters to its headquarters here today to hear to discuss what they think is the “next big idea” on the Internet’s horizon.

David Clark

The skinny is this: It doesn’t matter, unless the government, industry and academia does more to help develop the next-generation Internet.

David Clark, a super-smart professor and senior research scientist at MIT, pointed out how recent innovations – first music, then video – constantly put new increasing stresses on the availability and stability of the Internet.

What’s next? Who knows, Clark and others said. But it will probably put even more stresses on an Internet that at 40 years old is starting to show its signs of age.

“We could argue if video is the end of the world,” Clark said. “I don’t think so. Because never before has the road ended.”

The biggest constraint making the Internet better and ready to meet the needs of the next new thing is that the resources and infrastructure that brought about the Internet initially just simply aren’t around anymore, some say.

“We’re in a real risk in the United States because we had a technology system to create the Internet and (make the U.S.) a world leader,” said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “We don’t have that anymore.”

Institutions like Bell Labs and DARPA that encouraged and supported the shared development that created the Internet just aren’t around – at least like they were – anymore, Atkinson pointed out.

“DARPA is more narrowly focused on defense, and Bell Labs is a shell of what it was.” he said.

Robert Atkinson

Atkinson, like others, said he thinks government, academia and private industry needs to work together and do more R&D on ways to make the Internet better and bolder in the future.

Richard Green, former president and CEO of CableLabs, agrees. He encouraged government, academia and business to create a new sort of research institution to try and figure out what the best direction is for the next new Internet and how to get there.

Of course that would take money – something that the government has been unwilling to devote in large amounts to Internet R&D. That has to addressed in any national broadband plan if the United States is to resume its lead in all things involving the Internet, experts here say.

The amount of government spending on Internet R&D today, said MIT’s Clark, “is miserable.”

Van Jacobson, research fellow at the Palo Alto Research Center, wonders if it’s too late for the United States to retain the lead on the development and exploitation of the Internet, given the exodus of R&D labs and government-sponsored research to other countries.

“I think we’ve lost a lot of people in this country who think long term,” Jacobson said. “And we in the US particularly (are) going to feel the pain of that loss as we see that (next generation of) research come from overseas.”