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Welcome to the BISC Program
Prof.
Zadeh's 1997 commencement Address; UC Berkeley
TO:
Members of the BISC Group:
Date: Nov
29, 2004
Following is the text of a commencement address which I delivered
in Berkeley in l997, and which was subsequently published in the SMC
Transactions in l998.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN. AND
CYBERNETICS-PART C: APPLICATIONS AND REVIEWS, VOL 28, NO.1, FEBRUARY 1998
My commencement address was posted to members of the BISC Group
when it was published in the Transactions. I decided to post it again because some of the recent
events have underscored the seriousness of the points which I made in
l997.
Comments from you, with cc to M. Nikravesh would be most
welcome. Please indicate if
you would like your comments to be posted to the BISC Group.
Warm regards to all.
Lotfi A. Zadeh
Email: Zadeh@cs.berkeley.edu
Email: Nikravesh@cs.berkeley.edu
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ON COMMENCEMENT days such as this one, it is customary
to avoid touching upon issues that are contentious or in dissonance with
majority-held views. I shall take the liberty of departing from this
tradition because there are contentious issues that have to be addressed
and serious structural problems in our society that your generation is
likely to be called upon to solve. To put my views in perspective, I
should like to note the obvious: I am not a native-born American, as most
of you are.
Yet, I consider it a privilege to be a citizen of this
great country-a country of vast expanse, immense wealth, great diversity,
unmatched power, and a world leader in almost every realm of human
activity. But what matters most to me is that it is a country in which
human rights are taken seriously, governance is ruled by law, and
decency, generosity, and
fairness are national traits.
To say what I said does not mean that all is well. Our
society is faced with serious problems that are visible to all: drug
addiction, crime, homelessness, extremes of wealth and poverty,
alienation, and ethnic conflicts. But there are other problems
that-though less visible-are likely to cause serious damage to the fabric
of our society in the long run. My brief remarks will be focused on two
linked problems that fall into this category.
Many of you will be taking jobs in Silicon Valley, the
heart of our computer industry; the industry that is the driving force
behind the economic boom in which we are basking now. When I ask our
graduates who work in Silicon Valley whether they are happy in their
jobs, the usual answer is: the pay is good and the work is interesting.
But one important element is missing: the sense of security, dignity, and
collegiality. In Silicon Valley and. more generally, in the computer industry,
the working environment is the environment of cut- throat competition. As
they say, "'In Silicon Valley if you make the mistake of stopping
for lunch, you will be lunch." You are hired today but may be laid off
tomorrow, with no farewell parties and no regrets. The bottom line is the
stock price and not human welfare.
Something is deeply wrong with our values when elimination
of thousands of jobs is greeted with applause by Wall Street, causing the
price of stock to go up and, not coincidentally, increasing the value of
stock options of company
executives. In this climate, executives are not expected to spend
sleepless nights when downsizing leads to massive layoffs. Indeed, any
company that puts human welfare above profits and efficiency risks
serious damage to its competitive position and, possibly, its demise. It
is a sobering thought that profits and efficiency have become the driving
forces that shape the dynamics of our society, and that money may become
the ultimate determinant of values by which we live. Perhaps we should
pause and ask ourselves if we are doing the right thing when we exert
pressure on other countries to follow our example and abandon their
traditions of protection of social rights in the quest for efficiency
and, stronger competitive position in the global marketplace.
There is a linkage between this state of affairs and
the growing intrusion of advertising and commercialism into all aspects
of our lives. A disturbing prospect is that as we move further into the information
age and the multimedia the linkage will become stronger and less amenable
to control.
To many, advertising is the pillar of free enterprise.
Up to a point, advertising serves an essential purpose, but like any good
thing that is overdone, unrestrained advertising, with its high content
of half truths and untruths, is becoming a force that is corroding our culture
and distorting our goals. The pervasive influence of advertisers on TV
and radio programming substitutes the size of audience for genuine
concern for program quality. Catering to the least common denominator
leads to programming that focuses on crime, violence, sex, sports,
scandal, and human interest stories. The amount of time devoted to serious
news is declining, and the media, driven by the quest for higher
advertising revenue, are abdicating their responsibility to inform,
educate, and inspire.
In this climate of media manipulation and
commercialism, it is not surprising that our young people have become
cynical and materialistic. That
calls into question our ability to serve as a positive role model for the
young in other countries and other societies. Indeed. it is alarming to observe the degree to
which intrusive advertising and
commercialism have led to a vulgarization of our culture and
an abandonment of moral values
that led this country to greatness. The not-so-subtle control of our
media by advertisers has led to the
emergence of consumerism as the dominant influence shaping our
culture, our values, and our
perceptions.
What is disconcerting to observe is that the pop
culture programs mass produced by the TV, movie, and music industries in
the United States are displacing--in the marketplace of other
countries--their own products.
As in the United States, low-grade programs, intrusive
advertising, and rampant commercialism have become the norm in TV programming
in Europe and other continents as well. It was a prominent TV
personality, who in addressing--a European audience had this to say,
"We have succeeded in
ruining our culture in the United States, and now we are going to
ruin your culture."
I am touching upon these issues because they have a
definite impact on the outlook and aspirations of the young in our
society. A telling statistic is that despite the rising demand for
computer science graduates, the number of undergraduate degrees in
computer science has dropped 43% from 42000 in 1986 to 24000 in 1994.
What this suggests is that a declining number of students are entering
those fields in which hard work is required. A visible facet of this trend
is that pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is increasingly being
replaced by a quest for education as a ticket to a better paying job.
I have used harsh expressions to make my points. The picture
I have painted is darker than it should be. I have done this with
deliberation to underscore that it is our collective responsibility--and
especially the responsibility of your generation-the generation that will
shape our future--to do
whatever can be done in our democratic society to prevent the corrosive forces of
commercialism and consumerism from encroaching on our culture and becoming dominant influences in
defining our values, our
beliefs, and our morals.
Lotfi A. ZADEH
University of California Berkeley,
CA 94720-1776
Lotfi A. Zadeh (S'45-A '47-M'47-SM'56-F'58-LF'87)
received the B.S. degree in 1942 from the University of Tehran, Tehran.
Iran. The M.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), Cambridge, in
1946, and the Ph.D. degree from Columbia University, New York, in 1949.
He is a Professor in the Graduate School, University
of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and serves as the Director of the
Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC). Previously, he served as
Chair of the Electrical Engineering Department from 1963 to 1968. Prior
to coming to UC-Berkeley, he was with the Electrical Engineering
Department, Columbia University. He held visiting appointments at the
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, IBM Research Laboratory, San
Jose, CA. Project MAC at MIT, SRI International. Stanford. CA, and the
Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University,
Stanford, CA. His current research is focused on fuzzy logic, soft
computing, and computing with words.
Dr. Zadeh is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, and AAAI. He
is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and Foreign
Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He is the recipient of
the ASME Rufus Oldenburger Medal, the Kampe de Feriet Medal, the Grigore
Moisil Prize, the Honda Prize, the IEEE Educational Medal, the IEEE
Richard W. Halming Medal, the IEEE Medal of Honor, the Okawa Prize, the
B. Bolzano Medal, and other
awards and fourteen honorary doctorates.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN. AND
CYBERNETICS-PART C: APPLICATIONS AND REVIEWS, VOL 28, NO.1, FEBRUARY 1998
Prof.
Zadeh's 1997 commencement Address; UC Berkeley
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