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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JUNE 30, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 26
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Special Features:
HASTAC: THE HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF
EMERGING SCIENCE AND TECH
HASTAC (pronounced "Haystack"), the Humanities, Arts, Science, and
Technology
Advanced Collaboratory, announces the launch of its consortium, a strategic
alliance of scientists, humanists, artists, social theorists, legal
specialists, and information technology specialists. HASTAC is founded on the
belief that the future of cyberinfrastructure must be driven by creative
discovery across disciplinary divides because of the profound impact of new
technologies on individuals and society. HASTAC scholars and researchers will
think transformatively about their disciplines and engage in the design and
application of innovative computing and scientific technologies for the
humanities, arts, and interpretive social sciences.
More than 55 scholars, practitioners, and industry representatives
participated in the first meeting of the group at the University of California
Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), UC Irvine, on June 5-6, 2003. The
resulting action plan calls for research, development, assessment, and
application of emerging science and technology solutions. HASTAC
representatives are participating in this week's Global Grid Forum in Seattle,
Washington, to discuss strategic alliances within the Grid community and take
part in the development of the Global Grid Forum Humanities and Social Science
Grid Research Group.
Topics for the June meeting at UC Irvine included collaboration in
high-performance computing, biotechnologies, digital libraries, multimedia,
archiving and search technologies, interoperable standards, and systems for
virtual communications environments such as visualization caves. Issues of
transformation, animation, preservation, and conservation came to the
forefront along with the group's vision to create, implement, distribute, and
analyze new knowledge and discovery spaces.
"The humanities, arts, and social sciences have a very important role at
the
conceptual, research, and development stage of today's science and technology
discovery," said David Theo Goldberg, director of UCHRI. Bringing together the
expertise and experience found within HASTAC is critical to the future
development of science and technology, and to the engagement of a much broader
community.
Dan Reed, the director of the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications,
and Fran Berman, the director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, both have
noted the importance of including the humanities, arts, and social sciences in
their centers high-performance computing research, and sent representatives to
participate in the June meeting.
The founding HASTAC members include the University of California Humanities
Research Institute; Duke University's John Hope Franklin Center and
Humanities Institute, Maryland Institute for Technology and the
Humanities(MITH); Stanford Humanities Lab; Virginia Institute for Advanced
Technology in the Humanities; San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University
of California, San Diego; National Center for Supercomputing Applications at
the University of Illinois; Minority Serving Institutions High-performance
Computing Working Group; Creative Commons (an advocacy group supporting
flexible intellectual property licensing applications); California Digital
Library; and several other major digital archiving and exhibition centers,
along with groups with overlapping concerns such as the Coalition for
Networked Information, the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural
Heritage, and industry partners.
The group is developing a white paper for the National Science Foundation's
cyberinfrastructure initiative. Upcoming HASTAC meetings will be held at the
University of Illinois, Duke University, the University of Maryland and
Stanford University. HASTAC welcomes the participation from a broad community
of individuals and organizations with interests in the interface between
science, technology, humanities, arts, and social sciences.
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