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Distingushed Professor Emeritus Murray Turoff
Information Systems
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Newark, NJ 07102
References:
(a) (20091019) Constructing Indian Early Warning System (IEWS) and then Western Asian Early Warning System (WAEWS)
(b) Takeshi Utsumi, GLOSAS/USA
"Globally Collaborative Environmental Peace Gaming (GCEPG)"
(c) Utsumi, T., (2008), "Development History of Peace Gaming and Global University System," (September 7, 2008)
(d) (20091014) (1) Possible connections for the creation of the Middle East and Middle East Early Warning System (MEEWS) and (2) Flyer on "Grand Challenges on Modeling and Simulation for International Cooperation on Crises and Risky Enterprises"
Dear Murray:
(1) Many thanks for your msg (ATTACHMENT I) in response to Reference (a) above.
(2) You kindly suggested me to read “The Limits to the Growth” by Donella and Dennis Meadows, et al, of the Club of Rome which was published by the Readers’ Digests in the spring of 1972. You then propose that their model would better be updated by someone.
(3) In the mid-1960s, I took the course of System Dynamics (SD) under Prof. Jay W. Forrester of Sloan School of Management of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, MA.
I was then offered a Senior Research Scientist position at the Lincoln Lab of M.I.T. to join in the System Dynamics Group, but I did not take it because of the following two reasons -- if I took the job, I was surely ended up to be with Dennis’ group;
(a) Their salary was not much compared with the one at the Stone and Webster Engineering Company in downtown Boston, -- this company constructed the world first nuclear power plant in Springfield, MA, but I worked in their Ethylene Division,
With this company, I could have an opportunity to serve as a General Chairman of the Summer Computer Simulation Conference (SCSC) later, in addition to basic design job of many ethylene plants in Japan (US$1 billion/unit) — see more below.
(b) I was not quite convinced with the technical validity of the System Dynamics methodology.
For example, though the SD is the first attempt to use the Cybernetics Theory with positive and negative feedbacks to social systems, the social systems have intangible factors which quantification is almost impossible — e.g., the famous or “IN”-famous “Quality of Life” index, etc. Compared to this, the process control simulation of the ethylene plant was much rigorous, logical and easy.
BTW, we are now working with Millennium Institute which was originated by G. O. Barney, who was once a member of Dennis’ group and my long-time friend since then.
(4) As mentioned in the References (c) and (d) above, I served General Chairmanship of the 1971 Summer Computer Simulation Conference (SCSC) of the Society of Computer Simulation (SCS) in Boston.
I invited Dennis’ group to the Macro-system Simulation session, though it was almost 10 months before the publication of the “Limits of the Growth” book — Dennis was not at the session because of his travelling, but his group members, e.g., Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, were there to present their project status, basing on the World3 model, which was firstly composed by Prof. Forrester on his way back from the mtg of the Club of Rome.
As soon as I heard their talk, I thought how a hell their half dozen specialists/researchers could claim to know everything of the world. Japan is a part of the WORLD and Japanese should know much better than they did as far as about Japan, so that Japan side should be modeled by Japanese.
This was clearly the violation of the basic Iron Rule #1 of simulation, i.e., “Make simulation as much close to SIMULAND as possible.” When such a very basic rule was violated, their simulation outcome was not totally credible and acceptable;
Lo and Behold, immediately after the publication of the book, flurries of severe criticism appeared in SIMULATION, the official monthly journal of the SCS, the most authoritative professional journal on computer simulation — accusing the accuracies of the data used in the model. One of them was by a Dutch economist as saying that Yamani, Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia was at the Harvard MBA, and read the book. He then twisted arm as gathering OPEC ministers and raised crude oil price from US$2/barrel to $8/barrel, which resulted to the so-called first oil shock and subsequent world economy crisis with millions of job loses — I was shocked with this article, but at the same time, I was very surprised to learn the power of computer simulation. Namely, computer simulationists have tremendous social responsibility — like high priests of Inca dynasties.
(5) I then presented my first paper on our Globally Collaborative Environmental Peace Gaming (GCEPG) project (Reference (b) above) at the First International Conference on Computer Communication (ICCC) in Washington, DC in October 1972 (Figure 6 of Reference (b) above);
An outline of the hierarchical structure and distributed components of an integrated, interactive peace gaming/simulation system for energy, economics, and foreign trade in the USA and the Japanese sides was depicted in this diagram. Each block in the figure represented dissimilar computers in those countries interconnected through data telecom network (e.g., Internet nowadays). These computers included simulation models designated in each block. All models would be executed in concertedly via satellite and terrestrial telecommunication links, as if a single global scale super computer with massively parallel processors.
