BPN 1663: Dutch uni to build a computer, again (1)

Dutch scientists, led by the Technical University Delft, will start working on a supercomputer. The computer will be ready in fifteen years. It is a so-called quantum computer and it is a project of QuTech, an institute for innovation, funded for nine million a year, funded by the State, the TU Delft , the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research and business.

After more than 60 years a Dutch uni will start to build a computer in the Netherlands again. Between 1950 and 1980 computers were built at universities and by commercial companies in the Netherlands. Some of those computers are still in heritage collections, but not many were kept . In 2010 SCEN, the Computer Heritage Foundation Netherlands, published the National Register of Historic Computers (sorry, in Dutch).

University as a computer builder

Since 1952 scientists did not only study computers and computer principles, but they also began to develop them themselves. Universities and scientific institutions became computer builders.

The first computer in the Netherlands was ARRA I ( Automatic Relay Calculator Amsterdam ). It was built by the Mathematical Centre, part of the University of Amsterdam, these days known as CWI. It was a machine working with relays, switches operated by electromagnets. In practice, the machine was not exactly usable. At the presentation on June 21, 1952 in the presence of the Mayor of Amsterdam d' Ailly and the Minister for Education, Arts and Sciences F.J.Th. Rutten a demonstration of the device was planned generating a table of random numbers. This worked, but then the device gave up. The ARRA II, however, built in 1954 was a success. The computer contained radio tubes and transistors and a kernel memory . With this computer calculations were successfully carried out for the Fokker aircraft factory. The ARRA I nor the ARRA II have been preserved.

The year 1954 also marked the start of a second generation computer, ARMAC by the Mathematical Centre; in 1956 the computer was ready. New for this machine was that the software perspective taken by the developers. Starting point was the software design after which the hardware was selected. This computer made ​​use of transistors, a drum memory and a kernel memory. The ARMAC charged include for the Delta Works, the dike construction to guard the Netherlands from the sea. The computer was a success and seemed to have commercial potential. The ARMAC has not been preserved.

Another hotspot for computer building was the Technical University Delft. Computers were researched here and built. In 1952 Willem van der Poel developed the ARCO (nicknamed Testudo). In the following year he worked on the development of the PETRA, the first computer in the Netherlands with radio tubes instead of relays. In 1957 Van der Poel built the first ZEBRA , which worked on one half with radio tubes and the other half with transistors. The ZEBRA was successful. In fact it was fully transistorised and taken into production in Britain by Stantec. The ARCO has been preserved in the collections of the TU Delft; the PETRA , however, has not been preserved. The Stantec ZEBRA can also still be found in the collections of the TU Delft

Scientific institutions

Two research centers got involved in the building of computers: TNO and Philips Research Laboratory.

 

In 1955 the Dutch TNO, a scientific and technical consultancy for the government and business built also a computer, the VT , a technically advanced analogue computer. The aircraft builder Fokker used the computer to calculate aircraft movements and air flow and performed simulations with the computer. The VTH is considered the first highly advanced technical-scientific computer in the Netherlands. No copies of the VTH were built; luckily the VTH is part of the collections of the TU Delft.

In the fifties the electronics company Philips was not engaged in the construction of commercial computers. However, the Philips Research Laboratory (Natlab) built the computer PETER, which became operational in 1958. This one was followed by the PASCAL (Philips Awful Speedy CALculator), which was put into use in 1960 and proved to be much faster and more reliable than its predecessor. But a commercial version of the computer was a problem for Philips, because the company was producing computer components for IBM . And because this regular assignment brought in good money, Philips did not want to compete with IBM, but that changed after 1960.

By the end of the fifties the universities, particularly the University of Amsterdam and Delft University of Technology , were finished with building computers. The Mathematical Centre did not want to get engaged in a commercial adventure with the ARMAC, so the independent company Electrologic was founded in 1956. One year later IBM started marketing mainframes.

It is interesting to observe that a similar situation is arising around the quantum computer . There is no quantum computer yet. A lot of research still has to be done into the quantum doctrine, in the application of nano-materials and devices, and most of all in software. In the fifties it took universities  roughly a decade to develop computers at universities. The development of quantum computers is estimated at 15 years.

BPN 1604: Dutch cross media on the mend again

In the past week the iMMovator Cross Media Monitor 2012 was presented. It is already the fourth edition of the biannual snap shot of the creative industries and ICT. The monitor is a co-production of iMMovator, Paul Rutten Research and TNO. This is my translation of the press release published by the 

foundation iMMovator Cross Media Network at Hilversum.

