FYI France: Grandes Ecoles Symposium, May 27-30 -- part 2 of 3 3.0 Day 2 -- Was ist "Multimedia"?, and "Bioengineering"? Session 3: "Multimedia and Networks" The second day began, after introductions by co - chairs Litster of MIT and Erich Spitz of Thomson, with my own non - demo demo of the Website which UC Berkeley's Roy Tennant, and the E.N.S. de Telecommunications' Jean - Pierre Tubach and Bertrand Serre mounted for the Symposium. A "non - demo demo" is a backup which you plan in case the official version doesn't work. I learned a lesson watching two masters, John Gage and Steve Cisler, long ago: always plan on three levels of "demo" backup in hi tech -- something to fall back on in case the "demo" doesn't work, and something to fall back on again in case of trouble at level 2. In our case we had no live Internet connection this morning at Sophia; but I had made printouts of the demo, and Roy had this slide of the homepage, so the talk actually went very well -- much favorable comment about it, and some resulting email since. People were impressed at seeing their own institutions "online" on the WorldWideWeb. One other note from my own presentation: I gave the audience copies of Oracle's very recent "NC / Network Computer" -- I call it "Non - Computer" -- press release, suggesting that this late news development could "blow away" the personal computer market as currently constituted. My own session role is to be what the French call an "animateur" -- to animate -- often blended with "provocateur", which has much the same ring as the "agent provocateur" of spy novels. My "NC" suggestion succeeded both in animating and in provoking: the vested interests of the personal computer industry are as strong in Europe as they are in the US -- a bit stronger, perhaps. It turns out that Oracle's President for World - Wide Operations, Ray Lane, was on this same Sophia Antipolis stage saying the same thing only last week. And the rumors, anyway, are that he was traveling with someone from Netscape named Jim Clark. This thing is developing fast. Camille Wanat of UC Berkeley then showed a real - life example of how the technology could help in daily work. Most of the conference attendees are educators -- professors, school administrators -- and all are interested in applying digital techniques at their institutions. Wanat showed her own engineering library's example of bringing IEEE publications to users online. The possibilities for their own libraries and schools were mouth - watering for many in the audience. The Grandes Ecoles are financially well - endowed, and have good - sized serials budgets, while other schools in Europe are not and do not, but all have increasing problems in providing information access. Wanat emphasizes the importance of mounting a "critical mass" of material of interest to users. She says this was the central success factor in her current project, and provided its decided advantage over similar predecessors. J.M. Chaduc of the Ministry of Industry, Post, and Telecommunications gave the historical and institutional contexts of my own and Camille's presentations. He mentions the Nora - Minc report, the history of Minitel, the project to "wire" all of France, the US and French "Information Superhighways", the recent Bangemann report calling for telecom deregulation, and the dawning problem of developing services to provide over all the infrastructure. Hundreds of suggestions were received, he says, in response to the 1994 call for "content" proposals. He reminds us of the difference between the US set of concerns in hi - tech -- private investment, competition, open access, flexible regulation, and universal service -- and the priorities of Europe -- privacy, intellectual property, individual rights, cultural diversity, global cooperation, and social implications. Patrick Purcell of Imperial College London addressed the "distance learning" topic which is of such great interest to the educators in the audience. All of them are worried about making effective use of the techniques, without allowing technique to become merely a stopgap panacea for education's currently - omnipresent financial ills. The University of Maine's Martial Vivet called for "evaluation", a crucial aspect of any learning approach, which thus far is remarkably absent from most distance - learning experiments. Hal Varian, Dean of the new School of Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley, outlined the plans for his program. "Library / information" schools are under no less a state of siege and change in Europe than they are in the US. France's "E.N.S. des Bibliothe`ques" added "Sciences de l'Information" to its name only a few years ago. All of the schools represented in the Symposium audience, like schools everywhere now, are wrestling with the various problems of teaching and using "this new information thing". The Berkeley approach, as Varian outlined it -- see http://www.sims.berkeley.edu for full details of what is a very complex picture -- received much corridor - comment. The summary of Session 3 was offered by a stellar panel, which included researchers, writers, professors, and economists. Le Monde's Michel Colonna d'Istria outlined his work toward an online edition for his publication (imagine "Le Monde" on a Website! -- http://www.lemonde.fr) and presented his conviction that online and print publication will work hand in hand in the future. This view was challenged by Serge Soudoplatoff. He just has accepted a position with "WANADOO" (http://www.wanadoo.fr) the French national Internet service of France Te'le'com. (Note: as of May 5 the Internet may be reached, from anywhere within the country, via dialup to a single number at a uniform rate -- 36.01.13.13 is the cheapest, and other numbers will be announced on October 10 -- all this is per the mandate of France's national president, at a meeting held last Fall). Soudoplatoff