Sure, you know cloud computing. You also know a bit about so-called “private clouds,” which enterprises and government agencies are exploring as an option to combine the power and scale of virtualized cloud architectures with security and control over data.
But what do you know of Cloudlets? They may just be a key to the future of mobile computing.
That’s a possible conclusion from the results so far of a Microsoft Research family of projects called MAUI, short for Mobile Assistance Using Infrastructure. The MAUI approach is to enable a new class of CPU-intensive, and data-intensive, applications for mobile devices – but enable them in a new way. Today’s mobile devices can’t run such apps, at least not well. And if they stick to the cloud they may never do so.
I’ve just read a fundamental MAUI paper published last month in the IEEE’s Pervasive Computing journal: “The Case for VM-based Cloudlets in Mobile Computing” (November 2009, co-authored by MSR’s Paramvir Bahl along with colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University, AT&T Research, and Lancaster University).
When I first began talking with DIA CIO Mike Pflueger and Deputy CIO Mark Greer in the fall of 2003 about the work I’d be doing with them inside government, most of the ideas were big ones: let’s re-architect the DoDIIS enterprise, let’s find and deploy revolutionary new analytical software. One of our thoughts was a little one, but for me personally it turned out to be a most valuable project. They let me pull together a panel for the upcoming 2004 DoDIIS Conference called “Geeks and Geezers,” featuring some of the grand old names of intelligence technology. The panel was a success, and in organizing it, I spent quite a bit of time talking to those giants, or should I say listening to them. I learned an enormous amount about “the early days.” This post describes the important work of one of those fellows.
Friday I had an interesting meeting with Dawn Meyerriecks, who has just begun her new role as the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Acquisition and Technology. (Read the DNI’s statement on her appointment here in pdf, her bio here, and some reaction – all positive – here and here.)
Never mind what we actually were talking about, she asked me in so it isn’t appropriate to write about that. But to be honest I spent my drive home thinking about the atmospherics and significance of her holding that post in any case. In a companion post later (“The Purple History of Intelink“) I’ll comment on the significance of her prior background in the Defense Department.
But more striking, right off the bat, is the fact that DNI Dennis Blair has an impressive number of women in high-ranking senior leadership positions. And it’s not just the number, but the particular positions they hold that I like: Dawn Meyerriecks is DDNI/A&T, Priscilla Guthrie is Assistant DNI and Chief Information Officer, Marilyn Vacca is Assistant DNI and Chief Financial Officer. Lisa Porter leads the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency IARPA (I’ve written about her before). Continue reading →
This week marks the second anniversary of the first live internal demo of the intelligence community’s A-Space project, groundbreaking for the IC in its goal of collaborative use of social media across agency lines. Somewhere in Maryland, a remarkable government employee and friend named Mike Wertheimer should pause and quietly celebrate the fruition of his early evangelism for it.
I was still a government employee then, but wrote about the effort at the time here on Shepherd’s Pi (“A-Space: Top-secret social networking“). It makes me chuckle to remember back to those days when it was still mostly unheard-of for IC employees to blog openly on the public web about current technology projects. Now you can’t shut ’em up! 🙂
It made sense, I thought, to set down a few notes at the time for several reasons: Continue reading →
There’s a lot going on at this week’s Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC 09); it’s a traditional launchpad for cool new stuff. I thought I’d point out several of the government-relevant announcements and technology roll-outs.
I specifically want to spotlight something called Codename Dallas, and how NASA and others have begun using it. In the keynote this morning Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie told PDC attendees (and his streaming-video audience) that a landslide of new sensors and observational systems are changing the world by recording “unimaginable volumes of data… But this data does no good unless we turn the potential into the kenetic, unless we unlock it and innovate in the realm of applications and solutions that’s wrapped around that data.”
Here’s how we’re addressing that, with a bit of step-by-step context on the overall cloud-computing platform enabling it. The steps are: 1. Azure, 2. Pinpoint, and 3. Dallas.
