European Cooperation in Informatics, a joint enterprise of the Information Processing Societies, conference report 1976 | dijkstra

seems it was the first eci conference and according to dijkstra not a very successfull one.

(In this respect the panel discussion was very revealing: at least half of the time was devoted to problems related to standardization! From the history of programming language development they should have learned to what disasters that premature concern about standardization may lead.)

P.S. To give you some impression of how "international" this conference was: more than 150 participants were Dutch. P.P.S. A final quotation from our IBM-spokesman: "Interfaces decrease performance and increase manufacturing cost.".

the papers.

the trip report of e.w. dijkstra gives a little bit of an inside about the "twoness" of europea :: usa || programmers :: computer scientists.

Trip Report IBM Seminar about "Communication and Computers'', Newcastle, Sept. 1973: There are two completely different views of programming. On the one hand we have the (academic) study about the nature of the intellectual challenge, on the other hand we have programming as it is done and can be done by the hundreds of thousands that are called "programmers" today. These are two completely different subjects, and when two groups are talking about them as if it were one subject, unaware of the "twoness", endless confusions arise ...

... the giant IBM forcing a de facto standard upon the world of computing, "ma Bell" forcing in a very similar fashion a de facto standard upon the world of communication and finally as a third (politically very powerful) party the ARPA network, an achievement that, in spite of all its patent shortcomings, will be a model for many future efforts, if only because it has been such an expensive experiment ...

As far as his [sandy fraser, bell labs] technical message was concerned, he was also very careful --alarmingly careful, one might say-- : he made the impression of arguing that all technical considerations pointed in a direction opposite to the store-and-forward techniques chosen for the ARPA network, but clearly he wished to avoid making all ARPA fans his declared enemies ...

There were two talks from PTT officials, a management talk by Mr. G. Dale from the English PTT and a technical one by ir.A. Boesveld of the Dutch PTT. The first speaker dealt with international politics, the second one described Stored Program Controlled Telephone Exchanges.

After both talks the audience misbehaved, at least to my standards; the audience started to attack the (his) PTT for monopolistic attitudes, misuse of power, failing public relations etc. I understand that it can be quite frustrating to get PTT's permission to hook an unusual gadget to their lines, but this seminar was the proper place or moment to air(?) those frustrations.

Mr. R. Scantlebury from the NPL, Teddington, described the m again experimental!-- NPL Data Communication Network. The subject, I gather, was appropriate. It was, however, a little bit too obvious that the speaker had done so before; it was a nice, polished presentation, but the speaker could not get excited about his subject, nor could his audience. I always like to listen to him lecturing, but that is because I like his English. | djikstra archive

would like to read more about the talk of g. dale, though.

also of interest: "on the fact that the atlantic ocean has two sides" | ewd611 - includes the suggestion: skip the first speaker as his appearance is due to sponsoring.

... He was amused by my innocence. Didn't I know that the first performer was a complete bogus speaker? Of course it was all humbug, everybody in the audience knew that! Puzzled I asked him why the man had been invited and why, at the end, some of the participants had even faked a discussion. "Oh, on occasions like that, we just go through the motions. IBM is one of the sponsors of this conference, so we had to accept an IBM speaker. He was given the first slot, because the sooner it is over, the better.". I was flabbergasted. Since then I have learned that this "going through the motions" is, indeed, a typical habit of the American scientific community. Whenever a large project is sponsored by a sufficiently prestigious or powerful body (MIT, ARPA, IBM, you name it), it is officially treated as sound and successful. The above story illustrates how utterly misleading that habit can be for an innocent European.

eurosclerosis: symptoms were an evident lack of dynamism, innovation and competitiveness in comparison with Japan and the United States. | ert