On The Train (High Bandwidth Network), Aug. 5, 2009

I was at the MSC Innovation Centre this morning having a discussion on MYREN. MYREN stands for the National (Malaysia) Research Education Network. Technically it is a high bandwidth network infrastructure that was meant to provide opportunities for the research communities to collaborate virtually. Their popular services being an infrastructure for high definition video conferencing (VC) or just a normal VC, video streaming, e-learning and high power computing facilities. These are the obvious usage of the network and if you study and understand the network better actually it could be the best investment that you ever made for knowledge sharing and acquisition especially among the academic community. One thing that I like and people at MYREN doing right is to encourage a community-based business model among their users. Simply because that what it should be. Their entire research community should realize this and tap all the potential of the network to the fullest. As I was listening to the briefing I was also thinking and one thing that I realized immediately was not the bandwidth or the power of the network but the power of connectivity it provided across all expert groups for face-to-face conversation. Unfortunately, culturally, the research and academic communities failed to see this and instead pegged themselves to the belief that knowledge is power. They refused to recognize the big picture. Whatever their issues or problems they have with each other they have to see the positive side of the coin. For us we have a pretty good idea of how we are going to utilize the network.