Preliminary Proposal

for
Joint Collaborative R and D Activities
for
Technology Development with Microsoft

Technical Issues

A.B. Patki
Scientist G
Department of Information Technology
Ministry of Communications & Information Technology
Government of India, New Delhi 110003

January 2004
 OUTLINE OF THE TECHNICAL ISSUES

1. INTRODUCTION

2. IMPACT OF PERSONAL COMPUTERS & INTERNET

REVOLUTION
3. TRENDS IN COMPUTING REQUIREMENTS

4. OPERATING SYSTEM SCENARIOS AND OPEN SOURCE

ISSUES

5. SALIENT FEATURES OF MISNOS TECHNOLOGY &

CURRENT STATUS OF FUZZY LOGIC APPROACHES IN IT

6. LIST OF PROPOSED TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT

ACTIVITIES

7. REFERENCES
1. INTRODUCTION
Usage of Information Technology’s power in industries,
corporate houses, private companies and Government establishments has
been viewed in the form of IT as a resource for productivity
enhancements. Nicholas Carr has indicated that if IT as resource is
viewed as infrastructure technologies, the competitive advantage ceases
with time [1]. It is argued that pattern of corporate IT spending indicate
that greater IT expenditures rarely provide superior financial results. As
brought out by Carr, the new rules for IT management for the future
emphasize on -
i) Spend less

ii) Follow, don’t lead

iii) Focus on vulnerabilities, not opportunities

Carr has not focused on the primary cause of not recognizing the

technological development in other non-electronics fields in the second

half of twentieth century & not deploying these in IT forefront properly,

to overcome the ‘bleak’ chances of forthcoming investments in near

future in IT – especially in Corporate Sector. The observation of Carr is

an indirect reflection on the practices adopted practically everywhere in

the IT deployment in developed nations. The focus in the past was

merely on the deployment of existing off-the-shelf hardware/software

technology in the form of ICT infrastructure, training people, developing

computer applications, propagating the mechanism of change through

community infrastructure centers. This approach has resulted in a

limited success. Deeper insight into the study of such initiatives, indicate

that technological developments are required to reap full benefits of ICT

and merely creating the ICT infrastructure is not likely to serve the

purpose beyond a trade off limit.

(i) Carr has indirectly observed that the computing hardware /

software systems deployed in the twentieth century have
outlived to provide strategic advances. The obvious reason is
that the Second World War techniques are not much useful
for today’s competitive globalization oriented world
scenario. If one studies the Conventional (Von Neumann
architectural platform) Operating system, it becomes obvious
that it had used Operations Research and similar
mathematical foundations in its implementations. There was
no thinking for “Cognitive Off loading Support” at Operating
Systems level. The days of web content creation for
Government sites, NGOs web sites and many non-serious
industrial organizations in today’s Information Society, are
numbered. Such web contents fall under the ‘one time
referral’ type of information systems, which have been
analyzed earlier by Sivasubramanian [2].
Artificial Intelligence methodologies were not embraced for serious
practical applications due to the inadequacy of the Boolean logic.
However, there seems to be a basic reason for non-adoption of Boolean
logic in computing. It seems to be the lack of “oriental culture”.
Although Prof. L.A. Zadeh discovered fuzzy logic in US, its applications
were typically seen to be fructifying in countries other than USA.
Unfortunately, the Fuzzy-Logic as is understood today by a wider
section of professionals restricts its usage to the field of Control system
Engineering.

2. IMPACT OF PERSONAL COMPUTERS & INTERNET

REVOLUTION

With the introduction of windows systems on Personal Computers,

the load of remembering typical Disk Operating System (DOS)

commands was removed. Windows provided a Graphical User Interface

(GUI) to common user. Subsequent development in window philosophy

further eased out other frequently required operational functions. Thus,

the population of PC users was increasing through the evolution of

window systems. The latest boom brought out by TCP/IP and in Internet

browser technology has further resulted in giving a new face to the

computerization approach of mass utility. This resulted in the

government computerization taking speedy shape in implementing old

type of computerization program in the form of e-governance projects.

