As hardware prices continue to tumble, Internet use in countries with low-cost access to the Internet, particularly Scandinavia, Canada and the United States, has penetrated as many as 50 per cent of households. But it is still the science research community that sets the technical challenges, with research centres in neuro-imaging and particle physics, for example, expecting to generate 1015 bytes of data every year, and with the anticipated development of petaflop (1015 floating-point operations per second) computing power distributed over networks.

The US research community has already set the infrastructure agenda by promoting the idea of ‘grids’, in which reliable processing power and data are distributed among relevant communities by means of ‘middleware’ (see, for example, www.gridforum.org). Commendably, the Academia Europaea and the European Science Foundation are also pushing for urgent development along these lines, and are preparing a joint report that urges European action at every level.

So who needs to do what in Europe? A strong report — well documented and vivid in depicting the opportunities — needs to be published as soon as possible, and circulated to all capable of actively supporting the idea, whether in or beyond the research community. A proposal for investment needs to be considered by the council of research ministers next May, and the European Commission should approve funding as part of its fifth Framework programme.

Because such development will also benefit people beyond the research community, the case is intrinsically strong at these elevated levels of decision-making. But researchers must make a case for such investment locally if their institutions are to exploit the grids. The Academia Europaea/European Science Foundation have identified the cost of periodic upgrades that institutions need to provide for: about 10 per cent of their annual budget every seven years or so. That represents a tough challenge for a university. Researchers in the United States, Europe and elsewhere should lobby their rectors accordingly.