Further explanation

The scientific community is often a driving force behind technological developments and this is certainly true for the present ICT revolution. An outstanding recent example of the nurturing role of science is the Web. The paradoxical situation that its impact on the scientific world fell behind that on society was due to limitations in network bandwidth. This made it practically impossible to distribute the large amounts of data and information generated in today’s networked R&D experiments. It was not until recently that as a result of the impressive breakthrough in optical wide-area networking, network bandwidth ceased to be a limitation. A new generation of applications for the Internet is now about to be introduced, unleashed by the availability of ample bandwidth. Parallel to this, another technology is emerging that has the potential to enable users share compute power, storage and other resources such as expensive experimental facilities (e.g. a mass spectrometer or a large telescope). In analogy with the electricity power grid, this technology has been called the Grid.

Although these two developments can be seen as impressive enabling technologies for a new leap forward in science and society, we are still far away from fully integrating and exploiting their potential in modern everyday R&D practice - let alone that they have spin-off effects in society. The changing scale and scope of experimental science - with its need for accommodating the growing numbers of research coalitions with continuously changing partners and access to information - require a new research paradigm: (digitally) enhanced science or e-Science.