Global Peace Gaming
War and Peace Gaming
As a General Chairman, I organized a large Summer Computer Simulation Conference (SCSC) with several hundred attendees in Boston, in 1971. A professor from the US Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California presented his work on war gaming. The professor's last words were: "War gaming cannot be perfect without having its models tied together with simulation models of civilian sectors" (Schram et al., 1971). I responded, "Well, we may be able to help them, at least in the simulation of the civilian component," (see Figure 1). This motivated me to create a Globally Collaborative Environmental Peace Gaming (GCEPG), particularly on the issue of environment and sustainable development in developing countries, and the Global University System that would supply the players of the game. The games were intended to train would-be decision makers in crisis management, conflict resolution, and negotiation techniques. This gaming approach aimed to devise rational methods for conflict resolution basing on “facts and figures.”
On the
other hand, if education is based on understanding, it will foster trust among
people. They may conduct a peace
game by charging players with the responsibility of reaching a peaceful
resolution of a conflict of ideas or objectives, i.e., a plus-sum game that
increases the total size of pie collaboratively with creative ideas of the
participants. Each participant can
have bigger size of the pie than the one from the limited size pie for zero-sum
game. The objective of peace game
is then to reach a peaceful resolution of a conflict in such a way that a
nuclear war would never happen reflecting a win-win situation.
The GCEPG with a globally distributed computer simulation system 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 Internet to collaborate in the discovering of 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. Gaming/simulation is the best tool we have for understanding the world's problems and the solutions we propose for them. The understanding gained with scientific and rational analysis and critical thinking would be the basis of world peace, and hence ought to provide the basic principle of global education for peace.
Then in
1981, I coined the phrase "Global Neural Computer Network" in which
each participating game player, with his/her own desktop computer, database and
sub-model, would correspond to a neuron, router to synapses, with the Internet
serving as nerves in a global brain.
Vice President Al Gore used this term in a speech (as the result of one
of his staffs at the White House received numerous e-mail messages from my list)
and continued with the following words:
"The
Department of Defense is investing well over $1 billion in the development and
implementation of networked distributed interactive simulation. This technology, which allows dispersed
learners to engage in collaborative problem solving activities in real time, is
now ready for transfer to schools and workplaces outside of the defense
sector."
[Speaking to
communications industry leaders, January 11, 1994, Washington, D.C.]
Encountering ARPANET
After the
first presentation of our peace gaming project at the first International
Conference on Computer Communication (ICCC) in Washington, D.C. in October
1972, I saw a demonstration of ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency
Network of the U.S. Department of Defense), the first packet-switching data
telecommunication network. I then
decided to work on its extension to overseas countries, particularly to Japan,
because such a network would be the most suitable for our global peace
gaming. In a sense, it was the very first step of "closing digital divide" movement in the present day's terminology.
I heard
that the ARPANET was extended to England and then thought, why not to
Japan? My visits with many US
governmental agencies failed, however.
Later, the reason became clear.
The connection of the ARPANET to England was actually through Norway via
satellite and from Norway to England via undersea cable. The reason for connection of the
ARPANET through Norway was to detect the seismic wave of underground testing
explosion of nuclear bombs in Soviet Union. Later I learned that because Japan is an island it could not
detect seismic waves from Soviet Union.
Extension of Telenet to Japan
As soon
as the Telenet, a commercial version of ARPANET, was opened in the summer of
1976, I visited their office, offering my assistance to extend their data
telecommunication network to overseas countries, particularly to Japan. The nature of telecommunications
business made it natural to expand globally.
This extension effort (which is now called "closing digital divide") met with much opposition from the U.S. firms who previously encountered difficulties in extending their time-sharing computer services to Japan. My petition to the US Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) for extension of Telenet to Japan was to
demonstrate to Japanese how networking could increase intellectual capital,
decrease the cost of communications, and increase overall efficiency. It would also reveal to Japanese
society and businesses how ridiculous and unempowering Japanese
telecommunications policies were.
The FCC finally allowed the extension of Telenet to Japan, as a demonstration of the urgency with which the FCC's determination considered my petition and contention seriously. The
extended network of Telenet provided Japanese institutions with services of
many data bank companies, compared to the exclusive time-sharing services that
were previously available only from the host computers of opposing firms. Consequently, the extension of Telenet
to Japan was an instant success.