feels that print's former emphasis on "product" now has been shifted to "information", that "print will vanish". Colonna disagrees: he is a fan of the Internet, he says, but he offers the very reasonable reminder, and warning, that, "everything real cannot be put online". Colonna quipped, in English, that the challenge which he and other journalists nevertheless face is, "to turn our trademark into your [Netscape] bookmark". The outstanding star of this stellar group, I think -- I am a little biased, here -- was UC Berkeley's Stephen Cohen. He literally rattles off -- in a great challenge to the excellent simultaneous translation which was going on -- a number of "relevant considerations" which he suggests a "Multimedia and Networks" group might want to think about. These were fascinating. The economics are mysterious, he says: "marginal costs are declining", "there are network economies" -- "the more use there is, the more use there is". Pricing is in a quandary: the "free" Internet pricing model needs revision -- local network use predicated upon 6 - 7 minute sessions does not scale up to the WorldWideWeb which sees users logged in for 6 - 7 hours. Cohen warns against abstracting hi - tech applications elsewhere from the Silicon Valley model. California's Silicon Valley even has significant differences from Boston's "Route 128", he points out. He tackled the Colonna - Soudoplatoff discussion of print and reading: there is a place for variety, he says -- Danielle Steele novels perhaps always will appear in print, other things won't. The copyright and privacy concerns are serious, Cohen says, but he points out that laws themselves change to accommodate new realities: "it's just not good policy to have lots of people in violation of the law". Cohen is concerned about information inequality: universal service was a good idea for telephony, but what does it mean for the Web, he asks. Work patterns are changing: our urban / office building structure perhaps is giving way to a more rural / telecommuting idea. There could be some room here for answers to Dean Buxbaum's Symposium - opening question about Internet - based job opportunities. Cohen concluded -- or just "stopped", as he put it -- with the point that sheer speed has become paramount in information technology: "first to market" now is more important than many things, including quality -- he suggested the "qwerty" typwriter keyboard as an example of an approach which was able to predominate by being not best but simply first - to - market. Cohen also had the opportunity to display his talents telegenically. French television interviewed him about the Symposium: "they only gave me 1 1/2 minutes", he said -- so the Symposium faced the realities of the "sound - byte culture" which it is discussing, directly. There was an interlude, then, for an impressive panel to present an impressive project. Within the local Sophia Antipolis area, "Te'le'com Valley" is being established as more than just a name. A 155Mbs ATM platform is being set up to provide service to the entire Co^te d'Azur area, with eventual extensions elsewhere around the Mediterranean. Jean Paul Michel, who directs IBM's nearby La Gaude laboratories, and is President of "Telecom Valley", described the project. Other speakers -- one from Italy, another from Spain -- spoke of their own local efforts and of how these might be linked soon to that of the French. Outstanding among the presentations was that of Senator Pierre Lafitte. He is known in France as the "father" of Sophia Antipolis. Now he is providing the impetus and vision for the "Telecom Valley" project as well. Lafitte casts the project in very general terms: a triple convergence, he says, of, 1) digital technology, 2) information content, and 3) community and regional development -- a "globalization" of all three, Lafitte urges, "we must have the will to develop all of this." Lafitte is a senior French politician, a man of some standing in both his home territory in Provence and in Paris. But when he heard about the Symposium Website his reaction was immediate and very personal: "Let me have the Web address, I will try it from my office!" "Where is your office?", I asked him. "Why, in the Luxembourg Palace, of course!" How many senior US senators really are _this_ "online"? Session 4: "Bioengineering and Environmental Engineering" The session this afternoon has provided some of the best sparks. The program officially was devoted to three workshops, entitled "Biomedical", "Bioremediation", and "Agriculture": difficult areas, for anyone not fully - initiated. The whole assemblage was engineered ably and energetically by UC Berkeley's Kent Udell and the E.N. du Ge'nie Rural des Eaux et des Fore^ts' Claude Millier. (Someone, sometime, must tell me how the French think up the names for their schools?: "Ponts et Chause'es", "Ge'nie Rural des Eaux et des Fore^ts"!?) I am severely out of my depth in these subject areas, myself. I gather that all three contain some element of dynamic tension between those who would change things and those concerned that change disrupts various environments. Session 4 participants were to include Emmanuel Clair of Soletanche and Boris Rubinsky of UC Berkeley. But I confess that I had to spend much of the time in a nearby computer lab, exploring the Web with several people from the morning session. So I did not hear all of the Session 4 presentations myself. Hopefully some versions of these will get installed on the Symposium Website soon. I did get back just in time to watch some of the best controversies of the Symposium, though. UC Berkeley's Jennie Hunter - Cevera was standing, eyes and intellect flashing, defending US bioengineering against European environmental worries. A couple of European questioners were very concerned about work which has been done with California tomatoes, and the Hunter - Cevera defense was pungent and to the point. Of this more below. UC Davis' Lee Baldwin, somewhat more sedately but ultimately just as forcefully, made a very reasoned presentation of both facts and issues on similar work done on American cows. As with the tomato controversy, there was muttering from the audience: the use of hormones to increase milk production plays well to very different audiences on each side of the Atlantic. Of this more below, also. It did occur to me generally as an outsider, though, both how odd it is that such specialized and seemingly - remote areas can stir such deep passions, and how rare and wonderful that the passions might be aired and discussed this way, freely and openly in an international Symposium, rather than simply in newspaper disaster headlines. 