信息网络正在各地迅猛崛起，并以史所罕见的规模和速度生长成为世界性社会基础结构，深刻地改变着人们的生产方式、工作方式、学习方式、交往方式、生活方式和思维方式，成为工程学界以至整个社会普遍关注的集点、热点和前沿。文章旨在从理论上廓清信息网络的概念，阐明为什么信息网络对于科学技术的进步、对于世界经济和人类社会的发展能够产生如此巨大和深远的作用与影响。在此基础上，论述信息网络在现代工程学中的作用与地位，以及信息网络工程学在当前的主要研究内容和方向。

Information Network has been grown up and spread out to the entire globe extremely swiftly in recent years. It has also very quickly turned out to be a world-wide new infrastructure of the society and made great influence to the ways people work, live, learn and think.The astonished phenomenon has been regarded as a real frontier and focus in science and engineering, extracting great attentions from science and engineering circle as well as the whole world.

An attempt is made in the paper to establish a new discipline, the information network engineering, based on the above phenomenon.First, the concept of information network is re-defined clearly here and then the working mechanism of information network is analyzed in depth. A comparative discussion on the functions embodied in human activities and that performed in information network is carried out and the working relationship between man and information network is found to be the socalled symbiosis. As a result of the analyses above, a list of the important issues and directions in information network engineering study is briefly summarized.