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It circles the globe connecting the hearts, minds and works of the people of universities and research institutions around the world.
The Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development, or GLORIAD,
is a network of fiber-optic rings that circles the world to allow scientists, students and educators
to collaborate in solving some of the planet's biggest science problems.
Climate change and environmental degradation and energy needs
and so on, these are problems that require us to work together
Greg Cole is the director of GLORIAD which is housed at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
He describes the network as a separate internet that has the technological advances and capacity
to allow scientists to transmit entire libraries of information in seconds,
permit thousands of simultaneous video-conferences,
and even enable surgeons to operate on patients on the other side of the world.
GLORIAD grew out of the end of the Cold War, linking the U.S. with Russia. It later spread to Korea, Canada,
the Netherlands, five Nordic countries, and this summer is adding Egypt,
other parts of the Africa and the Middle East, India, Singapore, and the list goes on.
The idea is to connect the U.S. with countries it's currently not well-connected to.
The magic of the internet for me was that it creates the possibility for people to engage
in peaceful, productive, work together
and maybe enables us to be collaborate,
to get to know each other and to realize what is common about us
as opposed to focusing, as we often do, on our differences.
Also this summer, GLORIAD is adding a social networking site, http://www.zeeba.net, that enables
users to exchange ideas on how to use the advanced telecommunications services better.
The idea is to let the community tell their stories of how to effectively use the technology. And we are just trying to create an ecosystem
in which those people can basically function.
in which those people can basically function.
At first, GLORIAD only connected scientists but now Cole wants to connect future scientists.
He's starting by connecting one local Knox County School to the network, so the kids can collaborate
on science projects with their peers in China and Egypt.
Tennessee is known, because of our GLORIAD program, for connecting much of the world of science and education,
but one of the problems that we have is that our young people in Tennessee have little access to these technologies
Cole believes by connecting minds, GLORIAD may not only help conquer the challenges the world faces today
but also change the world -- one fiber optic ring at a time.
I hope these communications networks enable us to build a
I know it sounds corny, more peaceful world.