First Global Peace Gaming in
Normative (Qualitative) Mode
After
attending the 1972 SCSC in San Diego, California, I visited Professor Bob Noel
of the Political Science Department of the University of California in Santa
Barbara. I saw a conference room
with a wall-size world map, and an American flag standing by. It was like a situation room of a
governmental agency. The adjacent
room was a control room with a short-wave radio that could receive world news
instantaneously. The wall adjacent
to the conference room had a glass window from which they could videotape the
activities of the conference.
Professor
Noel was conducting a political gaming on international affairs using
ARPANET. He assigned several
different schools to act as the governments of the United States, Soviet Union,
Japan, China, etc. Students had to
study about the assigned countries before the start of the game.
I
inquired about the actor for Japan, and was told that it was the University of
Southern California. I remarked
that: "However hard Americans may study about Japan, they cannot think as
Japanese, since they eat steak with knife and fork while Japanese eat noodles
with chopsticks." So I
proposed that professor Noel invite the University of Tokyo to play the role of
the Japanese government. Thus was
born the original idea of Globally Collaborative Peace Gaming.
In the
spring of 1973, I conducted the world-first global "Peace Gaming"
with professor Noel with the use of e-mail over computer networks. I invited the University of Tokyo, and
he invited the University of Brussels, and the University of London in addition
to several universities in the U.S.
It was a "normative" gaming based on exchanging diplomatic
e-mail messages without the use of quantitative computer simulation
models. American universities sent their messages through ARPANET and overseas universities through GEISCO (a GE's time-sharing service firm).
Students
acted as the heads of states and cabinet members of assigned countries. All messages were accumulated and
re-distributed by a node at the University of California in Santa Barbara. The scenario designed by professor Noel
assumed an international crisis with a border incident between Iran and Iraq ñ
which actually happened about a half dozen years later. The Japanese team sent their messages
to the United Nations team, asking to make the Straits of Malaca an
international zone to secure oil flow from the Middle East to Japan. They also asked the U.S. and Soviet Union
teams to withdraw their naval fleets from the Pacific and Indian Oceans,
respectively.
De-regulation of Japanese
Telecommunications Policies for the Use of E-mail
Unfortunately,
this exciting global gaming had to be terminated upon instructions from KDD
(Kokusai Denshin Denwa, the Japanese overseas telecommunications
authority). This was due to the
Japanese telecommunications regulations, which strictly prohibited message
exchange through a computer without changing its contents. However, a node in Santa Barbara,
California, performed the message exchange, which was clearly outside of the
Japanese jurisdiction. I therefore
thought that this was patently unfair.
I then found fine prints in the KDD's user manual on the Telenet's extension line, prohibiting the use of e-mail. This would
negate my previous effort of extending Telenet to Japan, since e-mail would be
the most convenient means of communication among game players. So, I chose to work through the U.S.
government on the de-regulation of the Japanese telecommunications policy for
the use of e-mail. The late Commerce Secretary, Malcolm Baldridge, kindly took this issue as one of three items for discussion as Japan's "Non-tariff Barriers" when he visited Tokyo in October 1981 (Chunichi-Shimbun, Oct. 31 1981). This was the beginning of fierce US/Japan trade battles in
the following years.
My
efforts, however, encountered severe opposition from the Japanese Ministry of
Post and Telecommunications (MPT), and of course KDD, which was the semi-governmental
monopoly at that time. This was due to the difficulty of "mind-change" from circuit-switching technology for analog telephony to packet-switching technology for data communications. Another reason was that almost 60% of
KDD's revenue was from Telex. Lo
and behold, their financial status dropped into "red" a decade after
I succeeded with the de-regulation effort!
My effort also triggered the privatization of Japanese telecommunications industries and de-monopolization of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), the world's largest corporation, and KDD.
I would now say that the greatest beneficiaries of my de-regulation
efforts were large Japanese trade firms.
This was because the firms till then had to have their own leased Telex
lines all over the world with millions and millions of dollars in payments to
KDD. About a decade ago, all of
them ceased the use of Telex in favor of e-mail, thus saving huge amounts of
money.
