cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (05/18/91)
My Cyberspace Trip Report, Part One:
Sweden's Multi-G Project and Other Wonders
Does it matter that Sweden is the most beautiful nation in
the world, and Stockholm certainly the most lovely city? Only if
you're me, walking alongside the moored houseboats; stalking the
narrow lanes of Gamla Stan, the Old City on the island; or stroll-
ing a country lane in search of a more perfect seclusion. For
reasons unknown (I'm a Russian by heritage), Sweden has always
held a special place in my heart, right next to bodysurfing and
pistachio nuts.
Thus it wouldn't have mattered a whit if I had found no vir-
tual world activity in Sweden: the place is its own best excuse
for visiting. Thus, when I landed at Arlanda International Airport
on April 14th and was met by Dr. Bjorn Pehrson of the Multi-G
project at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS), it
would not have phased me in the least -- well, maybe just a
little -- to hear that there was nothing happening in Sweden.
Perhaps Ericsson, the giant global telecommunications firm that
is nearly synonymous with Swedish high technology, had given up
the ghost and was prepared to follow other European electronics
firms into oblivion.
So it was something of a surprise when Bjorn , upon arriv-
ing home (where his gracious wife served us _sild_ -- marinated
herring, with all the trimmings), proceeded to lay out for me a
tripartite research and development plan for SwedenUs (and
Europe's?) future high speed communications network. This plan,
called "Multi-G" (for "multi-gigabit"), is already proceeding
apace. Competing (at least in Bjorn's mind) with the U.S. NREN
initiative, Multi-G builds upon basic technology in the areas of
networking, signal compression, and distributed processing --
areas which Bjorn manages -- and leads all the way up the tech-
nological pyramid to groupwork and televirtuality. This last is
the brainchild of one Lennart Fahlen, the resident wildman at
SICS. Lennart directs -- or more accurately, interacts with -- a
range of researchers, scientists, and programmers to prepare the
way for the virtual interface. In one night, as part of a demo,
Lennart and his sidekick Olaf knocked off a distributed process-
ing program that, like the HIT Lab's VEOS, enabled two computers
to generate images in a third. This was quite remarkable.
How successful will Multi-G be, overall? It's hard to say.
SICS is located in Kista, the intended high-tech center of Swe-
dish industry, in a suburb north of Stockholm. In the Elektrum
Building which it shares with other high-tech labs, SICS (which
is funded by the state and private industry, primarily Ericsson)
engages the talents of a moderately sized research staff. Kista,
regrettably, is a rather dull place, and except for the SICS labs
themselves, there really isn't much of a community to keep
spirits alive. On the other hand, SICS seems self-energizing and
well tapped into other resource pools. This is a common method
of working in Sweden, where there are only eight million people
overall. To build any sort of technological momentum, projects
must be collaborative.
One of SIC's collaborators is the Royal Institute of Tech-
nology, abbreviated KTH (from Swedish), a highly acclaimed
institution in central Stockholm. There, in the computer
institute (NADA), Yngve Sundblad and his amanuensis, Konrad
Ericksson-Tollmar, are working on groupware and related issues
essential to the full realization of the virtual interface. I had
the good fortune to enjoy dinner with Yngve and his family,
Lennart, and Konrad, in the Sundblad's typically warm Sodermalm
apartment. We spoke of many things, especially the odd place in
which we all find ourselves, poised on the brink of significant
technological change which we ourselves are bringing about.
(Another school with which SICS collaborates is Linkoping
Universitet, where several leading researchers are building small
VR generators to do basic perceptual testing before moving on to
grander projects. One of the directors of this work is Robert
Hochmeier (sp?) (Swedish readers, help me with this last name,
please). Linkoping is about 300 km southwest of Stock-holm and
home to the Swedish/GM aerospace/automotive giant, SAAB.
Others who work closely with SICS are the Infologics A.B. group,
a high-tech R&D think-tank spun off from Televerket. Jerker
Andersson and Per Andersson -- friends, not relatives --
explained to me how Infologics has grown by assimilation of
other small firms. One of its main forces, the designer Lasse
Holmgren, is already taken with virtual reality and wants to build
a three-dimensional map of Sweden for the Tourist Authority.)
