Letter from the President
Dear Colleagues:
I am pleased to share with you the final report of the President’s Information Revolution Commission.
The report is impressive. It is a thorough, thoughtful, and comprehensive assessment of the University’s information technology needs and opportunities. For this tremendous, year-long effort, I am most grateful to co-chairs Stephen Director and John King, to the commission members, to the members of the several subcommissions that studied the implications of the information revolution for teaching, research, infrastructure, and global outreach, and finally to the many faculty, students, and staff who shared their thoughts and advice with the commission.
The commission calls on us to embrace the emerging digital environment and to assist a world grappling with an explosion of information. As the report notes, a key principle, sometimes overlooked in the midst of hyperbole about the digital age, is that information is not knowledge. The University must engage with these important phenomena without, I would add, losing the particular intellectual character that has marked the best academic communities. The University of Michigan ought to play a pivotal role in harnessing the immense volumes of information to create real knowledge—and not least, knowledge about the digital environment itself. The University’s depth and breadth make an ideal setting not only for developing and using new technologies in research and scholarship, but also for studying how the information revolution affects every aspect of our lives—from politics to science, from technology to culture.
Many will be intrigued with the commission’s concept of creating an “ecology of experimentation” to encourage new collaborations and new discoveries. The sense of intellectual adventure expressed in this idea is one we all can appreciate. Experimentation may yield new areas of study, new approaches to old problems, and wider deployment of promising technologies that first appear in small pilot programs. In this process of trial and error, we will perhaps also discover useful knowledge about the nature of human interaction with these new technologies.
Much work lies ahead to meet the challenges outlined in this report. The commission has emphasized that there are significant short-term technology infrastructure needs. I am prepared to begin committing resources necessary for infrastructure upgrades, and to work with the executive officers and deans to strengthen the University’s network dramatically over the next five years. Indeed, some recommended infrastructure upgrades are already underway. It is worth noting, for instance, that all renovation and new building projects include technological infrastructure specifications that are consistent with the commission’s recommendations. Additionally, as recently as the April Regents meeting, several million dollars were committed to take another step in the extension and enhancement of the University’s fiberoptic backbone.
Also, the commission identifies various policy issues to be resolved, most notably our policies on intellectual property. I have recently received a preliminary draft policy from the Copyright Policy Committee appointed earlier this academic year. I plan to meet with the committee shortly and to bring this issue to the campus in the fall.
The scope of the report’s recommendations and the decisions before us are both daunting and exciting; certainly, they will require further deliberation and planning. I anticipate a series of campus discussions, and possibly a set of advisory groups to help guide our efforts. We will undertake these discussions in the months ahead.
Finally, and on a more global note, I am pleased by the convergence of several major institutional initiatives we have underway—in the life sciences, information technology, and in the upcoming report on undergraduate education. They complement and enhance one another, and none can fully succeed if approached in isolation. We must, therefore, do our best to see that these several discussions are integrated.
Again, my sincere gratitude to those who contributed to this significant effort.
Sincerely,
Lee C. Bollinger