Tim O’Reilly created a bit of a stir last night in the tech world by writing a thoughtful essay entitled “The War for the Web.” He’ll be expanding on his thoughts in his keynote address today at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York. From the essay, here’s the core argument:
“[W]e’ve grown used to a world with one dominant search engine, one dominant online encyclopedia, one dominant online retailer, one dominant auction site, one dominant online classified site, and we’ve been readying ourselves for one dominant social network. But what happens when a company with one of these natural monopolies uses it to gain dominance in other, adjacent areas? I’ve been watching with a mixture of admiration and alarm as Google has taken their dominance in search and used it to take control of other, adjacent data-driven applications.
It could be that everyone will figure out how to play nicely with each other, and we’ll see a continuation of the interoperable web model we’ve enjoyed for the past two decades. But I’m betting that things are going to get ugly. We’re heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it’s more than that, it’s a war against the web as an interoperable platform. [emphasis added] Instead, we’re facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.
… P.S. One prediction: Microsoft will emerge as a champion of the open web platform, supporting interoperable web services from many independent players, much as IBM emerged as the leading enterprise backer of Linux.
If you’re reading this on the day of the symposium (Monday November 2, 2009), you can tune in to the live webcast of the speakers and panels. It is a stellar line-up, see the roster below.
I’m taking up my duties as a public-spirited citizen next week on Tuesday evening, by hosting a fun little fundraiser for my local Congressman – and if you’re going to be in Washington DC the evening of 10/27 I hope you’ll join me (click here for the invitation and details). It’ll be a fun evening; we’ll be at the ultra-cool Johnny’s Half-Shell on Capitol Hill after all.
US Joint Forces Command is sponsoring next week’s third annual DCGS Worldwide Conference in Virginia Beach, and I’m looking forward to participating on a great panel. If you don’t know much about the world of the “Distributed Common Ground/Surface System,” you can find some slightly dated background information at http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/dcgs.htm. DCGS is in many ways all about ISR, or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance – as well as their integration throughout the defense intelligence enterprise through the network of JIOCs (Joint Intelligence Operations Centers) and elsewhere.
There aren’t a lot of unclassified guides to the DCGS and ISR world for me to point to out on the web as background, although an anti-war group has posted a draft version of Army Intelligence Field Manual (FM) 2-01, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, which you can read in html format here.
The conference’s overall goal is “bringing together program offices, developers, and users to focus on establishing a fully integrated and seamless Enterprise in support of the warfighter.” Quoting more specifically from the conference material, “The conference objectives are to:
Improve knowledge of DCGS and JIOC capabilities for security, engagement and relief and reconstruction activities
Increase the utility and value DCGS provides to Irregular Warfare and General Purpose Forces operating independently, and through increasingly lower echelons
Markedly improve the ability to integrate with U.S. agencies, coalition forces, and other partners across the ISR enterprise
Inspire new thinking in areas of acquisition of ISR services, DCGS capability metrics, and the rapid delivery of intelligence solutions to the warfighter.”
The panel I’m participating on is titled “Amplifying ISR: Bringing Proven Advanced Video Processing Technologies to the Warfighter Now,” led by my good friend John Marshall. Below is the line up of the panel, which will focus primarily on the key topic of how to exploit and manage the waves of information coming off the profusion of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s) around the world.
Moderator:Mr. John A. Marshall Chief Technology Officer
Joint Transformation Command – Intelligence
United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM)
Panel Members:
Ms. Michelle Munson President and Co-Founder, Aspera, Inc.
Mr. Lewis Shepherd Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Institute
Panel Members:
Mr. Robert Gourley CTO, Crucial Point
Mr. Rudi Ernst CEO/CTO, Pixia Corporation
Ms. Casey Henson DIA/DS-CTO
Dr. Kari Kelton, Ph.D. Chief System Sciences Officer, NSI, Inc.
