The rise of cyberinfrastructure and grand challenges for eCommerce

Advances in ICT have enabled the transformation of commerce into eCommerce. The eCommerce revolution is well under way, but what grand challenges are on the horizon? This paper extrapolates from the past to understand the forces that shape the future. It focuses on cyberinfrastructure growing out of the Cold War and highlights the role of government, Big Science and of the National Science Foundation in that story. Big Science and eCommerce will continue to shape Web activities and to react to advances in ICT. Both are involved in the co-evolution of physical, social, organizational, economic and legal factors and face analogous issues arising from similarly disruptive transformations, though the manifestations of these transformations differ in their surface features. Each may lead in addressing a particular issue at a given time, but can learn from the other. Finally, this paper identifies three Extreme Grand Challenges for Big Science and eCommerce that represent important steps toward an even brighter future for both.