It would be incorrect to say that SICS is _doing_ virtual
reality. For now, Lennart is holding back on purchases to see if
the Eyephone evolves and if the glove controversy is finally
resolved. But SICS, unlike any other laboratory I came across in
my travels, has in place the ability to make quick progress in the
field when it is finally time to act, sometime later in the year.
Confirming the interest of industry in this development was
Lars-Erik Gustafsson, an employee of ELLEMTEL, the joint
research collaborative established by Ericsson and the Swedish
Telecomunications Authority. At an amiable dinner in an odd bar
and steakroom concealed in an underground mall located by the T-
Bana station, Lars-Erik, Johan Andersson (a summer intern soon
to join us at the HIT Lab), and I considered what it would take to
keep Ericsson at the technological cutting edge of the telecom-
munications industry. "New Services!" we all echoed, from which
it was obvious that televirtuality has a home in Sweden.
And I must admit, if the work has to be done somewhere,
let it be Seattle or Stockholm. Yes, knock me for provincialism,
but when the sun sets over Lake Mallern, streaking around the
Three-Crowned Tower of City Hall; and you're sipping a strong
coffee laced with brandwinn and sitting back on the luxury yacht
moored to the medieval island; and you contemplate a weekend
put out to the Skarmsgaard, the archipelago that extends nearly
to Helsinki...provincialism sounds not half bad. Seriously, the
effort in Sweden so far exceeds any comparably sized American
program in coherence and consistency. I was honored when the
folks at SICS asked me to come back and invited my colleagues at
the HIT Lab to collaborate with them. And, if my wife decides to
do her post-doc at the Karolinska Institutet, SICS is where I'd
seek to ply my trade.
[For more information on Multi-G, send email to
lef@sics.se (Lennart Fahlen) or bjorn@sics.se (Bjorn Pehrson).
For more information about NADA, contact yngve@nada.kth.se
(Yngve Sundblad) or konrad@nada.kth.se (Konrad Eriksson-
Tollmar). For information about Infologics, contact
jerk@infologics.se (Jerker Andersson). If any of this information
is wrong or incomplete, I invite my Swedish friends to correct
my citations.]
* * *
Three days later, I set out from Stockholm for Umea, in the
north of Sweden. Here my story becomes personal: the last week
of my trip was spent mostly with friends, in the North and later
in Denmark, where I walked in ancient peat bogs by night and
from whence I departed for Seattle on April 23rd. I won't bore
you with the details of warm times in cold places.
But one person of note, Kristo Ivanov, in Umeas Universi-
tet, impressed me. One of Sweden's few information-science
profes-sors -- there is typically only one professor in a Swedish
depart-ment, everyone else being only aspirants -- Ivanov had a
very critical attitude toward computer technology, in the tradi-
tion of the Frankfurt School. He has cautioned about the stric-
tures that computer use imposes on the social order, reifying
power relations that are neither democratic nor productive of the
best societal outcomes. Nevertheless, the issue of virtual world
technology found him both bemused and joyful; it seemed to him
to be a rare example of the possibly liberating technology. Or am
I putting words in his mouth that I wanted to hear?...
* * *
As my 767 recrossed the Atlantic, the video image on the
bulkhead marking our progress across Greenland, I twirled the
dial on my headset, looking for the Scandinavian folk tunes that
had enthralled me on my trip east. No such luck. All I could find
in their place were country-and-western, all tales (as Steve
Goodman has said) of Mom, prison, girlfriends, and booze. And so
I returned to America.
-- euaneg@eua.ericsson.se (Nils-Erik.Gustafsson) (05/29/91)
The researcher at Linkoping University mentioned by Bob is Robert *Forchheimer*, and his pet project is called 'Telepresence', a teleconference to take place in a virtual conference room, complete with virtual 3D sound. Nils-Erik Gustafsson (Not 'Lars'-Erik, Bob. Well, these odd Swedish names...) ELLEMTEL Telecommunications Systems Laboratories Alvsjo, Sweden [MODERATOR'S NOTE: A case study of what spending too much time in both Sweden AND Denmark will do to you. Don't mix your Scandinavians! -- Bob Jacobson]