0.3 Executive summary  (Page 2/4)

Commission members include humanities scholars, social scientists, administrators, and entrepreneurs fromuniversities and organizations public and private, large and small. All were selected for their experience with digital technologies.The Commission’s deliberations were informed by the testimony of scholars, librarians, museum directors, social scientists,representatives of government and private funding agencies, and many other people, gathered in a series of public meetings held inWashington, DC; New York City; Chicago; Berkeley; Los Angeles; and Baltimore during 2004; by national and international reports byother groups on related missions; by advisors to the Commission, selected for particularly relevant expertise; and by responses tothe draft report, which was made available for public comment from November 2005 through January 2006.

The Commission heard from those who wanted more advanced software applications, greater bandwidth, and moreaccess to expertise in information technology. We also heard from many who spoke about the potential for cyberinfrastructure toenhance teaching, facilitate research collaboration, and increase public access to (and fair use of) the record of human culturesacross time and space. As a result, this report addresses the particular needs and contributions of those directly engaged inteaching, research, and cultural work; but it also places those needs and contributions in a larger context, namely, the publicgood that these activities, collectively, produce.

As more personal, social, and professional time is spent online, it will become increasingly important to havean online environment that cultivates the richness of human experience, the diversity of human languages and cultures, and thefull range of human creativity. Such an environment will best emerge if its design can benefit from the strengths of thehumanities and social sciences: clarity of expression, the ability to uncover meaning even in scattered or garbled information, andcenturies of experience in organizing knowledge. These strengths are especially important as the volume of digital resources grows,as complexity increases, and as we struggle to preserve and make sense of billions of sources of information.

Many who work in the humanities and social sciences have come to recognize that knowledge in these disciplinesis on the edge of some fundamental changes, and that it would be better to approach these changes with specific goals in mind. Thisreport suggests what some of those goals might be. The Introduction answers a few fundamental questions: What is cyberinfrastructure?What do we mean when we refer to the humanities and social sciences? And what are the distinctive needs and contributions ofthese disciplines in cyberinfrastructure?

As the title of this report is meant to indicate, the online world is a new cultural commonwealth in whichknowledge, learning, and discovery can flourish. Our aim, therefore, is to show how best to achieve this cultural commonwealth for the betterment of all.