Common measure of IT penetration was considered as PC density and

Indian IT penetration is at about 5.8 PCs per 1000 population. MISNOS

technology had viewed IT penetration in the context of IT for Masses

and accordingly, emphasis was away from PC proliferation

Infrastructure creation to technology development as a figure of merit

[3]. Factors such as extent of deployment, number of activities for which

IT is used, level of IT usage, number of access points for useful

applications etc. were focused in the MISNOS technology development

initiative. This philosophy also explains why the initial enthusiasm

merely served to boost IT hardware / software sales resulting into new

nomenclature like providing citizen interface, community informatics &

e-governance for traditional computerization projects. The primary

concern here is non-availability of methodology to reduce ‘cognitive

load’ of the end user who is the ultimate beneficiary.

3. TRENDS IN COMPUTING REQUIREMENTS

Adoption and extensions of the Second World War based

methodologies for technology in computer hardware / software

development, has reached its saturation point. MISNOS Technology is

primarily considered as effective vehicle for developing futuristic

systems of next generation Information Society promoting Community

Informatics including e-democracy. The characteristic features required

for futuristic Community Informatics include

(i) Concept modeling including estimation of data

requirement based on concepts and knowledge

requirements. Patki [5,6] have discussed applications of

Rough Set techniques for concept Modeling and

Evolutionary Information systems.

(ii) Handling data and information overload at the stage of

information modeling

(iii) Adopting design and development philosophy for

developing systems on the basis of

information/knowledge synthesis and not on iterative

modeling

(iv) Integrated Vernacular Computing environment instead of

mere input / output data entry ‘font’ support in local

language

Amongst many other parameters like reducing weight, volume

air conditioning load, electric load and alike, the technological

developments in electronics have resulted in increasing the ‘speed’ of

the computer which traditionally is measured in Million Instructions Per

Second (MIPS). The better metric for the computer speed can be in the

form the Machine Intelligence Quotient (MIQ) rating as suggested by

M. Jamshidi [7]. Each device (irrespective of hardware or software

origin) will have its MIQ ratings. The problem in the Information

Society is that of the information overload. By information overload we

do not mean the insufficient storage capacity on the hard disk, or other

storage devices in terms of Mega Bytes. The information overload refers

to the phenomena of a typical software application portraying an

unmanageable cognitive load, which often dissuades the potential users

from using the system.

4. OPERATING SYSTEM SCENARIOS AND OPEN SOURCE

ISSUES

In the past, Operating System was primarily tailored for

individual hardware/CPUs. This has resulted into a chaotic situation that

made programs developed on one machine totally incapable of running

on another. By and large, although UNIX operating system had arrived

earlier than the DOS / MS Windows, most of the Community Center /

Cyber Cafe users in India have very little (or practically nil) idea about

the existence of UNIX and the Internet growth arrived through UNIX

route. UNIX has a variety of profound and diverse concepts developed

and perfected over a period of time.

UNIX had to grow through a sequence of three phases in its life

cycle:
 (i) A product for engineering & scientific community

(ii) Large corporations & government organizations where

the robustness of UNIX established it as the OS of choice

for database work

(iii) Internet phase of UNIX cycle

In the last decade of twentieth century, Linux – a UNIX

workalike (i.e. Linux responds to standard UNIX commands & runs

UNIX programs) began its life as the project of a single man, Linus

Torvalds. Linux is completely open i.e. you get the source code for the

Linux operating system and you can make changes to the operating

system. By and large, for many preliminary computing requirements

like, word processing, spreadsheets, and telecommunications – Linux is

adequate alternative to other PC operating systems. Since Linux is freely

available, it attracts the attention of many computer programmers &

software developers who release their software to the computer

community. However, a major drawback of Linux is the lack of robust

and user friendly applications for everyday use. The client/server

architectures and Personal Computer Systems were neither designed nor

planned for global information society. Similarly, for supporting

multilingual applications for Community Informatics, merely font based

multilingual support (for EMAIL, Web browsing, Web content

development in local language, Word processing and alike) is of limited

usage. This shortcoming comes to limelight when large scope vernacular

computing software development support needs to be provided through

Community Informatics. Of course, there are no such expectations

amongst the users of cyber café infrastructure. The missing link is the

lack of “cognitive off loading” software support in the existing

Microsoft as well as UNIX/LINUX based software to introduce

Collaborative computing in the context of e-Governance,

Community Informatics etc..

