Guiding society with technology

 

To celebrate the 22nd anniversary of 'Database', Science and Technology Minister Khunying Kalaya Sophonpanich talks to Don Sambandaraksa about her life and times

Published: 4/02/2009 at 12:00 AM

Newspaper section: Database

 

 

Science and Technology Minister Khunying Kalaya Sophonpanich first worked on a computer back in 1965 during her postgraduate studied at the prestigious Imperial College, University of London. A graduate in high energy nuclear physics, "Ajarn Kalaya," as her staff call her, began using computers in the punched paper tape era. She recalled how she learned to read the paper tape and had to know how to repair and manually punch holes when the tape tore.

Science and Technology Minister Dr. Khunying Kalaya Sophonpanich.

Later she used punched cards, which were much easier and more resilient. One trick in those days was to draw a diagonal line across a stack of cards so that a misplaced or out of order card could easily be spotted. She only dropped a stack of punched cards once in her career, and putting the pile back in order was enough to make her careful never to do so again.

The advent of magnetic tape was frustrating at first as early units had a very limited life-spans and the tape was prone to tearing.

The computer she used was from IBM. It had 64KB of memory and was the size of a large conference room.

 

The current Science and Technology Minister had to conduct atom smashing experiments at Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research which in recent years has made a name for itself with the Hadron collider. The principle was the same but at a much smaller scale in the '60s. Atoms were smashed together and photographs of their vapour trails were taken from different angles. These were manually logged and then analysis were run back at Imperial to fine tune models on the nature of matter and of the universe.

 

Another interesting fact was that while computer rooms were usually manned by engineers who took the tape or cards from researchers to run on a time-share basis, but when it came to the physicists, they pretty much had the computer to themselves. Many of Kalaya's own simulations ran for days on end because of the huge amount of data that had to be analysed.

 

Programs were written in FORTRAN and then hand-compiled into machine code. She had to know exactly where to put each variable in memory.

By the time she graduated, computer storage was being upgraded to huge magnetic discs, but the floppy as we know it came much later.

 

Today, her five years of research could probably be simulated in one afternoon on modern hardware, she joked.

 

Khunying Kalaya returned to Thailand and taught physics at Chulalongkorn University. She saw the new computer engineering department spin-off from the physics department in 1970. It was not until 1975 that programming became much easier with high level languages and things started progressing at a more rapid pace.

 

In 1976, Kalaya was head of the business computing department at ABAC, then still Assumption Businesses Administration College, and was a founding member of the Computer Association of Thailand, chaired by Professor Srisakdi Charomonman.

 

Much more recently, from 1995 to 2007, Khunying Kalaya was chair of the board of directors of Suan Dusit Rajabhat University and oversaw a push towards e-education and virtual libraries. The idea was that education could be done anywhere at any time and Suan Dusit was one of the first universities to have all students have a notebook PC for use in their studies.

 

During her years, she spent a lot of her time in advisory roles to a succession of science and technology ministers. 30 years ago, the ministry was called the Ministry of Science, Technology and Energy and later, it was Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment. But it was the civil service reform in 2002 that changed the structure to what we have today. 14 ministries became 21 and the functions of MoST were split up among four ministries.

 

Her current ministry was left with only science and technology. Environment became part of the Ministry of Natural Resources and energy was spun off into its own ministry and the IT function was supposed to be spun off to the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology.

In 2002, there was a lot of overlap between the MICT and MoST. The idea was for Nectec to return to being an academic think tank and for MICT to be the one doing the industry regulation and hands on practical aspects.

 

The division is far from perfect and there is a lot of overlap and uncertainty today, but that has not stopped the MoST from functioning. Recently Nectec manufactured a series of mobile phone jammers to prevent bombs being triggered by phone in the South. This was arguably the work of MICT or even the National Telecommunications Commission, but the bottom line was that at 450,000 baht a unit, these inexpensive jammers helped save the lives of many police and army officers operating in the deep South.

 

Another project was a rain sensor network rolled out in the far North during a period of heavy rain and mudslides, again arguably a function that should have been under the MICT's Meteorological Department.

 

The Computer Misuse Act, often referred to as the Cybercrime Law, was drafted by Nectec, the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre, under the Ministry of Science and Technology and today Khunying Kalaya thinks that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done not just on the law itself, but on educating everyone from government law enforcement to the person on the street what the implications of the law are to them. Education and advocacy, she feels, remains very much part of the MoST's mandate going forth.

 

Science and technology pervades every other industry and as such, the ministry has to work with every industry and every other ministry often as a mediator or advisory role. There are many semi-autonomous agencies that ultimately report to her, the National Innovation Agency, Biotec, Mtec (materials), Nanotec and of course Nectec. MoST is unique in having 546 PhD graduates and thousands of staff with master's degrees and this is a resource that has enormous potential if properly channelled.

 

Another issue is jurisdiction over the Internet. Today, many Internet-related matters lie with the Ministry of Culture because it is deemed as a form of entertainment. Thus it is regulated as a form of entertainment rather than as a business resource or basic right to telecommunications. Kalaya feels that this is a problem and that the final say should lie with MICT or MoST.

 

Khunying Kalaya spent most of her political career in opposition and was shadow science minister in recent years and made a name for herself as chair of the ICT sub committee of the parliamentary science and technology committee. She did a lot of investigative work into three issues, electronic junk, e-passport and smart ID card project.

 

The e-passport system was not thought through properly and even today we do not have any automated e-passport gates or treaties with other countries on automated clearance. The smart ID card project was simply not good enough and neither should have gone ahead.

However, all she could do was write reports. The government of the time did not budge and pushed through with these two projects regardless of her committee's objections.

 

Science and technology was not recognised, nobody talked about it. But we can't blame the public, we must blame ourselves as a scientific community that has not done a good job at getting the message out.

 

Away from politics, much of her work was with the environment. 22 years ago, Khunying Kalaya set up the Rachapruek foundation to help in reforestation and in particular restoration of watersheds. This was long before the current green movement gave rise to the fear of global warming.

"Reforestation is one of the best ways to reduce our carbon footprint," she said.

 

She does not feel that the current interest in biofuels is rational. Even if all of Thailand's agricultural land was turned to biofuel production, it would not be enough and it would have the side effect of pushing food prices through the roof. However, a biofuel strategy around by-products agricultural waste does make sense but ultimately it is a matter of conservation and nuclear energy in the distant future.

 

Khunying Kalaya is worried that technology and the Internet is tearing apart society with a digitally competent young generation seeing their digitally inept parents and grandparents as dumb. The social rift is worsened by the fact that youngsters do not learn norms and morals from their elders and the very fabric of society is threatened.

 

"Technology is fundamentally a good thing and brings skills, but it can be a double-edge sword if not guided properly," she said.

 

Today's online games are good for building skills, but she feels that the operators have been caught up in a tide of excessive capitalism forgetting to balance their morals in the process.

 

Getting people to use computers and go online is a major challenge. Kalaya feels that bridging the digital divide is imperative if Thailand is to heal its generational and social rifts of today.

 

responsible ? shhhhh

thanks for the article. all this stuff is complicated, it'll all come out in the wash, and the universe will unfold as it should.