FYI France: Grandes Ecoles Symposium, May 27-30 -- part 1 of 3 Sophia Antipolis, France (pretty close to the beach at Cannes, but we are working -- really) This place, Sophia Antipolis, is the French Silicon Valley. UC Berkeley and MIT are holding a Symposium here this week, with a consortium of European engineering schools, and with the French Grandes Ecoles, the higher education schools which have trained France's engineers and political leaders since Napoleon. (We have Websites for the event at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/IS3/ and http://www.enst.fr/ura/IS3 .) The declared Symposium subject is, "A New Technological System for a Global Society". But for this read, "The Internet", "Multimedia", "Distance Learning", "The Future of Engineering Education and Research on Both Sides of the Atlantic", and -- last but by no means least -- "Shouldn't We Invite the Asians Next Time?" MIT's Vice - President, David Litster, is co - chairing one of the sessions, and he has brought with him Eugene Skolnikoff, Eleanor Westney, and others from his institution. The UC Berkeley delegation includes the Chancellor, Chang - Lin Tien, the Vice - Chancellor for Research, Joseph Cerny, the Dean for International and Area Studies, Richard Buxbaum, and a number of senior professors and researchers. The French have brought Ecole des Mines Director Jacques Le'vy, Bernard Sutter, an impressive array of French and other European professors, scientists and engineers, education administrators, researchers and writers, and other dignitaries, and even the "father" of Sophia Antipolis himself, French Senator Pierre Lafitte. There is at least one Nobel prizewinner on the list, and several names which decorate the firmaments of nearly anyone who is in attendance, or anyone who is interested at all in the Symposium topics. Despite the common interests, fundamental differences of approach are becoming evident, early on. These are differences between the US and Europe, but perhaps also between the US and the rest of the world in general. The Symposium is becoming a microcosm of all the possibilities, but also the problems, involved in "scaling up" local thinking and technology to international applications. I thought that a conference report posting here might interest anyone involved with France, Europe, higher education, the Internet, or really any things international. What follows contains not a compte rendu, but only a few highlights, intended to convey flavor rather than substance: for the full picture please see the Websites, mentioned above. 1.0 A Multi - Cultural, Multi - Disciplinary, International Agenda The agenda would interest any sociologist of international affairs: Day 1 includes a "Systems of Partnerships and Competition" session, about patterns of cooperative international research in the new hi - tech world, and an "Infrastructure of Basic Research" session, about the challenges facing basic research in the new R&D environment. Day 2 offers "Multimedia and Networks", with discussions of the social impacts of same -- the Internet and the World Wide Web will come in most directly here -- and "Bioengineering and Environmental Engineering", considering cutting - edge biomedical, bio - remediation and agriculture work, and its various international ramifications now. Day 3 promises a summing - up: panels of pretty interesting people -- scientists, journalists, political leaders, even a futurist and a Benedictine monk. Few leaves are being left un - turned. 2.0 Welcome -- Monday evening, May 27. Bernard Sutter has welcomed us this first evening. One can say among other good things of Sutter that he is tireless. The sheer energy which he devotes, to gathering together such a disparate group of high - powered individuals, leaves all of us who participate in the organizing breathless. Sutter began his career in India in the 1950's, he says, working with France Te'le'com consumers: using his considerable persuasive powers on potential consumers, no doubt -- the Symposium's success is due much to his abilities. Jacques Le'vy, Director of the Ecole des Mines and President of the host Confe'rence des Grandes Ecoles, addressed the group this evening, welcoming us and urging us on to collective understanding and action. Dean Buxbaum of UC Berkeley cautioned us that he himself is not a scientist, like most present, but an international lawyer. Buxbaum considers the law, though, an expression of "social and cultural concerns", and he wonders -- with, he says, Raymond Aron -- whether in science always "that which can be done, will be," or whether the "Technology Sector" might not cooperate more with the "State and Societal Sector". Buxbaum also mused briefly about employment -- a matter of great concern now to his European audience -- wondering whether the new knowledge - intensive technology industries might one day provide jobs, for the labor - intensive industries which they have displaced. There have been brief addresses by others. But the first evening has been devoted primarily to the problem of jet - lag recovery for most of the attendees. It is an international group, and issues of hotel check - in, time - zone negotiation, foreign currency transaction, and general multi - lingual reorientation -- "does this thing really say that it will take them _three_ days to do my laundry?" -- are the greatest initial concerns. 