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COMPUTER WORLD '91

The international symposium Computer World '91, held in Osaka, Japan, from 24-26 September 1991, is summarized.

by David K. Kahaner

INTRODUCTION

Since 1986 an annual international symposium is held in the Kansai area of Japan under the name "Computer World 'xx"--even years in Kobe, odd years in Osaka. The general idea of these is to promote computer usage and make various first-hand developments accessible to the community at large. This year's CW '91 was sponsored by the Osaka Government, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), and the Kansai Institute of Information Systems. Support was also provided by the Japan Keirin Association through its Machine Industry Promotion Funds; these funds are part of the profits that the association had obtained from the sponsoring of bicycle races in Japan. The symposium is also held as part of Japan's information month (September). This year's theme was Multimedia Technology and Artificial Intelligence, with the subgoal of making computers more friendly to people. The symposium was held at Osaka's International House, a beautiful, modern facility with large convention exhibit and lecture space.

Osaka is to Tokyo very much what Chicago is to New York, its Midwestern manufacturing heart. Like Chicagoans, Osakans are very proud of their accomplishments, but they also have a slightly defensive stance when comparing cities. Osaka is also the major city in Japan's

Kansai area. It already has an international airport, but the new Kansai airport, in the bay, will become a major siphon for visitors. The Japanese Government, well aware of the problems with congested Tokyo, is trying (at least on paper) to decentralize itself. While there are 3.5 million Japanese living in Osaka, it is much less congested than Tokyo, and like citizens of Chicago, Osaka's citizens claim that they are more human, more civilized, their food is more sophisticated, their language is more refined, their women are more attractive, etc., than those in Tokyo.

My invitation to attend was from the program chairman,

Prof. Seiji Inokuchi

Dept of Control Engineering
Osaka University

Faculty of Engineering Science
Toyonaka, Osaka 560, Japan
Tel: +81-6-844-1151
Fax: +81-6-857-7664
E-mail: inokuchi@inolab.ce.osaka-
u.ac.jp

whom I had met at an earlier meeting. Prof. Inokuchi's interests are in threedimensional (3D) vision systems, and one of his systems is used at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States. Also attending many of the sessions

was

Mr. Christfried Webers
Technology Manager, Deutsches
Kulturzentrum
7-5-56 Akasaka
Minato-ku, Tokyo 107
Tel: (03) 3586-7104
Fax: (03) 3586-7187

E-mail: webers@gmd.co.jp

My thanks to both Inokuchi and Webers for their valuable additions to this report.

The general chairman of the organizing committee was

Dr. Tetsuro Kawakami

Chairman of the Board and CEO Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. 4-5-33 Kitahama

Chuo-ku, Osaka 541, Japan
Tel: +81-6-220-4061
Fax: +81-6-222-6476

1-2-12 Motoakasaka
Minato-ku, Tokyo 107, Japan
Tel: +81-3-3423-5411
Fax: +81-3-3423-5008

Considering the size of the organization that he manages, it seemed really remarkable to me that Dr. Kawakami actually attended many of the symposium sessions.

The CW '91 symposium combined about two dozen lectures in two parallel sessions and also a small vendor exhibit. Exhibitors were mostly Japanese vendors demonstrating artificial intelligence (AI) type software products;

one of the most interesting was Fujitsu's (see below). About two dozen Westerners were in attendance; most of these presented invited rather than submitted lectures. Simultaneous Japanese/English translation was available. In the past I have been disappointed with the quality of such translations, but in this case the translators really did an outstanding job, and I believe that very little was misunderstood.

The symposium has released a Proceedings with papers, some in Japanese. Copies are available by contacting

Secretariat: Computer World '91
Kansai Institute of Information
Systems

Osaka Edimae the 1st Bldg, 8F
1-3-1-800, Umeda
Kita-ku, Osaka 530, Japan
Tel: +81-6-346-2841
Fax: +81-6-346-2443

Total attendance was a few hundred. This was below the expectations of the SUMMARY COMMENTS organizers, who claimed that there were several other competing conferences during the same week. By Tokyo standards attendance was very low. Last year's supercomputing symposium drew several thousand, at least to gawk. I attribute this low turnout mostly to the much more modest exhibit venue, and also to the fairly technical content of the papers. This symposium has positioned itself about halfway between a highly specialized technical meeting and an exhibition. There were interesting papers presented on a variety of topics related to advanced use of computers. Everyone could find something to listen to and appreciate, but at the same time the wide range meant that it was not possible to glean any significant national trends except the obvious ones that computers are getting more sophisticated, more entwined into our culture, and more user friendly. Almost all the papers were overviews, ranging from economic prospects in the European Community (EC) to network capabilities in Japan; thus, researchers could get an excellent picture of a large part of some field but probably wouldn't learn much about very new results that were not already being communicated through more specialized channels--in short, an excellent opportunity to learn about one or more new fields but perhaps not quite so good to learn about new results in your field.

In a recent report [D.K. Kahaner, "Virtual Reality," Scientific Information Bulletin 16(4), 43-45 (1991)] I already mentioned eye tracking research at ATR and virtual reality activities at the University of Washington, both papers presented here at CW '91.

M. Cooley (FAST, Brussels) gave a mesmerizing opening talk about the implications of technology, generally, implications of technology, generally, and computing, specifically, on countries within Europe. I won't either summarize or comment on his Europerelated remarks as my focus is Asia (his paper is given in the Proceedings). However, with respect to the more AI related material, Cooley pointed out the need for more anthropomorphic systems, for expert systems that support rather than replace humans, and for systems that reduce the cultural imperialism of English; the need to free designers from menu-driven systems; the necessity of getting out from under our obsession with rule-based systems; a refocus on education rather than training; and overall more emphasis on human-centered systems. He ended by saying,

It is a profound responsibility of
all those involved to ensure that
we develop forms of science and
technology which will help to
heal a wounded planet, which

will address the issues of drought, poverty, and suffering worldwide and will develop sustainable systems and products which lay the basis for the form of society we wish to see as we enter the 21st century.

Many later speakers echoed his remarks in their own terms.

For me, the most inspiring paper was presented by K. Kikue (NHK) describing an experiment with sixth graders (12 years old) at a Japanese public school. NHK has prepared a 15-minute high definition television (HDTV) program showing how industrial progress has destroyed the forests in Japan. There is also an HDTV textbook containing photographs electronically printed in HDTV and a multimedia workstation. Using this workstation, the students (in small groups) prepared multimedia presentations about environmental issues, splicing in visual and sound bits from NHK's and their own materials in whatever order seemed appropriate to them. The sophisticated workstation software includes image menus and allows the students to edit image and sound from a laserdisk and also video tape that they shot themselves. Kikue showed a video taken of the students working together on their projects and then presenting them in NHK's "future classroom." The latter was filled with students, faculty, and parents watching their kids. Anybody who doubts that people will pay for HDTV should watch this video to absorb the excitement and enthusiasm of these children and then ask themselves if these 12 year olds will be satisfied with lesser technology as they grow into

consumers.

Researchers from Fujitsu described a new Al environment developed in Japan and only available (at the moment for Fujitsu systems) built with the following requirements in mind.

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