3. Current News and Work in Progress at GLOSAS:

a. Lord Perry Award goes to Dr. Takeshi Utsumi, Chairman of GLOSAS
b. Dr. Utsumi's Acceptance Speech (abridged)


(a)

The 1994 Lord Perry Award for Excellence in Distance Education was awarded to Dr. Takeshi Utsumi, Chairman of GLOSAS, at the University of the World's 6th Annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, on November 1, Lord Perry presiding. Lord Perry established Open University in the U.K. which was emulated in many other countries.

The occasion for the award ceremony was the EDUCOM conference at San Antonio Convention Centre from October 31 to November 3, 1994. The Award is the most prestigious accolade in the field of distance education. A distinguished group of prior recipients includes Professor Yash Pal of India, a theoretical physicist, former Secretary of the Department of Science and Technology and Laureate of Marconi International Fellowship Award; Dr. Arthur C. Clarke, CBE, of the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka, well known author and the first to suggest the possibility of using geo-synchronous satellites for communications; and His Excellency Jose Chaves, Ambassador of Colombia to the United Nations.


Following are excerpts from Tak Utsumi's acceptance speech.

(b)

Philosophy and Realization
of
Global (electronic) University (GU) System

Distinguished Members of the Board, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is my great honor to receive a Lord Perry Award for Excellence in Distance Education, and to join the distinguished group of prior recipients, Professor Yash Pal, Dr. Arthur C. Clarke, and Ambassador Jose Chaves.

I would like to wholeheartedly congratulate Dr. Jim Miller, Lord Perry, and the members of the University of the World for this outstanding award system. This award gives credibility to the fledgling academic field of global electronic distance education. It also encourages our colleagues who are now striving for its spread to every corner of the world with the use of various telecom media for betterment of mankind and world peace keeping in the 21st century.

At this memorable occasion, I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to our electronic colleagues around the world for their continuing mutual encouragement, extraordinary help and cooperation, and generous "in-kind" service support to my long-standing dreams of establishing a Global (electronic) University (GU) system and a conduct of Globally Collaborative Environmental Peace Gaming through Global Neural Computer Network of the Global Brain. Therefore, this honor should be shared with all of them.

I am very happy to have this opportunity to briefly describe our Global (electronic) University system project and its underling philosophy.

I. GLOBAL (ELECTRONIC) UNIVERSITY (GU)

Global (electronic) University (GU)(TM) consortium seeks to improve the quality and availability of international educational exchange through the use of telecommunication and information technologies. Its main activity is to achieve global electronic education across national boundaries by developing a cooperative infrastructure and by bringing the powers and resources of telecommunications to ordinary citizens around the world. Another goal of Global University is to empower under-served people of the Third World by giving them access to the educational excellence available at the institutions of the more developed. Students could access some of the world's finest resources with a far greater variety of educational philosophies, courses and instructional styles than they could ever encounter on a single campus.

This is "the 21st century version of Fulbright exchange program."

This system is a corollary to many U.S. distance education organizations which now extend their educational services across state boundaries. An outstanding example among them is the National Technological University (NTU), which President, Dr. Lionel Baldwin, is the key person for its success and who is one of the distinguished board members of the University of the World.

(...)

The ultimate goal of the GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A. (GLOSAS/USA) is to establish a Globally Distributed Decision Support System with distributed interactive computer gaming simulation system, for problem analysis, policy formulation and assessment, to be used for training of would-be decision makers in conflict resolution, crisis management, and negotiation with win-win cooperation.

This is to be done with integrated use of distributed computer conferencing, databases and simulation systems among various countries. Several systems will be interconnected to form a global neural computer network [a term coined by me in 1981]. The total system will act as a single system with parallel processing of those subsystems in individual countries. Here, each game player with his submodel and database corresponds to a neuron, TCP/IP oriented node to a synapsis, and packet-switching Internet the nerves of a global brain.

Vice President Al Gore's speech on January 11, 1994 to communications industry leaders said, "The Department of Defense is investing well over $1 billion in the development and implementation of networked distributed interactive simulation. This technology, which allows dispersed learners to engage in collaborative problem solving activities in real time, is now ready for transfer to schools and workplaces outside of the defense sector."

(...)