4.0 Day 3 -- Summing Up: "The most famous phrase in science is not 'Eureka', but 'Gee, that's funny...'" (I. Asimov) The extraordinary panels assembled, on the third day, to try to wring conclusions from these wide - ranging discussions, enjoyed the exceptional abilities of an extraordinary moderator. Axel Krause has an established reputation as a journalist and editor at the International Herald - Tribune. His fine stage presence -- resounding deep voice, telegenic presence, and infinite yet firm patience with his charges -- make him a superb conference chair. It was obvious that he has done this before: the Web says that he does it often. Krause frames the questions of the Symposium as, 1) "What training is needed for scientists and engineers in a global economy?", and, 2) "What should we be looking at and preparing for?" UC Berkeley's Chang - Lin Tien was the first to respond. He enumerates three hard financial realities of the last 3 - 5 years in education: a) budget restructurings, with reductions in state aid to education, b) the uncompleted shift from Cold War military / space to new civilian / commercial emphasis, and, c) the "information" / telecommunications explosion. Tien says that integration, rather than differentiation, is needed in education: integration of a) theory / analysis / design / experiment with b) knowledge and with c) communication skills. Change must be dealt with better by the campus, he thinks. Resistance to change in educational institutions, in curriculum as well as in other areas, is the greatest challenge: "At Berkeley now we all are experimenting," Tien says. Gilbert Frade, of the Ecole des Mines, distinguishes between, 1) the task of understanding what is happening now, and, 2) the task of reconciling technology with society. For the first, perhaps we need some adaptation of fuzzy logic, he thinks: inter - disciplinary studies and student exchanges must be encouraged -- in education today, he says, "disciplines separate more than nationalities do". For the second the emerging question, Frade believes with deliberate irony, is "what to do about human error, the human factor?". Engineers must become non - scientists as well, he thinks. There is a lack of critical thinking in the new media now: "politically correct" means simply "lack of imagination", Frade feels. Krause observed that one extension of this point might be the problem of defining who will set the goals going forward?: the old problem of "church and state", in modern guise. John Weiner, of the US NSF / National Science Foundation, described what his own, new, "Office of Multidisciplinary Activities" is going to try to accomplish. "A map to the traditional departments," is how he sees it developing, he says. NSF sees the need for new approaches, called for by Frade and Tien and others, and is trying to respond. "Education needs to be better - integrated with research," Weiner says, "the time to degree is getting longer and less flexible." Funding is going into non - academic research, while education is aimed at training. His office will support university programs, he promises. Dom Hugues Minguet is "Responsable du Centre Entreprises" of the monastery of Notre Dame de Ganagobie, in Ganagobie, France. Just _try_ finding that on a map: Durance valley, high in the mountains -- the Web found it at http://www.imaginet.fr/apollonia/monasteries/mona04.html ("Benedictine, Priory founded around 950, Daily mass chanted in Gregorian", and, "Hostel for retreats: 14 rooms", and, "Crafts: jams, honey, perfume essences"), or you might try http://www.hh.se/stud/d95ms/skivor/ALBUM5F58.html for their CDROM of Gregorian chant (St. Benedict decreed self - sufficiency). Both Ganagobie and Dom Hugues are aspects of experience as much outside of my own California upbringing (Jerry Brown, maybe?), as was any of the earlier bioengineering talk. The "take" of Dom Hugues and the monks of Ganagobie on all of this is simple: there is a need for "Ethical Management", he says -- Ganagobie teaches this now, through retreats at the monastery and workshops held inside large French corporations. There is a "need for community to deal with the current speed of change", he believes: is Howard Rheingold listening? The four - part program of the monks of Ganagobie emphasizes: 1) "a sense of self - direction -- science will close in upon itself without a notion of self - direction" ["sens"], 2) "an idea of complexity", 3) ethical humanistic ideas, and 4) some idea of individual spirit or conscience. How remarkable, I thought, in my California innocence, that Dom Hugues and the monks of Ganagobie even are invited to such a gathering, much less are taken seriously by decision - makers such as the others here assembled. There could be few more dramatic illustrations offered by this Symposium of the differences between what interests most Americans in these fields and what interests so many Europeans. [And others? Think of Moslem countries, Latin America... the US is the exception rather than the rule in this, I myself think.] Next: Controversies, and Conclusions? 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