This was the starting point of our so-called “distributed simulation” with distributed system dynamics simulation models to comply with the basic Iron-Rule of simulation, which Prof. Jay W. Forrester, originator of the System Dynamics methodology, called the “Enhanced System Dynamics.”
At that conference, I encountered with the followings, which changed my life;
(a) demo of packet-switching ARPANET (a predecessor of Internet), which was invented by Dr. Paul Baran.
I then worked on its extension to many Asian countries, especially to Japan — see the subsequent development history in the Reference (c) above.
(b) demo of computer mediated conferencing system — predecessor of your Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
You may recall our lunch at a steak-house with you and Prof. Louis (Pete) Mayfields, who was my prof. at Montana State University and an officer at the National Science Foundation at that time.
After this lunch, you took me to the attic of the Executive Office of the President, which is located at the west of the West-Wing of the White House, and showed me a PDP/11 which was conducting the world first computer mediated conferencing system for the Wage and Price Control Program of the Nixon Administration.
(6) After attending the 1972 SCSC in San Diego, California, I visited Professor Bob Noel of the Political Science Department of the University of California in Santa Barbara. I saw a conference room with a wall- size world map, and an American flag standing by. It was like a situation room of a governmental agency.
Professor Noel was conducting a political gaming on international affairs using ARPANET. He assigned several different schools to act as the governments of the United States, Soviet Union, Japan, China, etc. Students had to study about the assigned countries before the start of the game.
I inquired about the actor for Japan, and was told that it was the University of Southern California. I remarked that: "However hard Americans may study about Japan, they cannot think as Japanese, since they eat steak with knife and fork while Japanese eat noodles with chopsticks."
So I proposed that Professor Noel invite the University of Tokyo to play the role of the Japanese government. Thus was born the original idea of Globally Collaborative Peace Gaming. This was to align with the Iron Rule #1 of simulation, i.e., “Make simulation close to SIMULAND as much as possible.”
(7) In the spring of 1973, I conducted the world-first global "Peace Gaming" with Professor Noel with the use of e-mail over computer networks. I invited the University of Tokyo, and he invited the University of Brussels, and the University of London in addition to several universities in the U.S.
It was a "normative" gaming based on exchanging diplomatic e-mail messages without the use of quantitative computer simulation models. American universities sent their messages through ARPANET and overseas universities through GEISCO (a GE’s time-sharing service firm).
Students acted as the heads of states and cabinet members of assigned countries. All messages were accumulated and re-distributed by a node at the University of California in Santa Barbara.
The scenario designed by Professor Noel assumed an international crisis with a border incident between Iran and Iraq – which actually happened about half dozen years later. The Japanese team sent their messages to the United Nations team, asking to make the Straits of Malacca an international zone to secure oil flow from the Middle East to Japan. They also asked the U.S. and Soviet Union teams to withdraw their naval fleets from the Pacific and Indian Oceans, respectively.
Professor Jonathan Wilkenfeld of the University of Maryland was a graduate student under Professor Noel at that time. He then continued this normative exercise into his International Communication of Negotiation with Simulation (ICONS) at the University of Maryland
(8) De-regulation of Japanese Telecommunications Policies for the Use of E-mail:
Unfortunately, this exciting global gaming had to be terminated upon instructions from KDD (Kokusai Denshin Denwa, the Japanese overseas telecommunications authority). I then found fine prints in the KDD’s user manual on the Telenet’s extension line, prohibiting the use of e-mail. This was due to the Japanese telecommunications regulations, which strictly prohibited message exchange through a computer without changing its contents. However, a node in Santa Barbara, California, performed the message exchange, which was clearly outside of the Japanese jurisdiction. I thought this was absurd.
(9) Beforehand of this incidence, I asked Professor Jack Pugh of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) to install his DYNAMO simulation language for System Dynamic simulation modeling into GE’s GEISCO so that I could use it from Tokyo through a time-sharing terminal.