The stats

The Dutch cross media sector provided nearly 553 000 jobs in 2010 which is nearly 7 per cent of the Dutch employment. Cross media is the combination of creative industries and ICT segments. Of this 3.5 per cent accounts for the creative industry (over 280 thousand jobs) and 3.4 per cent for the ICT sector (over 272 000 jobs). The turn-over of the cross media sector accounted for  € 90 billion in 2010, of this amount € 32.8 billion is generated by the creative industry (2.9 per cent) and € 57.2 billion by ICT (5 per cent). In ICT more sales were generated with less people than in the creative industries.

Hesitant recovery

The number of jobs in the Dutch cross media industry has again increased slightly (0,5 per cent) between 2009 and 2011. The job reduction of the crisis year of 2009 has been brought to a standstill. Creative industry is growing again by 1.9 per cent, while ICT shows a slight decrease: -0.9 per cent. The sector has some difficult years ahead. The economic downturn will certainly be felt in the cyclical ICT segment. The cuts of the national government will hit the creative industries, particularly arts and cultural heritage as well as  media and entertainment. Arts will be less subsidised in the coming years. Also the public broadcasting system and its suppliers will feel the impact of government measures.

Need for co-operation between small creative businesses  

An important part of the growth in creative industries is attributable to the rise of self-employed entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs increase in number, while large firms are getting smaller. Downsizing is the key word in the creative industry more than in the rest of the industry. The creative industries have low entry barriers and is therefore open to new professionals. This creates the need for new forms of working together. In this way self-employed entrepreneurs and small businesses can compensate the lack of scale of large companies. This leads to inefficiencies within the creative industry. While the number of jobs in the creative industries is increasing, teh revenue declines. ICT sees the reverse effect, the number of jobs decreased while sales increases.

Amsterdam and Utrecht fastest growers in the media cluster

In The Netherlands there are two major cross media areas, called the Northern, ranging from Haarlem, Amsterdam, Almere, Hilversum, Amersfoort to Utrecht and the Southern wing, ranging Delft, The Hague, Rotterdam, Breda, Tilburg, Eindhoven to Den Bosch. The fastest growing concentration is in the Northern Wing. Amsterdam and Utrecht have generated the largest number of cross media jobs in the past years (2009 ttill2011).  Amsterdam had the largest  growth with over 7,500 new jobs in cross media (+5.6 percent)  in 2009 to 2011, while Utrecht had an increase of almost 3 thousand (+5.3 per cent) in the same period. Hilversum is a different story: the town lost nearly a thousand jobs (-3.6 per cent) over the past two years due to the decline in major media and entertainment industry. The media cluster in the Northern Wing of the Randstad is still an important engine of the Dutch economy. A strengthening of the cluster strategy is necessary, partly in view of the internationalization of the sector, which will intensify the competition. The clustering of cross media companies currently mainly provides efficiency, but must increasingly become a source of innovation.

BPN 1604

BPN 1244 A banker's view of the Dutch creative industry

In these days of financial troubles, it is hard to read a financial report without any suspicion. But recently the Dutch cooperative Rabobank published statistics on the Dutch creative industry in its series of industrial sector reports under the title Figure and Trends. The financial figures report (sorry: in Dutch) is an addition to the Dutch 2008 Cross Media Monitor, which was put together by iMMovator in collaboration with TNO and the Rabobank.

The creative industry is a container term for a sector consisting of arts and cultural heritage, media and entertainment and creative business services. Within the subsector art and cultural heritage economic motives are subordinate to artistic motives. The activities are often sponsored by governments or semi-government institutes, not leaving the activity to the market mechanism of demand and supply. The subsector media and entertainment industry with the music industry, broadcasting, print and movie industry is very market driven and generates turn over from products and services for the consumer market. Major exception is the public broadcast system. The subsector creative business services operates on the business market, delivering products and services adding symbolic value to the products and services of their clients. In the creative business services sector operate architecture companies, consultancies, design and communication bureaus.

The Rabobank produced a financial analysis of the creative industry between 2004 and 2006. The data come from the Rabo Figures & Trends database. The database contains balance sheets of bank customers up to 2006. The statistics reflect the average company in the subsector. The figures of the art sector are base don a smaller amount of data than the other subsectors and are only indicative.

On a national level the creative industry created in 234.000 jobs in 2007. The creative business services are the largest subsector, followed by media and entertainment with 30 percent and arts and cultural heritage with 19 percent. The creative industry and ICT were the main boosters of employment with 10 percent between 1996-2007. Both sectors grew faster than the national economy and realised both in this period 4 percent turn-over growth over against an average national growth of the total economy of 2,2 percent. The creative industry as well as ICT are heavily concentrated in the Northern Wing.

