<<April 21, 2000>>

Franck BIANCHERI <fbianch@club-internet.fr>

Colette Mazzucelli <colettegrace@earthlink.net>

Roger Lee Boston <rboston@tenet.edu>

Mr. John McLeod <mcleod@sdsc.bitnet>

Chris Nicholas <cgn@globexplorer.com>

Sam Venneri <svenneri@hq.nasa.gov>
 

Dear Franck:
============

(1)  Many thanks for your msg (ATTACHMENT I).

     I thank you for your continuing interest in our projects.

(2)  I have visited your web and was greatly impressed!!  Congratulations to
     your superb organization of the congress on 10/5th to 7th, 2000 in Paris.

(3)  The Global Peace Gaming will firstly have a computer simulation model of
     each country (if possible, with its submodels in various sectors of the
     country, e.g., industry, environment, energy, economy, population, etc.)
     in computers (desktop or main-frame) located in the country.  They will
     have their associated web-oriented databases and be connected through
     Internet in such a way that they can be executed together as a single
     computer simulation.

     Each computer will then have pseudo-decision-makers to manipulate their
     national policy parameters in cooperation with their counterparts in
     other countries with the use of email (or videoconferencing) via
     Internet.  They will then execute the entire simulation model with the
     new policy parameters and with graphical presentations of simulation
     results, until someone will request to stop it due to some reasons of
     his/her country.  All players then discuss via email for new set of
     policy parameters for next execution period, and so on.

     Those pseudo-decision-makers are the game players.  They will follow
     pre-set scenario to play games of international policy makings for
     attaining peace among countries.

          For example, industrial smog and automobile exhaust in European
          countries cause acid rain which harms forestry and fishery in
          Scandinavian countries.  How should each European country prevent
          such occurring in cooperation with each other? -- incidentally,
          such a scenario was once studied by the International Institute
          for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria some
          years ago, though their computer simulation model resided in a single computer.

          Another example is Colette Mazzucelli's (your friend who
          introduced your TIES project to me originally) Kosovo conflict
          resolution gaming.  She recently presented her project with Roger
          Boston and David Johnson during their Starlink session -- see
          <http://www.teched.org/starlink>.  It was very excellent and
          succinct presentation, though it does not have quantitative
          computer simulation models yet, for discussion basing on  facts
          and figures" as John McLeod often urged.  John's contention is
          that huge time and money for the preparation of simulation/gaming
          should not be wasted with mere normative (qualitative) discussions alone.

          During our Tampere event <www.uta.fi/EGEDL/>, we tested NetMeeting
          videoconferencing via broadband Internet between the University of
          Tampere, Finland and Montana State University, even though there
          were more than a dozen routers made by different makers.  It
          produced high quality audio and video, signifying that there was
          no packet loss and time delay.  This means that synchronous,
          simultaneous execution of dispersed, distributed computer
          simulation submodels for our peace gaming via broadband Internet
          is now technologically possible.

(4)  Excerpts from my hook draft/Chapter 5:  Global University for Global Peace Gaming":

           The global peace gaming of GLOSAS is a computerized
          gaming/simulation to help decision makers construct a globally
          distributed decision-support system for positive sum/win-win
          alternatives to conflict and war. The idea involves
          interconnecting experts in many countries via global value-added
          networks (VANs) to collaborate in discovering new solutions for
          world crises, such as the deteriorating ecology of our globe, and
          to explore new alternatives for a world order capable of
          addressing the problems and opportunities of an interdependent globe.

          The globally distributed peace gaming/simulations will be for
          policy analysis, conflict resolution, cooperation, and training in
          negotiation techniques. Gaming/simulation is the best tool we have
          for understanding the world's problems and the solutions we
          propose for them. The distributed mode with autonomously
          maintained and updated databases and simulation models will not
          only give credibility and integrity to the databases and models
          but will also motivate local people."

     You can find its complete format at;
     <http://www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS/Bookwriting/PART_I/Chapter_V/ISAGA_Paper.html>.

(5)  Such system may be of some interest to policy makers of European Commission.

          If the system users can be extended to K-12 level as envisioned in
          the 2nd or 3rd para's from the bottom of Chris' msg, it may
          attract some media coverage, too.

