DARPA has just come out with a new solicitation, “LOCO” (for Location and Connection Aware Content Pushing.)
In a nutshell, it posits that, while caching, P2P collaboration in data hosting, etc., can efficiently get content across the Net, what will be needed by the U.S. military is a network that anticipates what’s needed in advance of requests. Some of that’s intuitive (e.g., detailed tactical maps of areas being entered, order of battle for units likely to be encountered, etc.), but I think their targets are wildly optimistic, e.g. (by the end of less than three years of development) demonstration of a system scalable to more than 100,000 machines, able to deliver at least 50% of information required in advance of a request at least 80% of the time, while delivering unused information less than 10% of the time.
DARPA plans to make two to four awards to companies/teams, across two tasks: architecting such a system, and test & evaluation, including construction of a testbed.
I’m working with a company that is interested in the test & evaluation portion of the solicitation, and seeking teaming partners. There will also be a Proposer’s Day Conference on Feb. 27, in Arlington, VA.
This idea of anticipation as the next step in location awareness is a very interesting one, especially considering Jeff Hawkins’ idea of the brain as a prediction engine.