The financial highlights are:
- The average company in the creative industry as well as in the subsectors have developed positively developed in the years 2004-2006. The average company in the creative industry sector realised turn-over of 689.000 euro in 2006.
- The average turn-over of a company in the creative business services was 801.000 euro, in the media- and entertainment industry 593.000 euro and in arts and cultural heritage 557.000 euro.
- The absolute profit as well as the profit percentage was raised in the period of 2004-2006: the creative business services with 6,9 percent, media and entertainment with 4% and arts and cultural heritage with 2 percent.
- Almost half of the companies in the creative industries with a turn-over smaller than 250.000 euro makes a profit after deducting the management fee.
- An average company in this sector owes 33 percent of the capital, while it also has 36 percent of foreign capital on the balance sheet. The short term foreign money is on average 20 percent.

The figures offer some ideas about the financial side of the business in the creative industry. However it would also be interesting to know what the share is of the digital creative industry, as I suspect that this is the main boost behind the growth up to 2007. Of course we will have to wait for the new figures and see in 2009, what the present financial crisis has brought on.

Blog Posting Number: 1244

Tags: creative industry,cultural heritage, creative busines services, arts, media, entertainment

WSA 07 Awards in Venice (3)

I am at Venice airport. My flight has been cancelled and I was booked to another flight which has now a delay of an hour due to the strike. No striker in sight, no placards to explain the cause of the strike. No open wifi to inform the travellers.

But there was at least some good news today from the TNO boys, good for an upgrade with KLM due to their looks. TNO had won a jury distinction for their mobile game Triangler. During their presentation they invited participants to the WSA 07 Winners’ Conference to partake on Tuesday morning for a game on the Plazzo San Marco (In Venice there is only one square; all the other squares are indicated as campo). And they did among all the tourists; in fact they did a trial run and after that it was serious gaming of high quality. One of the designers said that it was the best gaming session they had ever done.

All in all, this is a little bit of a disappointment after an exciting day and night. Yesterday I was at the global Forum, held at the island of San Giorgio, where a Benedictine monastery was built. But the monks were forced to leave by the armies of Napoleon. The place dilapidated badly until 1951 when the Cini Foundation started to restore the buildings and gave the monastery a cultural destination. These days it is used for conferences and special occasions like the G7/8, as it is easy to protect the island.











In the afternoon the World Summit Award Ceremony was held. After a quick changement from conference hall to theatre the show could start. Presenters were Peter Bruck and Manar Fasan AlHashi. All the categories passed by way of a short movie. It gave people present an idea about the scope and uniqueness of the projects I will treat the categories over the next days. By the end of the day all the WSA activities in Venice were over.









However on the program was still a concert and a dinner at the Teatro de la Fenice. This opera house burnt down in 1996, was rebuilt and reopened by 2003. It is a beautiful place (see photograph). The concert was given by the Academia Musicale di San Giorgio, a violin ensemble. They played Haydn, Brazinni and Chaikovski. The Chaikovski music was like a river shrouded with fog. The conductor was a Japanese lady, the first female conductor I saw in my life.

The dinner afterwards was fun. It was one of those conference dinners, with round tables. The food was okay. But the company (see photograph) at the table was hilarious. It was a mix of people from Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Russia, Mexico and Guatamala, Canada and the Netherlands. One of the big topics among the women was the television series Desperate Housewives. It was quite a release from the past efforts in the conference and the award ceremony.

The trip to Venice is over, but so far I got stuck in the end in Frankfurt.

Blog Posting Number: 915

Tags

2007 WSA Grand Jury Croatia (3)

I came into Brijuni after the welcome dinner. But I met an enthusiastic crowd. Jurors of the Dubai edition and also jurors of the Bahrain edition. It was great to see them back. I started to meet also the new jurors in as far as they did not disappear to their hotel room, catching up from jetlag and days of travelling. The Salzburg team was there as well as the tutor group, a bunch of nice young Croatian students, who will be assisting the jurors. When I woke up this morning, this was the view from the room.

By 10 o'clock the jury were in full swing. An introduction is geven to the World Summit Award and the Eminent Expert jurors are introducing themselves.. Some statistics: 32 jurors, more than 600 entries in eight categories; the 600 entries have been entered by 159 countries.