     However, I must say that it would require considerable preparations --
     would not be quite ready for your congress in this coming October.

Dear Chris:
===========

(6)  Many thanks for your msg (ATTACHMENT II) in response to my previous
     distribution on  Global Peace Gaming / Past and future possibilities -
     April 17, 2000," which you can find at
     <http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve/global-univ-2000.html>.

(7)  Glad to know that you were once involved with Earth monitoring and
     visualization systems, since our Brazilian colleagues are now soliciting
     the participation of the Brazilian Air Force's SIVAM project people in
     their mini-workshop and projects -- as you know SIVAM is a similar
     project as yours, but for Amazonian rain forest.

(8)  During the Founders Conference at the Arthur C. Clark Institute of
     Telecommunication and Information (CITI) on February 5th, NASA official
     presented their plan to construct globally distributed computer
     simulation system for K-12 children's designing a rocket.

(9)  I think that the construction of globally collaborative environmental
     peace gaming/computer simulation system with Systems Dynamics
     methodology would be much interesting to them, as you say.  I believe
     that the cause-and-effect diagram of the Systems Dynamics methodology is
     a very good teaching tool for K-12 children to understand
     interdependence of world phenomena and affairs.  And, this understanding
     would be the basis of world peace.

          Incidentally, after I took the course on the Systems Dynamics
          under Prof. Jay Forrester at the Sloan School of Management at the
          M.I.T., I was about to take Research Associate position at Draper
          Lab.  If I did, I might have joined in Dennis Meadow's group to
          produce the "Limits of Growth" book.  It was presented and
          discussed during the Macro-system simulation session (which was
          presided by John McLeod) during the 1971 Summer Computer
          Simulation Conference in Boston, MA for which I was the General Chairman.

     Anyway, I enjoyed visiting <http://www.globe.gov>.  This URL was created by the
     NOAA of the US Dept of Commerce.  Mr. John Schmidt, Educational Affair
     Division of the NOAA, kindly introduced me to Ms. Sanner of National
     Security Council at the White House in order for her to assist Vice
     President, Albert Gore's trip to Russia in September of 1993 -- on
     satellite videoconference and global networking for environmental
     issues.

          I mentioned subsequent effects of this connection in my previous
          distribution mentioned in Item (6) above.

Dear Franck:
============

(10) The prerequisite to global peace gaming is global education.

     We are now forging ahead to establish a Global University System with
     global broadband Internet which are to be financed with Global Service
     Trust Fund (GSTF).  Pls visit URLs listed in ATTACHMENT III for more information.

(11) During our GLOSAS board mtg yesterday, we discussed your cordial
     invitation for our participation in your congress.

     Although your programs have already been well set up, should you be able
     to kindly accommodate a session of, say, one and a half hour for our
     Global University System project, following persons may be able to present our project;

          P. Tapio Varis, Ph.D, Professor (confirmed)
          Acting President, Global University System
          Chairman, GLOSAS/Finland
          Professor and Chair
          Media Culture and Communication Education
          Hypermedia laboratory
          University of Tampere
          P.O.Box 607
          FIN-33101 Tampere
          FINLAND
          Tel: +358-3-215 6110
          GSM: +358-50-567-9833
          Fax: +358-3-215 7503
          tapio.varis@uta.fi
          http://www.uta.fi/~titava

          Dr. Marco Antonio R. Dias (tentative)
          Vice President, Global University System
          Consultant of United Nations University
          Former Director, Division of Higher Education of UNESCO
          36, Rue Ernest Renan
          92.190 Meudon
          FRANCE
          Tel: +33-1-45 34 3509
          Fax: +33-1-45 34 3509
          mardias@club-internet.fr
          m.dias@unesco.org

          Dr. David A. Johnson, AICP (confirmed)
          Board member of GLOSAS/USA
          Former President of Fulbright Association
          Professor Emeritus, School of Planning
          College of Arts and Sciences
          University of Tennessee
          108-I Hoskins Library
          Knoxville, TN 37996-4015
          USA
          Tel: +1-423-974 5227
          Fax: +1-423-974 5229
          daj@utk.edu
          davidj@buncombe.main.nc.us
          http://web.utk.edu/~djohnutk/

     We would be very happy if you can accept our proposition.  Your European
     university coalition may then join together with our GUS' to form the
     group of gaming players in the near future.

