One day, his lesson digressed and the whole class started arguing over how a
pineapple tree bears fruit--a unique lesson! The discussion became heated and
strange, and surprising, puzzling answers came out in turn. One student drew on
the blackboard a picture of pineapples hanging heavily from branches like
coconuts. Another argued that they grew underground like radishes. And the only
image I had was of pineapple slices in a can!
"We should study it!" someone
said.
"How?"
"Where can we find the answer?"
"Who can we ask?"
The teacher then told us "It doesn't matter whether you know the answer. What
matters is whether or not you know how to find the answer. Thinking about
solutions is what we call `learning.' Wise people know many ways to get to the
answer." I still remember realizing the truth of his words.
You use the
Internet now if you want to find out something, but you'll find more than enough
data on the network, and we encounter too much information during our daily
lives. It would be handy if our computers could process such huge amounts of
data and information instantaneously.
I personally felt that the target world of the RWC Project was far away. I've just realized that a fast, intelligent, and truly user-friendly computer that can process massive amounts of data in an instant is exactly what the project is designed to achieve (I know I took too long to realize this). We need a technology that can control many computers as if they were a single machine to process a massive volume of complicated data at a high speed. We need a technology that can process natural human speech and gestures in the same way as the human brain. Such technologies will create a very convenient world.
This issue of RWC NEWS features the 2000 RWC Symposium at which many interim reports and presentations were made to introduce how the project would bear fruit. The RWC Project has two more years to go and the linkages between its technologies under development and the real world are gradually becoming clearer. The project's final results will be worth waiting for.