The scientist's infosphere

The importance of national defense in the US required the development of tailor made computing and communication systems. The military coined the term infosphere to refer to the collection of remote instruments, appliances, computing tools, and people made accessible by these systems from a person's working environment, such as the cockpit of a plane or the bridge of a ship. Because military personnel are often mobile, they must use remote instruments and computing programs and they must collaborate with people at distant sites. It is concluded that within a decade, most scientists' infospheres will reside on portable computing devices. The infosphere will allow the scientist to access and control home appliances, office devices, laboratory instruments, and computing tools and to communicate with colleagues everywhere. Communication bandwidths may vary as the scientist moves from place to place, but the infosphere will increasingly free the scientist from the constraints of physical location. This freedom will change the ways in which scientific research is carried out, science is taught, and scientific results are disseminated.