After
successful conduct of the global gaming with professor Noel, I tried to solicit
the participation of Japanese government officers for my second round. I visited an officer at the Japanese
Economic Planning Agency, who was sent from the Japanese Ministry of Finance
(MOF), the most powerful ministry, and who was a graduate from the Political
Science Department of the University of Tokyo. I explained to him that the gaming players would act as
echelons of governments, according to scenarios for the perspectives of policy
analysis, training on negotiation techniques, etc. He replied, saying: "Are you suggesting that we, as Japanese government officers, act as KABUKI Players?" I learned how difficult it was to trigger a "mind-change," but I believe that tenacious persistence and patience will prevail and are the key ingredients of success.
"And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more
difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its
success, than to take the lead in the introduction of new order to things. Because the innovator has for enemies
all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders
in those who may do well under the new.
This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the
laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily
believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus, it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly..."
[Niccolo Machiavelli's word on Introducing Change in his "The Prince," 1513.]
See more in Chapter 1: "Personal Recollections on the Inceptions of Peace Gaming and Global University System" in a book draft "Electronic
Global University System and Services."
Idea of Distributed Computer Simulation System
The
well-publicized book, The Limit to the Growth (Meadows, 1972) (which was the
outgrowth of the book World Dynamics by
Prof. Jay W. Forrester of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.)) indicated
interactions of population, industrialization, agriculture, resources, and
pollution on a global scale. Some
said that the publication of this book triggered the first oil shock in the
early 1970s and changed the world economy.
On
the other hand, the book received severe criticisms that appeared in many
journals and newspapers. The main
contention was on the credibility of the data they used, i.e., how a group of
only a few scientists could claim that they knew everything of the world. I thought at the time, why not take the
motto of the Greyhound Bus Company, "Leave the Driving to Us." Namely, each
participant at appropriate locations should construct
the sub-models of their individual sectors and
countries and then connect all of their sub-models via telecommunications as if
their total acts as a single model.
The experts of those sectors and countries could bring credible data and
model structure. Thus was
born the idea of a distributed computer simulation system through a data
telecommunication network similar to an analog computer configuration, as
corresponding to each of sub-models to components of the analog computer, which
are processed in parallel fashion.
System Dynamics Methodology
Incidentally,
after contributing to the early development of digital computers and inventing
magnetic-core memory, Prof. Jay W. Forrester pioneered "system
dynamics," a computer simulation methodology for understanding complexity
that extends far beyond servomechanisms and Cybernetics theory. He applied quantitative, system
analysis and computer simulation technology to complex socio-economic, bio- and
eco-systems to evaluate how alternative policies affect growth, stability,
fluctuation, and changing behavior.
The system dynamics' cause-and-effect analysis based on feedback theory, along with computer simulation modeling, is the best tool to understand the inter-relatedness and inter-dependency of various complex world phenomena.
Under
Forrester's leadership, pioneering schools are creating a new kind of
pre-college education, starting in kindergarten that is built on a system
dynamics foundation. Such
education becomes inter-disciplinary with the same computer simulation concepts
applied to the environment, biology, history, literature, and economics. We can expect future leaders with
expanded abilities for crisis management, policy-making, and negotiation skills
for corporate, national, and global issues. The resulting deeper understanding of social and economic
complexity, arising from this new kind of education, will enhance mutual
understanding among people of different countries and cultures, and facilitate
world peace and a sustainable development of humankind in the 21st century.
Global Peace Gaming in Quantitative
Mode
Later, I conducted a demonstration
of global-scale peace gaming at the conference on "Crisis Management and
Conflict Resolution" that was organized by the World Future Society (WFS)
in New York City, in July of 1986.
It was one of the largest and perhaps the most successful demonstration
of global gaming/simulation so far.
The event was a global gaming simulation session on a crisis scenario
involving the U.S.-Japan trade, and economic issues. Nearly 1,500 people took part in New York, Tokyo, Honolulu,
and at the World's Fair in Vancouver, B.C. An officer of the United Nations wrote a game scenario, and
Prof. Akira Onishi of Soka University in Tokyo supplied FUGI Global Modeling
System, which is the world largest econometric model (Onishi, 2003).
