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Wallis Annenberg Speaks at IST Groundbreaking
December 7, 2007
 The groundbreaking ceremony for the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology took place at the building's site on Friday, December 7. The aim of the new facility is to foster collaboration, interdisciplinary research and teaching intrinsic to this emerging academic discipline. Wallis Annenberg, vice president of the Annenberg Foundation, was among the honored guests, and delivered the following remarks."I am delighted to be here today . . . let me try and put this groundbreaking in context. When the first computer was invented more than 60 years ago, it took up 1500 square feet and it needed 18,000 radio tubes just to keep running. That may be why, back in 1949, Popular Mechanics magazine boldly predicted, and I quote, 'computers in the future may weigh no more than one and a half tons.' There is more computer power in some small cell phones carried around by young people than there was on the spaceship that took Neil Armstrong to the moon. "With the help of computing, the human genome is merging far-flung disciplines such as biotechnology, genetics, and information technology, promising to unlock the darkest secrets of illness and disease. The Internet is bringing about an explosion of commerce, of education, of ideas, even in some of the poorest and remote villages of the world. Most of you know that Caltech's IST initiative is doing pioneering work in faster Internet transmission, sending data so fast that soon we may be able to transmit the entire content of the Library of Congress in about 10 minutes. Michael Elowitz, one of Caltech's recent "genius grant" recipients, is using computers to look at the way cells communicate with one another to form organisms, the building blocks of life itself. "Needless to say, the name Caltech is already synonymous with this kind of work. But when you're crossing so many different disciplines, when you're reinventing the very boundaries of science and the way it can improve our lives, you deserve a research home, an intellectual crossroads that is as collaborative and inclusive and revolutionary as the work itself. This center will be that home, and I'll tell you why I am especially pleased to play my small part in helping it along. "As a nation, as a society, we don't do enough to fund basic scientific research. Even on the brink of such major advancements, it is too often a monetary afterthought, and when we do fund it, very often it is dedicated research, when any scientist can tell you that pure, undirected research, the kind that chases theories wherever they may bleed [sic], the kind that defies easy categorization, is where the great breakthroughs are found. We simply must redouble our commitment to basic, undirected, scientific research. It is dizzying to think of what's been achieved in this area just in our lifetimes. "Thanks to this new center, thanks to the work you're already doing here in IST, in another few decades today's boldest predictions may seem as old-fashioned as that 1500-square-foot computer."
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