The preceding paragraphs brought out a scenario that whether it

is DOS / MS – Windows or UNIX/Linux, all are appearing as ‘frozen’

operating systems i.e. once configured & installed on the computer

hardware, the role of OS is to provide support only & OS itself does not

get further evolved over a period of its life cycle on the ‘installed

computer hardware’. Any diversification from this ‘set’ idea of

operating systems software, appears to be a very strange concept

amongst software developers & had attracted severe criticism. While

Linux development was in its infancy during 1992-94, the team at

Department of Information Technology (DIT) – erstwhile Department of

Electronics (DOE), was exploring the possibility of operating software

environment that would have an inbuilt capability to support

Community Informatics. The issues had to focus on OS potential to

(i) Evolve itself from learning from user behavior

patterns (partially similar to user profile settings in MS

– Windows)

(ii) Evolve itself from learning from usage of various

application software packages running under the

‘installed’ operating system configuration

 (iii) Incorporating Operating systems Shell features on the

lines of Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC)

hardware [5]

(iv) Providing built in support at Shell & Kernel level for

‘cognitive off-loading’

Soft computing techniques developed during the second half of

twentieth century viz. like Neural networks, Fuzzy Logic, Rough Set

methodology, Genetic algorithms etc. were found useful. This had

resulted into the evolution of a framework for MISNOS (Multimedia

Multilingual Information Services Network Operating Software). The

emergence of information banking related services & Community

Centers for IT for Masses was reported in the seminal paper on

MISNOS Technology by R. Bandyopadhyay [3]. Community

Informatics in a multilingual democratic society like India is a fit case

for experimenting new operating software environment to explore and

reap its benefits to corporate computing in near future due to

globalization of corporate business world over. In this context, it is

important to carefully study the observation made by Carr viz. “Let the

impatient competitors shoulder the high costs of experimentation, and

then sweep them past.

5. SALIENT FEATURES OF MISNOS TECHNOLOGY &

CURRENT STATUS OF FUZZY LOGIC APPROACHES IN IT

Soft computing based approach is needed to meet the

information need of future society. Therefore, in contrast to the existing
approach of database management systems for IT proliferation, the
starting point of soft computing based approach would be towards
introduction of Integrated Intelligent Information Systems (IIIS). This
would pave the way for Multimedia Multilingual information services to
provide intelligent information, guidance and help in the virtual reality
mode. The initial preliminary work carried out in this direction leads to
indication of using high MIQ building blocks (operating system as an
integrated extension of hardware unit) in deploying Multi-media
Multilingual Information Services Network Operating System
(MISNOS) technology for providing information for masses.
We have seen in the past that electronic data processing was the
sole purpose of the previous generation of computers and there
extensions to scientific and commercial applications paved ways for
many new avenues that opened up in the form of High-speed
computations and Data Base Management systems respectively. In the
context of Internet & WEB based Computing, issues related to analysis
of Data Overload, “One Time Referral’ situations, raw data, processed
data, raw information and intelligent information get a different
significance in the context of IT for Masses and cyber civilizations.
With the Boolean logic based data item as a basic unit, the concept of
raw data v/s processed data, raw information vis-a-vis processed
information did not progress further as seen from the ‘cognitive’
information load sharing viewpoint. The information needs of a multi-
lingual society in cyber civilization with different and extremely variant
social and cultural background, either in the context of information for
masses or arising out of globalization of business and trade practices,
encompass the concepts ranging from virtual reality oriented
information services to global IT applications for economic
development. With the introduction of image, video, graphics, sound
types of means of information through the Internet, the data compression
algorithms (which were developed for data compression to overcome
storage and retrieval problems) became further popular. However, the
information weeding’ is different from that of simply deleting a file (s)
from the computer system’s hard drive(s), with the OS commands of
‘delete’ type. We have to look for different approaches based on soft
computing methodologies using fuzzy rough set techniques to address
the issues of evolutionary information systems. The typical approach
hitherto adopted of servers for different purposes e.g. application
oriented servers were needed and will continue to be deployed in future.
However, the concept modeling of the user’s requirement is not catered
to in the past. Concept modeler (either in the form of hardware or
software implementation) based on rough set techniques uses the idea of
extracting the model of the user interaction.

