Magic Lounge in Saarbrücken

Magic Lounge in Saarbrücken

The second Magic Lounge (MLounge or ML) Workshop was held in Saarbrücken on January 22 - 23, 1998, at the DFKI (Deutsches Forschungsinstitut für Künstliche Intelligenz - Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of Germany) of Saarbrücken University.

Attending were representatives of the Magic Lounge Consortium: DFKI and Siemens (Germany), LIMSI (France), MIP (Denmark) and - writing these words - a representative of the Subcontractors Usergroup from the Danish Isles Association.

As at the first workshop - which was held in Odense, Denmark, in 1997 - the schedule of this meeting was extremely tight, due to the amount of strategic and practical decisions to be made. The goal was to set out the course for the coming research and development phase of this exciting and innovative project.

Actually, this scarcity of time itself demonstrates the goal of the Magic Lounge project, which is to make available a hitherto unseen integration of common communication technologies in order to faciliate decision-making among spatially widely disparate participants, as well as research and communication in general.

Inhabitants of the Danish Isles have been selected as model target and end user example for the project. They constitute a near-ideal example of a probable future to come - a future with increased communication needs, but also with the need to minimize physical transportation, due to rising costs and environmental considerations.

At present, the islanders make use of a wide variety and disparity of communication devices, being scattered over a comparatively wide geographical area with an obvious lack of accessible transport. At the same time, they are part of a society well advanced into the information age, in which the high level of interpersonal relations and exchanges to be expected in a modern society of rapid cultural and technological transition need not be compromised.

On the first day of the workshop, the issues of 'systems architecture' and 'software tools and conventions' were discussed. For example, the use of CORBA was discussed in order to facilitate the overall system integration. The day ended with agreements on the working schedule for the next six months and dissemination activities.

The second and last day was dedicated to the more detailed discussion of the 'functional specifications' and 'core functions' of Magic Lounge. These core functions are in particular the access through heterogeneous interfaces with unequal bandwidths, intelligent history services which would make it easier for a person to participate in an already ongoing conversation, and intelligent services which enable joint web-serving. The workshop concluded by deciding which of these functional specifications and core functions should be included in 1MLD (the 1st Magic Lounge Demonstrator).

I am a representative of the target Usergroup and as such not directly involved in the practicalities of the development process. I have, however, gained a certain insight into matters after 20 years of programming experience and daily contact with potential 'real life users'. This background made it extremely interesting to follow the 'battle' from the privileged position of the 'sideline', only to be brought into the discussion occasionally to comment on various issues from the user angle. Making use of a 'participant observer' made it possible to resolve some of the issues at hand in an instant.

As an uninhibited bystander, I would like to attach a few critical remarks about the project as such and the i3 in a broader context.

It is one of the major purposes of the EU funding of the i3-program to further the advancement of European research and development of information technologies. As these are labour- and cost-intensive in the creative phase, I feel perfectly justified in stating that funding is far from adequate considering the (overseas) competition. Of course, this is always the case. But below a certain level, there is the risk of having invested in vain. The competition is stiff - from legions of overseas developers and programmers, working in an economy and living in a tradition of academics and research vastly different from the European one that we take pride in.

I would like to point out a single issue on which this particular project could be enhanced, even though I am aware that measures already have been taken in this direction.

At the Magic Lounge project, several sociologists are involved in the study of the actual users. Considering the available resources, the proportion of their work in relation to the effort invested in the development of new communication strategies seems reasonable.

But: the duration and size of the project itself will make it very difficult to do in-depth study and real-life testing in a fashion that could guarantee a significantly and fundamentally different approach to the subject of user-friendly communication devices. The limitations imposed by funding frames will therefore - in my opinion - impair the probability of success in view of the foreign competition and their pragmatist/traditionalist approach of these issues.

This is all the more unavoidable as the project terms themselves call for the regular deliverance of 'demonstrators' of the project's progress. This is a perfectly reasonable call from the viewpoint of the EU administration, and one that I have to agree to as a taxpaying member of the European Union. But it does occupy a significant part of the creative resources. Furthermore, programming is not like bricklaying or roadpaving where half the distance can be covered in half the time. On the contrary, creating a complex software 'building' will often necessitate the construction of several independent parts only to be functionally connected at a later stage.

At such intermediate stages, it is difficult to present 'demonstrators'. Striving to deliver intermediate but functional products and not wasting project resources at the same time will ever so often tempt the reuse of components, thereby encouraging 'patchwork' rather than the grand integrated and coherent construction that would be the ideal.

home + about i3net + services and publications + CI projects + ESE projects
esprit + european commission + IST