(12) I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best, Tak
            ****************************************
                          ATTACHMENT I

From: "Franck BIANCHERI" <fbianch@club-internet.fr>
To: <utsumi@columbia.edu>
Subject: Global Peace Game / Newropeans Congress
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2000 09:31:59 +0200

Dear Prof. Utsumi,

I am always very interested by the various emails I receive on your list.

Beside TIES which is developing fairly well and is creating a new type of
civil society transcontinental portal (soon a little "TIES brother", SITMED,
will be launched for the EuroMed area), I am in charge of a huge European
project which will take place in Paris on the 5th, 6th and 7th of October 2000
called:
"New Europe, New Challenges, New Generations". or in short the
"Newropeans Congress".
You can see more of it on http://www.newropeans.org/.

As this congress will also be a European wide event with numerous seminars
taking place in dozens of universities around Europe, and will have several
transcontinental developments, I was very interested by this concept of Global
Peace Game.

What does it consists in? Could it be used at the occasion of this October congress?

Thank you for circulating this information.

Best regards

Franck BIANCHERI
            ****************************************
                         ATTACHMENT II

Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2000 08:52:00 -0700
From: Chris Nicholas <cgn@globexplorer.com>
To: Tak Utsumi <utsumi@friends-partners.org>
CC: mcleod@sdsc.bitnet, sgoldste@cise.cise.nsf.gov
Subject: Re: Global Peace Game

Mr. Utsumi -

I must say, it was most fascinating to read through your last
email.  I can easily say that my studies and my career have been
extremely influenced by the book "The Limits to Growth" which I
read in high school, and the ongoing S3 column of John McLeod in
Simulation magazine. I spent my early working years at Goodyear
Aerospace working on synthetic aperature radar, and had a chance
to experiment with the Goodyear massively parallel processor
(MPP).  The Goodyear team at Goddard Space Flight Center had just
completed working on the Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment
(LACIE) and the Agriculture and resources inventory surveys
through aerospace remote sensing (AGRISTARS) using the MPP. I
have been professionally involved in Earth monitoring and
visualization systems ever since.

I also had the opportunity to be the lead technical resource for
Sun Microsystems' involvement in the Clinton Administration
"Netday" volunteer activity to wire K-12 schools for the
Internet, which reminded me once again of the power in an idea
whose time has come. Since then I have continued volunteering
time with the Oakland school district to build a bare-bones
intranet infrastructure out of entirely donated equipment, and we
now have FreeBSD UNIX servers running email and home accounts
throughout the district. We are multicast enabling the routers as well.

So I certainly am quite convinced in the power of media events
such as Netday. However, I believe that it is too late,
logistically, for us to do anything meaningful for the Earth Day
events of next weekend on the Mall, unless someone else you know
can set up and run compelling visual simulations and convince
people there to use them; I can only provide compute power at the
end of a multicast enabled connection.

As far as a focused, high-profile event, I think we will have to
position it for another time. But if we started now, we could
possibly stage something meaningful for late summer or early
fall, near the elections, but far enough away that there would
still be time to debate the outcomes of the game(s). That might
be the most effective course of action.

What I would like to explore is something that would run globally
for an entire week.  That way, perhaps we could generate news
attention such as existed during the famous human-computer chess
challenge. It would be very interesting if it were hierarchical
in nature, to produce both local and global results, soas to give
the results something meaningful locally as well to sustain interest.

If we could recieve some form of input via email from the K-12
level; perhaps they would get to "vote" on policy, it would be
extremely interesting to leverage the schools, data-input, and
political infrastruture of the www.globe.gov effort, and run
models at NASA, NASDA, ESA and IMF, as well as participation from
a few select NGOs currently protesting in downtown Washington.
(Sierra Club, NRDC, etc.)

NSF might be the ideal organization to coordinate a few major
university efforts.

Do you think this is possible?

