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To: Jake0302 who wrote (71967)	1/24/1999 8:07:00 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 186894

U.S. announces increase in info technology spending By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent ANAHEIM, California, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Vice President Al Gore announced a proposal on Sunday to increase government investment in information technology by $366 million. The plan, part of President Bill Clinton's fiscal year 2000 budget proposals, is aimed at basic information technology research, beefing up computer and engineering capabilities and studying the effects that information technology has on the economy. ''This initiative, which we call 'IT squared', represents an unprecedented 28 percent increase in information technology research,'' Gore told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Anaheim. He said it will help Americans keep up with the current explosion in human knowledge. ''The science that this research could make possible is awesome to contemplate -- computers that can speak and understand human language, intelligent agents that can search the Internet on our behalf, and high-speed wireless networks that bring telemedicine to our most remote communities.'' Of the $366 million, $100 million would go to the Department of Defense for fundamental research, $70 million to the Department of Energy for basic, computer and workforce research and $38 million to NASA for similar projects. The National Institutes of Health would get $6 million, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would get $6 million and the National Science Foundation would receive $146 million. Gore said government-funded research had helped ''split the atom, splice the gene and put people on the moon.'' Basic government-funded research, he said, can look at areas private industry cannot afford to explore, but give private companies a platform to build from. Computer power doubles every 18 months now, Gore said. ''The consequences are clear in every industry. To take one example, a Ford (NYSE:F - news) Taurus now has more computing power than the Apollo 11 that took us to the moon,'' Gore said. ''Just six years ago there were no more than 50 sites on the World Wide Web,'' he added. ''Of course, now it is an engine driving the stock market, the futures market.... In the latest Christmas buying season, we saw the real ignition of e-commerce.'' But he said many people lacked the skills to take advantage of this booming science-based economy. ''At a time when 60 percent of the new jobs being created require advanced skills, only 15 percent of our people have those skills,'' he said. ''We must renew education, and we must make the investments that enable people to keep learning for a lifetime.''