2.0 Day 1 -- Partnerships and/vs. Competition, and "The Basics" The formal procedure today is to present the two sessions, "Systems of Partnerships and Competition", and "Infrastructure of Basic Research", one in the morning and one in the afternoon, broken by a lunch beneath the Provenc,al pine trees. Session 1: "Systems of Partnerships and Competition" The UC Berkeley Chancellor, Chang - Lin Tien, opened the first session by declaring his own personal connection. He lived as a child, he says, in the French "zone of influence" in China, in Wuhan and Shanghai. His command of the French language has disappeared, he admits, but not his affection for French culture, or his conviction that much can be gained from forging international links among different cultures. He has seen, Tien says, great international progress in this century both in his own professional field, science, and in democracy. He offers the strides made by the EC and NAFTA as examples. Today, he says, "Regardless of where you are in the world you can see the whole world as a whole...". His greatest hope for both science and democracy in general, and for the "Partnership and Competition" aspect of this Symposium in particular, is that more examples of "many different constituencies all working together" might result. Jean - Pierre Chevillot supported Tien's call, citing both progress and problems which have been encountered. He is a Conseiller to the EC's DGXII, and Directeur de Recherche for the French CNRS / Centre National de Recherche Scientifique. (The CNRS is sort of a combination of NIH, NIMH, and NSF, with several other US government agencies thrown in. Nearly all R&D done in France has some CNRS affiliation.) Chevillot has been active in European international R&D efforts for many years. Michael Gerlach, of UC Berkeley, described Japan - US business networks and practices. He speaks of markets, alliances, and firms, all three of which have increased recently, he says, despite earlier fears that each might make competitive inroads against the others. He describes two well - known differences between Japanese and US practice: domination of the Japanese effort by large business organizations, and the Japanese tendency to form cooperative business groups. His own research is in, he says, patterns of Japanese hi - tech business relationships. Gerlach's presentation has been the first example of a very interesting phenomenon generally in evidence at the Symposium. R&D cooperation, it has been observed by several speakers, may be both multi - disciplinary and international. Gerlach represents both. He is a business professor addressing an audience composed primarily of scientists: but the scientists seem to find his organizational behavior examples directly relevant to their own work. He also is an expert on Japan, speaking to a US / European audience: again, the audience appears fascinated by his Japan examples. This was only the first occasion on which I heard people asking, "Shouldn't We Invite the Asians Next Time?" J.S. Metcalfe, of the University of Manchester, spoke of the group selection involved in international cooperation, warning, "Different technologies require different amounts and types of cooperation." MIT's Eleanor Westney reinforced Metcalfe's points about the capabilities of the firm, suggesting that their enhancement, through technology and organization innovation, is a primary challenge. David Mowery, of both UC Berkeley and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, challenged misconceptions which he believes exist regarding cooperative R&D. Cooperation among universities and publicly - funded programs in both the public and private sectors has been successful, he says, but with consequences both intended and unintended. He suggests university patents as an example: such cooperation can establish an "innovation interdependence", which can interfere with declared institutional and governmental policies. At primary risk, Mowery says, are "welfare consequences" of recent technological change: health, education, environment, social equality. What will be the regulatory mechanisms, who will be the regulators, Mowery asks, particularly in an emerging era of international cooperation? He points to the general confusion which exists now, even within the US itself, over intellectual property issues. Trade negotiations have offered some regulatory help, Mowery said to me later in the corridor -- GATT, the WTO / World Trade Organization -- but these so far are at most only partially successful, and they only cover trade. [I am editing this on the day that the US Courts are rejecting a Congressional attempt to censor the Internet; I read today, as well, that the French legislature is considering making a similar censorship attempt -- and French courts do not have legislative review powers equivalent to those in the US.] The final panel for "Systems of Partnerships and Competition", ably chaired by the Ecole des Mines' Armand Hatchuel, discussed some of the real possibilities for cooperation. Eugene Skolnikoff of MIT cautioned us not to be too sceptical. Major societal change due to technology has happened before, he observes: the urban growth explosions of the 19th century, the birth of telecommunications then, the introduction of both horseless carriages and the electric light. We must preserve a sense of proportion in our discussions, Skolnikoff urges. This said, the "permanence of change" appears to be a distinguishing characteristic of the current era, at least as perceived, Skolnikoff believes. There is a continuing "alteration of factor endowments" now, yielding flexibility, choice and ultimately inter - dependence, he says. The nation - state, which used to provide a modifying force, essential for crises, has receded. Yet science and technology work still essentially are national. Skolnikoff warned against the growth of the view