After the KDD’s instruction mentioned above, I received a message from GEISCO/Tokyo office requesting information how to use the DYNAMO in GEISCO. The message was sent from Jørgen Randers (a member of Dennis’ group) in Oslo, Norway. Recalling the KDD’s instruction, I asked them why such message exchange was possible. Their reply was because the message was sent from GEISCO/Oslo office to GEISCO/Tokyo office, i.e., within the same company. I therefore thought that this was patently unfair.
(10) This KDD’s prohibition of email negated my previous effort of extending Telenet to Japan, since e-mail would be the most convenient means of communication among game players. So, I chose to work through the U.S. government on the de-regulation of the Japanese telecommunications policy for the use of e-mail. The late Commerce Secretary, Malcolm Baldridge, kindly took this issue as one of three Japan’s “Non-tariff Barriers” when he visited Tokyo in October 1981. This was the beginning of fierce US/Japan trade (including automobile) battles in the following years.
My efforts, however, encountered severe opposition from the Japanese Ministry of Post and Telecommunications (MPT), and of course KDD, which was the semi-governmental monopoly at that time. This was due to the difficulty of “mind-change” from circuit-switching technology for analog telephony to packet-switching technology for digital data communications. Another reason was that almost 60% of KDD's revenue was from Telex, which worldwide networks were just about completed with huge investments around that time. E-mail completely forfeited their billion dollar investments!! Lo and behold, their financial status dropped into "red" a decade after I succeeded with the de-regulation effort! In a sense, I acted as the so-called “Creative Destruction,” a famous word by Joseph Schumpeter. (Incidentally, ITT, RCA Globcom, Western Union, etc., large US telex companies also disappeared after proliferation of email, even though I was the one who suggested Telenet to utilize their worldwide telex network in 1976.)
My effort also triggered the privatization of Japanese telecommunications industries and de-monopolization of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), the world’s largest corporation, and KDD. Thanks to these privatization and de-monopolization, Japan now has the world most advanced broadband Internet. Incidentally, Japanese Ministry for Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) was the most formidable bureaucratic bastion at that time.
(11) As you see above, I have been working on the upgrade of the world simulation since BEFORE the time when the “Limits to the Growth” book of the Club of Rome was published, with substantial spin-off benefits, e.g., extension of packet-switching telecom networks to various Asian overseas countries, especially to Japan, the deregulation of Japanese telecom regulations, particularly on the use of email, etc.
Those telecom deregulations were emulated in many other countries since then, with more than one billion email users around the world nowadays. In a cynical sense, the inquiry from Jørgen Randers (a member of Dennis’ group) in Oslo, Norway mentioned above kicked off my de-regulation effort, and changed the world — I then admit that this is the ONLY and very significant benefit brought by the Club of Rome and Dennis’ “Limits to the Growth” book.
Best, Tak
ATTACHMENT I
From: Murray Turoff <
Reply-To:
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:38:09 -0400
To: Tak Utsumi <
Subject: Re: [gu-new] (20091019) Constructing Indian Early Warning System (IEWS) and then Western Asian Early Warning System (WAEWS)
go back and read the club of Rome model, it might not have been that far off in its prediction. some one should update that model
On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 10:30 PM, Tak Utsumi <> wrote:
Murray:
(1) Thanks for your comment.
(2) You might have been thinking about the tsunami.
Our early warning system is for the policy analysis to prevent the economic and social collapse and subsequent fierce, severe conflicts due to the global warming, resource scarcity and food security, etc.
Best, Tak
From: Murray Turoff <
Reply-To:
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:42:46 -0400
To: Tak Utsumi <
Subject: Re: [gu-new] (20091019) Constructing Indian Early Warning System (IEWS) and then Western Asian Early Warning System (WAEWS)
Tak, all the technology including the sensors, computers, communications already exists and is tried and proven. the design of placement and such is part of the implementaiton and it is hte money for building the system that is the only thing needed to get it going. that is for the seismic and wave detection whihc is the most important for that area. it does not have to be a satilite system except for communications which may need some more communication satelites..
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* Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D., P.E., Chairman, GLOSAS/USA *
* (GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A.) *
* Laureate of Lord Perry Award for Excellence in Distance Education *
* Founder and V.P. for Technology and Coordination of *
* Global University System (GUS) *
* 43-23 Colden Street, Flushing, NY 11355-5913, U.S.A. *
* Tel: 718-939-0928; Fax: 718-795-1655; Skype: utsumi *
* Email: ;
* U.S. Federal Tax Exempt ID: 11-2999676 <
* New York State Tax Exempt ID: 217837 <
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