Sincerely,

Chris Nicholas
            ****************************************
                         ATTACHMENT III

                      Reference web sites:

(1)  GLOSAS/USA:

     <http://www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS/>

(2)  Tampere conference:

     <http://www.uta.fi/EGEDL/>

(3)  Global University System:

     <http://www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS/Global_University/Global%20University%20System/Synopsis_11-5-99.html>

(4)  Global University System: Asia-Pacific Framework:

     <http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve_mc/asia-pacific/index.html>

     and

     "Draft of Travel Grant Application to the National Science Foundation
     for the Manila Mini-Workshop -- 1 of 5: Travel Grant Application / 2 of
     5: Workshop Schedule / 3 of 5: Grant Nominees / 4 of 5: Philippine
     Counterparts / 5 of 5: GUS in the Philippines Pilot Project Proposal -
     February 16-17, 2000" at
     <http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve/global-univ-2000.html>

(5)  Global broadband Internet networks:

     <http://www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS/Tampere_Conference/Global_Broadband_Internet/Global_Broadband_Internet.html>

(6)  Global Service Trust Fund (GSTF):

     <http://www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS/Tampere_Conference/GSTF/Synopsis_2-15-00.html>

     and

     <http://www.informatics.org/clarke/projects.html>

(7)  Manaus workshop:

     <http://www.argo.com.br/~alex_mau/workshop/workshop.htm>

     and

     "Draft of Travel Grant Application to the NSF for the Manaus Mini-Workshop - March 30, 2000" at
     <http://www.kagawa-jc.ac.jp/~steve/global-univ-2000.html>.
            ****************************************

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Franck BIANCHERI
President
PROMETHEUS-EUROPE
4, rue de Berite
F-75006 PARIS
Tel: +33.1.42.22.88.61
Fax: +33.1.42.84.12.30
fbianch@club-internet.fr
president@prom.org
centre@prom.org
TAKE A LOOK AT OUR WEBSITE: WWW.PROM.ORG
<ties-list> is a closed mailing list of North-American and European
partners for transatlantic information exchange.
For more information send "info ties-list" in a message body to:
Majordomo-K@dds.nl
Archive: http://www.dds.nl/hypermail/ties-list/
Contact: ties-list-owner@dds.nl
http://www.dds.nl/hypermail/ties-list/0007.html --About Tampere event.

Colette Mazzucelli, Ph.D.
Co-President
The Robert Bosch Foundation Alumni Association (RBFAA)
1864 74th Street
Brooklyn, New York 11204-5752
718 234-0143
Fax: 718 621 1659
colettegrace@earthlink.net

Roger Lee Boston
Rockwell Chair/Instructor
Distance Education/Technology Center
Houston Community College System
4310 Dunlavy Street
P.O.Box 7849
Houston, Texas 77006
USA
Tel: +1-713-718 5224
Fax: +1-713-718 5301
rboston@tenet.edu
boston_r@hccs.cc.tx.us (secondary)
http://www.rboston.com
http://www.teched.org/
http://www.hccs.cc.tx.us
http://www.teched.org/Finland
http://www.teched.org/ChinaLive
http://www.teched.org/starlink

Mr. John McLeod (Fax: 619-277-3930)
Founder
Society for Computer Simulation International (SCSI)
8484 La Jolla Shores Drive
La Jolla, CA 92037
619-454-0966
mcleod@sdsc.bitnet
mcleod@Sds.Sdsc.Edu

Chris Nicholas
GlobeXplorer, Inc.
cgn@globexplorer.com

Sam Venneri
NASA Hqs
202-358-4600
svenneri@hq.nasa.gov
**********************************************************************
* 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 of CAADE                                                   *
* (Consortium for Affordable and Accessible Distance Education)      *
* President Emeritus and V.P. for Technology and Coordination of     *
*   Global University System (GUS)                                   *
* 43-23 Colden Street, Flushing, NY 11355-3998, U.S.A.               *
* Tel: 718-939-0928; Fax: 718-939-0656 (day time only--prefer email) *
* Email: utsumi@columbia.edu;  Tax Exempt ID: 11-2999676             *
* http://www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS/                            *
**********************************************************************

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