vision of knowledge engineering which by the public was misunderstood as the final 
targets of the project. 

c. The economist's way would judge the success by the amount of economic impact 
caused by the results of the project. Again this way does not make sense for a basic 
research project for which the impact is to be expected not before many more years. In 
this respect the project would actually have to be judged a total failure since at present the 
economic impact is probably close to zero. In the long range, however, it might (and 
probably will) turn out to be enormous. 

d. The viewpoint I take is that of a scientist.. It consists in estimating what the net-effect 
of the enterprise might be, i.e. the effect of the enterprise in comparison with the 
situation, were it not been undertaken. As effect I understand all the changes caused by 
the project including the scientific results, the technology evolved, the systems and 
machines built, but also the changes caused in the Japanese and the international research 
community, or in the entire world for that matter. In addition to such an estimation I 
speculate about whether the net effect could have been improved by changing some of the 
project's conditions. 


3. The project's net effect 

The project has produced results and effects of very different kinds. A predominent 
effect is political and social in nature; others are of an infrastructural kind; and of course 
there are the scientific results in form of publications, systems and machines. I will 
discuss them all in this order. 

As far as I know, the FGCS conference in 1981 was the first conference held in Japan 
which attracted the worldwide interest at such a high level of international visibility. For 
the first time the world got the feeling that Japan is about to take the lead in one of the 
key technologies of the future. Clearly, these feelings were mixed with serious concerns. 
Some people overreacted and spoke even of a technological war. Today some people 
again overreact. As they see that their fears have not materialized, they regard the project 
as a failure. 

On balance, I judge the political net effect as a success. Japan has indeed proved that it 
has the vision to take a lead for the rest of the world. On the other hand, it acted wisely 
and offered the results to the international public for free use, thus acting as a leader to 
the benefit of mankind and not only for its own self-interest. One must, however, be 
aware that politically the views have not settled down to a stable state of opinions. False 
political steps in the future could easily destroy the current positive state of affairs. 

Socially the effect of Japan's initiative is that the rest of the world has recognized the 
importance of information technology for the well-being of mankind. The existence of 
major institutions and projects in the US (MCC and others), in Europe (ECRC, SICS, 
ESPRIT, Alvey, and others), and in other parts of the world is to be seen as a direct 
consequence of the FGCS project. They all have contributed to the advancement of 
information technology. 

One of the major results and successes of the FGCS project is its effect on the 
infrastructure of Japanese research and development in information technology. By an 
extremely clever arrangement hundreds of young Japanese researchers in research 
institutions of industry or universities have actively learned about the latest state of the art 
in information technology. This is because of the many links of ICOT with companies 


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