... along with our U.S.-Russia Electronic Distance Education System (EDES) project, we helped establish the Association of International Education in Moscow with the Ministry of Science, Higher Education and Technology Policy of the Russian Federation. This is to later become a Russian Electronic University as a part of our Global University system. Others are Global University in Ukraine (GU/UKR), Global University in Costa Rica (GU/CR), and similar activities in Japan, Canada, Italy, Colombia, Poland, Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, etc.

GU/USA has already gained wide support of prominent educational institutions, information technology specialists and industry in many countries, making this an international project to help Russia, Ukraine, other excommunist, and the Third World countries.

The students, faculties and researchers of our Global University system will be the "would-be" or "pseudo" decision-makers of our planned Global Environmental Peace Gaming exercises mentioned before.

(...)

We advocate a Space Station Library System which will consist of three space stations on the geosynchronous orbit. Not only books and archived information in the U.S. Library of Congress or at any of similar libraries in any countries, but also educational courses available at any schools on earth can be uplinked to the nearby space station library to be stored in compact disks which can be retrieved with a juke-box type system. Those space libraries and ordinary communication and broadcasting satellites will be connected via laser communication beams which technology is now a hot pursuit in Japan, the U.S. and European countries. One can obtain information or educational course from the other side of globe through those routes. We call this system a Strategic Peace Initiative (SPI).

(...)

VI. WHAT LIES AHEAD

1. "Multimedia of America (MMOA)"(TM) Project

GLOSAS is now forging ahead to develop a one-to-many receive-only multimedia system to broadcast American educational courses to rural and remote areas around the world. Video of an instructor, handwriting in color on an electronic white board, image/graphic with annotation, dynamic graphic presentation by real-time execution of an application program/simulation model, etc., can be seen in windows on computer screen. On the other hand, teachers and professors (active or retired) can also transmit their courses from their offices or homes through ordinary telephone lines for worldwide broadcasting.

2. Large Scale GLH

In cooperation with the Fulbright Association Task Force on East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union, GLOSAS will assist Hungarian Fulbright Commission to organize a large scale GLH at the occasions of the 50th anniversary of Fulbright exchange program and of the 1100th anniversary of the nation of Hungary. This GLH will be centered in Budapest, and will focus on medical information, telemedicine, nurse training with electronic distance education, etc. Proposed panelists are former President Jimmy Carter, former Surgeon General Dr. Everett Koop, etc. This GLH will range from Japan, Australia, New Zealand, North and South America, entire Europe and Former Soviet Union (FSU).

VII. CONCLUSION

We all know that technological advances have made global communication an everyday fact of life: but the lives of so many millions of people, particularly in disadvantaged countries, are still untouched by the great educational possibilities that have already been opened up for relatively few [De Blasi, 1990]. We are at the threshold of a new age in education and communication but the use of the new tools is so far reserved mainly for the privileged few and is scarcely discussed as a matter of public policy. The emerging Global University (GU) attempts to provide cooperative, experiential learning opportunities on the widest possible scale and for the purpose of fostering peace and sustainable development [Ljutic and Utsumi, 1991].

Global University will distribute education from all the world's finest sources to all students who crave knowledge, wherever they are, so as to enlarge and expand the present exchange of courses into a worldwide educational system that can provide a specially tailored educational program for each individual, bringing to his or her home an array of resources that can empower individuals and bring new wealth to the Third World also.

Global (electronic) University is an evolutionary concept with no global precedent. The time is ripe for global electronic distance education.

Let us work together.

Thank you very much for your interest.


The full text of the speech is available from Dr. Utsumi as well as from our FTP site (see 1. About GN above).


Return to GLOSAS News Contents for this issue.

URL: http://library.fortlewis.edu/~instruct/glosas/news43.htm

December 1994


GLOSAS NEWS was orinally posted to the WWW at URL: http://library.fortlewis.edu/~instruct/glosas/cont.htm by Tina Evans Greenwood, Library Instruction Coordinator, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado 81301, e-mail: greenwood_t@fortlewis.edu, and last updated May 7, 1999. By her permission the whole Website has been archived here at the University of Tennessee server directory of GLOSAS Chair Dr. Takeshi Utsumi from July 10, 2000 by Steve McCarty in Japan.