Allow a thousand flowers to grow

How are you involved with Freeband?
We, the steering committee and Board, have to consider how to move forward and what the possibilities are for the corporate world, educational institutions and the government.
The question is what path we’ll follow next year. We’re currently working on the ICT innovation platform intelligent communication (IIPIC). I love bringing people together, creating networks, and building consortiums, so I often find project leadership too executive.

IIPIC is not a reincarnation of Freeband, because that would mean that Freeband is dead. Instead, it’s a renewed version, with a modern take on communications technology. That process has been running for a year and a half and it’s time for a concrete plan - the strategic research agenda. We will present our ideas to various parties at Freeband’s closing ceremony on October 2-3, and we’ll ask them for feedback on how they’d tackle the strategic research agenda. We’ve also invited speakers from abroad to add an international perspective.

It’s challenging because it has to fit in with other ICT programmes and the government’s preferred agenda. IIPIC is doing pretty well, but we have to find it a place within the landscape of ideas. There will definitely be a national ICT programme and IIPIC will have to form part of that and contribute its share. This will require some synchronization, which will be a bit of a puzzle. And that’s exactly what I love to do: finding out what the various interests are and how to harmonize them.

So, what’s the deal with intelligent communications? 
Well, first you have to find a way to define it. It is a label after all, just like internet and web 2.0. If you’d like to know exactly what it is, you have to look at how various parties interpret it. On the one hand it includes solutions for the shortcomings of classic telecoms, such as smart energy-saving radios, and on the other it encompasses new systems like P2P and sensor networks. We don’t really understand how it works. We can just about control it in small demos but it’s trickier on a larger scale. Intelligent communications have not been fully engineered yet, which is why we have defined three areas within IIPIC that require more attention:
Adaptive, Intuitive and Robust, or AIR. These domains are crucial for both the research and application sides.

The programme will be largely technology oriented. Currently, other ICT innovation platforms which will be more active in the application domains are being developed in the Netherlands. It’s not surprising that programmes like ‘mobility’ would require ICT. ICT has been called the engine of innovation, but ICT has to innovate too. Is it a box for plugs and cables or is it the holy grail of solutions? Everything’s possible but there is still a big gap between expectation and possibility. We have to engineer a lot to live up to the expectations. The interesting part is that while ICT drives innovation, it is constantly evolving itself, which isn’t something policy makers always understand.

What will the ICT world look like in 10 years? 
We have launched IIPIC and we’re proud that we have been able to pinpoint the AIR domains already. This means that we’re using a three-pronged approach but AIR cannot be hierarchically organised. Data processing is an increasingly important aspect, however. We can measure, communicate and store data, for example, for distance care or for civil engineers who want to equip dykes with sensors. We say, “measuring is knowing’’, but what do you do with the data? What is relevant or meaningful for me as an internet user, student, professional or scientist? We can measure almost anything, but what next? This step still has to be made. There are examples of measurements where the resulting data simply isn’t used. We have to pay more attention to how we can make data more meaningful by measuring, communicating, analysing and taking selective actions. Intelligent communications encompasses it all.

Which book has had the greatest influence on your work? 
Gödel Escher Bach, also called GEB. Of particular interest to me are the boundaries of our knowledge and modelling, which GEB discusses as it relates to music, sculpture and mathematics. I’m especially intrigued by the brain as a mode of communications and as an information processing system through our neural systems. GEB seems to say that we have a built-in limitation of what we can understand. If you look ten or twenty years into the future we’ll arrive at new modes of communication, just like biology has progressed. But how far can we go? GEB shows that there is an inherent tension that cannot be avoided.

Which ICT development has been the most meaningful and which the least? 
The advantage of technology is the evolution it triggers. There have been revolutionary ideas such as YouTube, peer-to-peer, and mobile communications that have created large shifts in societal and business models. These disruptive developments are typical for ICT. The government keeps thinking that we’re finished and that everything has been invented. Not. There have been useless technological developments but what’s meaningful or valuable? For whom? There have been countless developments that have led nowhere but were they meaningless? As a scientist I can tell you that you have to research ten creative ideas just to find one useful one. So, there are no useless things. I say: allow a hundred flowers to grow in the world of knowledge, business and entrepreneurs – and then you’ll see ICT innovation bloom.