Noted
U.S. economists (Prof. Lester C. Thurow of M.I.T., Provost William Nordhaus of
Yale University, Mr. Keith Johnson of Townsend and Greenspan Company) were
panelists of this event during which they interconnected electronically with
Japanese counterparts for three days of computer-assisted negotiations. Several hypothetical policies were
examined. One issue raised by
President Emeritus of American Arbitration Association was the effect of
raising military expenditures in Japan to the American level while lowering
those of the U.S. to the present Japanese level. Simulation that ran overnight predicted that the balance of
trade would thus be even by the year 2000, with the necessity of cooperation,
rather than competition by both countries in the future. This clearly indicated the cost and
dilemma of the American nuclear umbrella protecting Japan's economic
prosperity, thus threatening American's economic prosperity (Nikkei, 1986).
This
event, combined with the use of inexpensive delivery systems, afforded an
opportunity to contemplate how academic departments might become linked across
national boundaries for the purpose of joint study, research and planetary
problem-solving without expending high cost for satellite video. After this successful sessions, several
former high ranking officers of the U.S. and Japanese governmental agencies
expressed strong interest in a similar multi-media teleconferencing on a more
regular basis to establish an early warning system for both countries'
ever-closely interwoven, interdependent economic and trade relationships. System analysis for systemic change at
the global level is a precondition for any significant resolution to today's
global-scale problems.
GLOSAS Activities
GLOSAS/USA
Envisioning a significant future on the use of information
and communication technologies (ICTs) in educational and healthcare fields, the
GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A. (GLOSAS/USA)
was established in October of 1988 in the State of New York. It is a publicly supported, non-profit,
educational service organization - in fact, a consortium of organizations ñ
that is dedicated to the use of evolving ICTs to further advance world peace
through global communications.
GLOSAS fosters science- and technology-based economic development to
improve the quality of life.
Political Contributions
As mentioned above, over the past three decades, GLOSAS/USA played a major pioneering role in extending U.S. data communication networks to other countries, particularly to Japan, and in the deregulation of the Japanese telecommunications policies regarding the use of e-mail through ARPANET, Telenet and this is now referred to as "closing the digital divide." This contribution
of GLOSAS/USA triggered the de-monopolization and privatization of Japanese
telecommunications industries, and the liberalization of the telecommunication
industry has now created a more enabling environment for economic and social
development in many other countries.
This type of reasoning has since been emulated by many other countries; at present, more than 180 countries have Internet access, and more than 700 million people are using e-mail around the world. Academic programs of universities in America and other
industrialized countries now reach many under-served developing countries. This may be an example of Gu-Kou-I-San (literally translating to "Even a stupid fellow can move a mountain," Figure 3 -- click here for larger display).
Global Lecture Hall (GLH)
Since the initial success of our global peace gaming on the US/Japan
trade issues in 1986 mentioned above, I realized the necessity of accompanying
graphics, diagrams, images and audio/video in addition to text-only e-mail
communications via data telecom networks, particularly for e-learning courses
of engineering and for continuing medical education (CME). However, around that time and up to the
early 1990s when advanced data compression technology enabled inexpensive
videoconferencing and World Wide Web via Internet, graphics could only be
transmitted with the combined use of fax via Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS)
and analog satellite, both of which were expensive, particularly, for overseas
connections.
GLOSAS then
made another major contribution towards fostering global dialogue and creating
learning environments with the innovative distance teaching trials that were
conducted every year in a series of our Global Lecture Hall (GLH) tm
multipoint-to-multipoint multimedia interactive videoconferencing, using
affordable hybrid delivery technologies, spanning many countries around the
world, from Korea and New Zealand to Finland, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and
Brazil, etc.
Thanks to these efforts and also for initiating the
movement of global e-learning since early 1980s, I received the prestigious
Lord Perry Award for the Excellence in Distance Education in the fall of 1994
from Lord Perry, the founder of the U.K. Open University. The two-year senior recipient of the
same award was Sir Arthur C. Clark, the inventor of satellite.
See more in Chapter 2: "Global
Lecture Hall (GLH)" in a book draft "Electronic
Global University System and Services."
Three Components Necessary for Global Peace Gaming
The ultimate goal of GLOSAS/USA is to establish Globally
Collaborative Environmental Peace Gaming (GCEPG). To achieve this goal, we need the following three
components;
(1)
Data telecommunication
infrastructure:
Figure 4