that universities are "just another interest group", among the many which now are "feeding at the public purse" for R&D resources. Lunch! (this is France) Lunch was held, as mentioned, beneath the Provenc,al pines. Sophia Antipolis is a place of recent architecture and almost unbelievable natural beauty in the Spring. Writers like Pagnol have described the Provence region almost entirely in terms of the profusion of herbs and blossoms which greet walkers and picnickers here in April and May. We all walked a short way to lunch, up to a futuristic terrace - like building, with many skylights -- the conference center itself is equipped with one of Bucky Fuller's geodesic domes over its foyer -- and the much - anticipated and thoroughly - enjoyed French cuisine and good wine. The walk was enough to remind us that we were in "Provence in Spring": plenty of wildflowers peeking out from beneath the rocks, and the pines whispered. Sophia Antipolis has certain advantages, as a hi - tech conference center, over a Burger King lunch in Cupertino. Session 2: "Infrastructure of Basic Research" The afternoon of Day 1 was devoted to the hard - core: "Basic Research", normally defined in most academic settings as, "that which you will not understand unless you already do". At least several of us, perhaps many, came prepared to be awed or at least confused. UC Berkeley's Bernard Sadoulet introduced an element of awe at first. He works in "cosmology", he says. Such a term rings alarm bells immediately in the brain of this former philosophy student. The bells became thunderous, then, when Sadoulet proceeded to show a slide purporting to depict the history of the universe: "There, over at the left, is the beginning... there at the right is the end... and we are somewhere in the middle, just about...", he gestured, "there." This may be pedestrian talk in physics, but it truly is awesome in philosophy. Sadoulet's presentation itself, however, makes a literally more mundane, and for me intellectually much more manageable, point. He looks over his awesome slide and describes the work and data which have been contributed to it by a number of different international research groups. "There are the French... and this came from the British... that was an American contribution... ", etc. It is a dramatic illustration of Sadoulet's fundamental point, that physics today is conducted nearly always by large, cooperative, and usually - international teams. There were presentations made by Danielle Imbault, of France's CEA / Commissariat a` l'Energie Atomique, by Yves Petroff, Director of the European Synchotron (he fondly recalls his own student research days at Berkeley), by George Trilling (spelled "Georges" in the French program), physicist - extraordinaire from Lawrence Berkeley Lab, by Mme. F. Praderie, of the Observatoire de Meudon, and by others. The descriptions generally are of successes in international scientific cooperation, although session organizer Kenneth Smith of MIT offers the cautionary example of the Space Station projects, which are going ahead in the US although its international project has stalled. The reasons for all of this -- for successes as well as failures -- were not immediately apparent. It occurred to me, as I listened to the scientists, that success in funding might vary directly with the degree of obscurity of the project to be funded: the more the public and the politicians understood, the less likely the funding. David Litster put the question on a more elevated plane, in his summation: "Politicians are professionals regarding human nature," he warns, "we should listen to them about this." He acknowledges that currently there is a "diminished governmental interest in funding international research". "Political review is replacing peer review", in many research areas, he says: a prospect which alarms many scientists. Litster concludes with the warning that, "you never can know with research": he himself has seen many odd examples, including one seemingly - "useless" radio telescope experiment, which led to great improvements in cellular telephony, and the ability of "911 / emergency" services to locate callers. Next: Multimedia, Bioengineering, and a Summing - Up. (For a description of Grandes Ecoles Symposium II, held at Berkeley in 1993, see FYI France for November 15, 1993: locations shown below.) XXX FYIFrance (sm)(tm) e - newsletter ISSN 1071 - 5916 * | FYIFrance (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic newsletter, | published since 1992 as a small - scale, personal, | experiment, in the creation of large - scale | "information overload", by Jack Kessler. Any material / \ written by me which appears in FYIFrance may be ----- copied and used by anyone for any good purpose, so // \\ long as, a) they give me credit and show my e - mail --------- address and, b) it isn't going to make them money: if // \\ if it is going to make them money, they must get my permission in advance, and share some of the money which they get with me. Use of material written by others requires their permission. FYIFrance archives may be reached online at http://infolib.berkeley.edu , or via gopher to infolib.berkeley.edu 72 (path: 3. Electronic Journals (Library-Oriented)/ 6. FYIFrance/ or http://www.univ-rennes1.fr/LISTES/biblio-fr@univ-rennes1.fr/ (BIBLIO-FR econference archive), or gopher.well.sf.ca.us , or via telnet to a.cni.org , login brsuser (PACS / PACS-L econference archive). Suggestions, reactions, criticisms, praise, and poison - pen letters all will be gratefully received at kessler@well.sf.ca.us . Copyright 1992 by Jack Kessler, all rights reserved. XXX end