The jurors’ works consists of three rounds of evaluation. In the first round every category will have four jurors in one team. The assignment of this round is to decrease the number of entries for closer inspection. In the second round, the teams will move to another category. In this phase the jurors can spend more time to familiarise themselves with the selected entries. The goal of the second round is whitled down to maximally ten entries per category. As five entries are needed for the last selection phase, the entries per category are presented to the entire jury and voted in or out. The last five entries that survive are the winners; there is not a single winner with runner-ups. Just for logistics, every juror sees more than 190 entries in eight days.

Every participating country could enter one entry per category. Theoretically 159 countries time eight entries in eight categories could have entered a total of 1272 products and services; but not all countries entered an entry in every category. For example for the Netherlands the national expert Bas Verhart has made a selection of eight entries. To give you an idea of the type of entries, I will use the list as it was published in the press release of the past week in the Dutch media:
1. e-Government: http://www.blob.nl/, a web game by students for the municipality of Utrecht;
2. e-Health: http://www.womenonweb.org/; Women on Waves in co-operation with Mediamatic;
3. e-Learning: http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/webspel/rembrandt?lang=nl; http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/webspel/nachtwacht?lang=nl webgame by the Rijksmuseum in co-operation of IJsfontein;
4. e-Entertainment: Triangler; a serious mobile game by TNO
5. e-Culture: http://www.fabchannel.com/; a Music site;
6. e-Science: http://www.wadlandis.com/, a webgame by the Wadden association in co-operation with XMediaworks;
7. e-Business: http://www.skoeps.com/, a user generated news site;
8. e-Inclusion: www. ikzieikziewatjijnietziet.nl, a digital campaign against child abuse by Sire in co-operation with Achtung!

You probably wonder why a juror will spend a week of his/her life to look at entries from all over the world. For a juror it is a unique experience to see the trends in digital media in so many products. Besides the WSA uniquely demonstrates the local diversity and creative use of ICT around the world, serving as a global platform to make today's information society more inclusive. Of course also the experience of meeting 35 experts in multimedia and social activities is a chance of a lifetime. Seven of the jurors have been privileged three times and six jurors twice to be part of the Grand Jury of Eminent Experts. BTW I am not involved as a juror, but as a co-moderator.

BTW There is an official WSA blog on http://worldsummitaward.blogspot.com/
and there will be daily photographs.

Blog Posting Number: 855

Tags: World Summit Award, World Summit on the Information Society

TNO awarded for mobile game

I was flabbergasted by the news that TNO had won a prize for developing a mobile game. I could not believe my eyes. TNO is Dutch research institute with some 40.000 employees. The institute covers a lot of research areas such as automotive, construction, health and food. The final three years of the last century, I worked for the institute among very serious researchers in the ICT/new media policy department. I had several good laughs with my colleagues of the scientific and technical policy department, but we never were in gaming or developing games. In fact, it was rather grey and dull at that time.

As soon as I had left, TNO started to change (no causal connection between my leaving and the changes). TNO bought KPN Research, the telecom department of the incumbent telco KPN. And another board of directors came in; they started to reorganise the research institute drastically (and rightly so). It is since that time that TNO has moved with its telecom research into surprising alleys, of which gaming is one.

Last week TNO was awarded the top International Mobile Gaming Award 2007 at the 3GSM exhibition in Barcelona (Spain). Besides winning the Grand Prix, it also won the most innovative award out of the 400 entries from 42 countries. The winners went home with 15.000 euro for the Grand Prix and 5.000 euro for the Most Innovative Award. The prize money will be spent in game research.

The price was awarded for the game Triangler. It is an outdoor game to be played with the mobile as tool. The game is played with two teams of five persons per team. Three team players make an equilateral triangle with sides of 150 metres. For the team the objective is to enclose the members of the other team, using gps location positioning and gprs data communication for coordination between the team members. The score resembles the number of enclosed opponents.

TNO did not develop the game for fun. TNO is also serving the Dutch military industry by developing equipment and vehicles, but also with strategy tools. Serious gaming is one of the strategic tools where TNO trains the Dutch military with. Triangle is now one of the serious games for the military, but also the police to train tactics and operational coordination. TNO sees opportunities to produces useful variations on Triangler.

TNO does not develop the games all by itself. But for the development of games it often collaborates in the Center for Advanced Gaming and Simulation with researchers of the University of Utrecht and developers of the media and art college HKU. TNO usually researches the use of serious games to train for response to crisis situations such as war, terrorist attacks, floods and large scale road accidents. Its second objective is to develop the necessary technology for wider use by game developers.

TNO was also active at the GSM exhibition in Barcelona with mobile video technology as a module of its mobile publishing system Farcast.

Research at TNO has become more exciting with games and content tools, I guess.

Blog Posting Number 670

Tags: serious games