CPS616: Technologies and Applications of the Information Age
Draft 1: Geoffrey Fox August 7,1994
Background
Computational science can be defined broadly as the discipline on the interface 
between computer science and applications of computers. The current Syracuse 
course CPS615 and others nationwide, can be considered as "Computational 
Science for Scientific Computing" or "Technologies and applications for 
Scientific Computing". The audience is both the technologists (Computer 
Science, Computer Engineering and Applied Mathematics) as well as the 
application fields such as Computational Chemistry, Physics and Aerospace 
Engineering. We propose a new course CPS616 playing a similar role to 
CPS615 but aimed at the Information related applications rather than scientific 
computing. At Syracuse University, application students could come from 
IST(Information studies which also covers technologies), 
Newhouse(Communications), Maxwell(Public Administration), VPA(Visual and 
Performing Arts), Education. Technology students are from Computer Science, 
Computer Engineering and IST.
Implementation
We propose to offer the full course in the first semester (January to April) of 
1995 with a trial run of reduced scope as part of CPS713(Applications of 
Computational Science) this fall. We will make all teaching material available 
electronically and have discussed producing a textbook (electronic and 
conventional). Many authors and teachers will be needed to cover field. Not all 
of these teachers will be at Syracuse University and videoconferencing may be 
used for part of the course. The course is currently structured as about ten 
independent modules of about three to six hours per module. We are now 
seeking comments and offers of help and collaboration.

Overview of Draft Curriculum
The conference proceedings "R and D for the NII: Technical Challenges" 
obtainable from EDUCOM (nii-forum@educom.com) is one useful general 
resource. It would be important to collect other useful general and specialized 
reference books for either teachers and/or students. There are currently 10 
modules listed below. Possible material for each module will be found in the next 
sections.,

1) The Internet and Specialized Testbeds as Prototypes of the GII (Global 
Information Infrastructure)
2) Physical Network
3) The Consumer Multimedia Enterprise: Multimedia Videogames, PC's, Settop 
boxes, and Workstations
4) Digital Media: Audio, Video, Graphics and Images
5) User, Application and Service Interfaces
6) Client and Server High Performance Multimedia Computer Requirements 
andArchitecture
7) Base Software and Systems Architecture of the GII
8) Pervasive and Niche Applications for the GII
9) Generic Services and Middleware on the GII
10) The Emerging GII Enterprise in Industry, Academia and Society


1: Curriculum of Module: Internet and Specialized Testbeds as Prototypes 
of the GII (Global Information Infrastructure)
1) What is Internet including History, Phenomenology and base 
Technologies
2) Learn to use gopher, Mosaic etc.
3) Peruse examples of text, image, video, Information systems
4) How to prepare and convert HTML, JPEG, MPEG
5) Gigabit Testbeds

2: Curriculum of Module: The Physical Network
1) Local Home Delivery --  THE GII Offramps -- Copper pair, coax, fiber, 
wireless, Cellular, ADSL
2) Trunk Transmission -- fiber, Satellite
3) Switching -- ATM, ISDN
4) Architectures: Cable and Telephone Company, Distributed, Centralized, 
Multivendor, Military(Global Grid)

3: Curriculum of Module: The Consumer Multimedia Enterprise: Multimedia 
Videogames, PC's, Settop boxes, and Workstations
1) CD-ROM
2) Settop Box
3) CD-I, 3DO, Nintendo, Sega, Atari(Jaguar)
4) Specialized Hardware: DVI, Video Accelerator cards
5) SGI and other high end systems
6) Multimedia Authoring
7) Edutainment
8) Anatomy of selected videogames and Multimedia titles: SIMCITY, MYST, 
NBA Jam, Crash and Burn, Mortal Kombat, Encarta

4: Curriculum of Module: Digital Media: Audio, Video, Graphics and Images
1) Rendering and Modeling
2) Photo-CD
3) Compression of Images, Video, Audio and Text -- MPEG, JPEG, Wavelet, 
Fractal
4) Individual and "crowd" display technology
5) Computer Animation for movies such as Jurassic Park
6) Video browsing
7) Video indexing -- speech recognition
8) Displays: HDTV

5: Curriculum of Module: User, Application and Service Interfaces
1) Virtual Reality
2) X, Motif
3) Mosaic and its future
4) ATM Layers (AAL)
5) Interfaces for real world users such as children

6: Curriculum for Module: Client and Server High Performance Multimedia 
Computer Requirements andArchitecture
1) Multimedia Clients (see module 3)
2) Parallel Video and other Information servers
3) Parallel I/O Issues
4) Disk and Archival Storage Issues
5) Specialized versus General Purpose Architectures (Workstation, 
Mainframe, Teradata, nCUBE, IBM SP-2 and equivalent)

7: Curriculum for Module: Base Software and Systems Architecture of the 
GII
1) World Wide Web -- URL and futures
2) Network Protocols, Management and Switching -- data transport
3) What is right/wrong with TCP/IP, PVM, MPI, ISIS etc.
4) Fault Tolerance
5) Distributed Operating Systems
6) Televirtuality
7) Network Resource Allocation
8) Caching

8: Curriculum for Module: Pervasive and Niche Applications for the GII
1) Movies on Demand
2) Interactive TV
3) Digital Library
4) Telemedicine
5) Education
6) Global Grid(Defense)
7) Commerce
8) Manufacturing
9) Distributed Scientific Computing

9: Curriculum for Module: Generic Services and Middleware on the GII
1) Parallel and Distributed Databases
2) Security, Privacy -- cipher/decipher
3) Collaboration -- distributed whiteboards etc.
4) Digital cash
5) Decision Support and Datamining Tools
6) Geographic Information Systems -- Terrain data

10: Curriculum for Module: The Emerging GII Enterprise in Industry, 
Academia and Society
1) Early (successful) commercial services
2) Convergence of industries
3) Convergence of Academic Fields
4) Convergence of Computing and Communication
5) What (if anything) will happen to society from the GII -- Quality of Life, 
Jobs, Education --are there important negative implications?
6) Intellectual property rights on the GII
7) What information is available now (free or more money) and what could 
be made available
8) Current Internet Assets
9) Kodak Picture Exchange