The web site www.fly.to/misnos has many reference material

provided for the subject matter of this paper. However, the important

aspects are regarding Fuzzy Data type support in programming

languages [8], Command Line Interface for laboratory usage, FUZOS

[9,10] type interface for Internet Browsers. Fuzzy Logic based solutions

for IT Security including virus problems are likely to emerge soon [11].

6. LIST OF PROPOSED TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT

ACTIVITIES

A detailed discussion is needed with Microsoft Technology Group for

the product development and technology adaptation. An indicative list of
proposed activities is given below

1. Technology Product Adaptation using DIT’s IPR [9, 10] for

(i) Windows Explorer
(ii) E-Mail software
(iii) Internet web browser

2. COM/DCOM Technology Development [12]

3. Software products development for community informatics [3, 4]

(i) Multilingual support for winamp /realplayer type of

products
(ii) Vernacular Computing
 4. Enhancement to E-Governance software support using MISNOS
Technology conceptualized by DIT [3]

5. Internet Dialog Processors for Database to Database Information

Services including search engines

6. C# and .Net - Programming Medium Philosophy- replacement

of ‘iterative’ modeling by ‘synthesis’ modeling is Visual Studio
and >Net introduced products. [4]

7. REFERENCES

1. Nicholas G. Carr –(2003) - IT doesn’t matter, HBR at large, pp

41-49, Harvard Business Review, May 2003

2. Sivasubramanian S., Patki A.B. (1996) - Software Industry

Intelligent Information System, Electronics Information & Planning,
June 1996, Vol.23, No., pp.513-518

3. Bandyopadhyay R. (1996) - Multi-media Multilingual

Information Services Network Operating System (MISNOS)
Software, Electronics Information & Planning, January, 1996,
Vol.23, No.4, pp. 205-230

4. Patki A.B. (1997-c) –Exploration of Developmental Trends in

JAVA Technology, Electronics Information and Planning Journal,
December 1997, Vol.25, No.3, pp.125-133

5. Patki A.B., Raghunathan G.V., Ghosh S., Sivasubramanian,- S.,

Khurshid A.(1999-a) – Soft Computing for Evolutionary
Information Systems: Potentials of Rough Sets, WSC4, Fourth On-
line World Conference on Soft Computing in Industrial
Applications, 24-30, Sept. 1999, Nagoya, Japan.
6. Patki A.B., Raghunathan G.V., Ghosh S., Sivasubramanian S.
(1999-b)- Towards Rough Set Based Concept Modeler, WSC4,
Fourth On-line World Conference on Soft Computing in Industrial
Applications, 24-30, Sept. 1999, Nagoya, Japan.
7. Jamshidi, Mohammad (Ed.), (1997) - Applications of Fuzzy Logic:
Towards High Machine Intelligence Quotient Systems, Prentice Hall
Inc.1/e ISBN: 0-13-362831-0
 8. Patki A.B., Raghunathan G.V., Narayanan. N., (1996) – On Data
types for Object Oriented methodology for Fuzzy Software
Development, Proceedings of First On-line Workshop on Soft
Computing, August 19-30, 1996, Internet event, Nagoya, Japan
9. Patki A.B., Raghunathan G.V., Khurshid A.- (1997-a) FUZOS--
Fuzzy Operating System Support for Information Technology,
Proceedings of Second On-line World Conference On Soft
Computing in Engineering, Design And Manufacturing, June 23- 27,
1997, Cranfield University, UK.
10. Patki A.B., Raghunathan G.V., Khurshid A. (1997-b) - FUZOS:
A Perspective From 'Fuzzy OS Or Fuzzy Command Line Interface'
Viewpoint And Need For Cooperative Research, Short
Communication to WSC2, Proceedings of Second On-line World
Conference On Soft Computing In Engineering, Design And
Manufacturing, June 23-27, 1997, Cranfield University, UK

11. Patki A.B., Lakshminarayanan S., Sivasubramanian S., Sarma

S.S. (2003) - Cyber Crime Information System for Cyber ethics
Awareness, To appear in the Proceedings of 2003 International
conference on CYBERWORLDS, 3-5 December 2003, Singapore

12. Patki A .B., Kulkarni M.D., Patki Dhanvanti D.- Software

Development Paradigms for Community Informatics-
Technological Aspects, Proceedings of 5th International Conference on
Information Technology in Regional Areas (ItiRA), December 15-17,
2003, Caloundra, Queensland, Australia