If that title seems a bit LSD-fueled, the subject matter warrants it. Here comes some Chemistry gone wild!
First, have a look at this bizarre video. It stars a soft robot, or chemical robot – “ChemBot.” Even the experienced geeks at IEEE Spectrum are calling it “by far one of the coolest and weirdest robot prototypes we have ever seen.”
This particular prototype by iRobot and University of Chicago researchers was just unveiled, at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems this past week. (More on the conference here.) It was built in response to DARPA’s interest in chemical robots, a program run by Dr. Mitchell Zakin.
The DARPA “ChemBots” page describes the program as creating “a convergence between materials chemistry and robotics through the application of any one of a number of approaches, including gel-solid phase transitions, electro- and magneto-rheological materials, geometric transitions, and reversible chemical and/or particle association and dissociation.”
What’s the anticipated DoD mission use? In DARPA’s words, “With ChemBots, our warfighters can gain access to denied spaces and perform tasks safely, covertly, and efficiently.” Or, as CNet’s “Crave” gadget blog puts it, “the weird little blob inflates and deflates parts of its body, changing size and shape–and scaring the living daylights out of us. We don’t know exactly when ChemBot will join the Armed Forces, but we can only beg: please, oh please, keep it away from us.” 🙂
Does Mitch Zakin Dream of Electric Sheep?
With that kind of geeky appeal, this video has been gathering some Internet buzz over the weekend, appearing on several tech blogs. But the better story is the scientist behind the science. Several of us have been following Mitch Zakin’s work for a while, primarily because he is also the PM for the Programmable Matter Program — the “novel physics” of “a new functional form of matter, based on mesoscale particles, which can reversibly assemble into complex 3D objects upon external command.”
There is revolutionary promise for such composability in multiple fields, not just defense. Zakin described it several years ago in a speech as “a concept so simple, yet so revolutionary that it pushes even the DARPA envelope. A vision that has profound implications for how we think about chemistry and materials. A vision that could provide our warfighters with meaningful technological surprise.”
Zakin is a demonstrably brilliant scientist, of the sort you expect to find at DARPA. Indeed, in that same speech (“The Next Revolution in Materials“) which he gave at DARPA’s 25th Systems and Technology Symposium a couple of years ago, Dr. Zakin said: “I joined DARPA because it is unfettered by conventional wisdom.”
One area where he has been exploring beyond traditional boundaries is in developing “the infochemistry project,” which combines the powers of chemistry and information technology. In an exotic illustration, Dr. Zakin is directing a research program on “Chemical Communications,” which I’m not sure I fully understand but which sounds like some sort of holographic persistent Twitter:
The Chemical Communications Program is exploring innovative methods to develop self-powered chemical systems that can encode an input string of alphanumeric characters (i.e., a message), convert the message to a modulated optical signal, and transmit it repetitively to a receiver.
The ultimate goal of this program is to develop a small replicator device, with the form factor of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or cell phone that―
Permits the user to input an arbitrary 60-character alphanumeric message.
Translates the message into an appropriate set of modulated chemistries.
Embeds these chemistries into a disposable substrate (the transmitter).
Ejects the substrate for deployment.
The replicator device will enable warfighters to generate disposable optical transmitters in real time, each with a user-specified message. It will be compact, lightweight, and powered by batteries or solar cells. – DARPA website, Chemical Communications Program
With projects like these under his belt, Zakin is credited with reviving the chemistry discipline at DARPA, which had fallen away over the years. But now he’s scheduled to leave the agency in 2010. He is uncertain where he’s heading, but perhaps he can be persuaded to spend some time with like-minded souls in Microsoft Research; I suspect many there would find his infochemistry approach very appealing.
An interesting profile of Dr. Zakin in the journal Analytical Chemistry notes that “Academia is one option. Venture capitalism is another. Zakin has launched so many basic science research projects that have the potential of becoming commercial products that he says, ‘it’s almost a sin not to look at all that from the other side.’ ”
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