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Internet Founders and Communications Experts
Explore Marconi and the Future in Seminar at Columbia

More than a dozen telecommunications visionaries, among them several developers of the Internet, will gather at Columbia University Dec. 9 to discuss how Guglielmo Marconi's invention of wireless communications has reshaped the world - and how new information technologies will reshape it further.

The all-day seminar, "The Heritage of Marconi's Invention and the Future of Telecommunication," will begin at 8:30 A.M. at Columbia's Casa Italiana, 1161 Amsterdam Avenue. The event is sponsored by the Italian Trade Commission's High Technology Center in New York and was organized in collaboration with the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America and the School of Engineering and Applied Science, both at Columbia.

The Italian government has organized a series of international events, beginning in Bologna in 1995 and ending with three telecommunications seminars in Helsinki Nov. 5, Stockholm Nov. 7 and New York Dec. 9, to mark the centennial of Marconi's first successful experiment in wireless communication.

"Marconi was not the last Italian inventor," said Massimo Mamberti, Executive Director for the United States at the Italian Trade Commission. "Despite its small size, Italy plays a leading role in telecommunications technology, a role we wish to bring to the attention of the American public."

In the summer of 1895, at his parents' farm outside Bologna, the 21-year-old Marconi used a primitive radio transmitter he had devised to send a telegraphic message a distance of about two miles. He added refinements to his invention and moved to London to experiment further and to commercialize it. On Dec. 12, 1901, he transmitted the letter "S" 25 times in Morse code from his station in St. John's, Newfoundland, to another in Poldhu, Cornwall. News of the achievement spread around the world, and he was acclaimed by scientists of his day. Widespread radio and telephone communications followed within a dozen years.

A host of new technologies makes this era not entirely unlike Marconi's, said Zvi Galil, Dean of the Columbia engineering school, Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor and an expert on computing and wireless communications. He will welcome attendees and introduce speakers, as will Richard Brilliant, the Anna S. Garbedian Professor in the Humanities, and Mr. Mamberti.

"Marconi's invention opened an entirely new world of long-distance communications, where international news that once took days to transmit now took seconds," Dean Galil said. "The challenge today is to fully realize the potential of a number of new kinds of communications, some of them in competition with one another.

"The Internet, high-frequency wireless telephony, broadband ISDN lines and still other technologies can deliver an enormous variety and depth of information. The question is how we will use these inventions and the information they convey."

Experts from Italy will discuss the history of telecommunications and new services on the horizon. Francesco Carassa, professor of electrical communication and former rector, Politecnico di Milano, will look at efforts to provide broadband services using high-frequency satellites. Umberto Silvestri, chairman of Telecom Italia, will examine marketing and cost control issues. And Guido Vannuchi, former senior executive for RAI, the Italian broadcasting company, will highlight key issues in converting radio and television from analog to digital transmission. Gian Carlo Corazza, professor of telecommunications at the University of Bologna and director of the Fondazione Marconi, will offer closing remarks and begin an open discussion.

Among other speakers Dec. 9 are three founders of the Internet: Vinton G. Cerf, now senior vice president for Internet architecture at MCI Telecommunications Corp.; Robert E. Kahn, president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, a not-for-profit organization to foster research and development for the National Information Infrastructure; and Leonard Kleinrock, professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Dr. Cerf's graduate advisor.

Professor Kleinrock's doctoral dissertation at MIT is often cited as laying the groundwork for the computer networking revolution. And in the early 1970s, when Dr. Cerf was on Stanford's computer science faculty and Dr. Kahn was at the federal government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, they collaborated on the software and network architecture that made the Internet possible. The two computer scientists designed and developed TCP/IP, the standard mechanism that allows heterogeneous computers to connect to each other and exchange information reliably. All the new information services, including e-mail, the World Wide Web and network searches, use TCP/IP.

Yet these proud parents of the Internet revolution express concern about the effects of the new information technologies. Dr. Kahn sees conflicts between copyright law, which protects intellectual property, and communications laws designed to insure the free flow of information. And Dr. Cerf wonders where all the new gadgetry - pagers, personal telephones, portable computers and now wearable computers - will lead us. "Apart from looking like Christmas trees, what more might we expect from wireless communication in the future? "

Answers may be forthcoming from Andrew J. Viterbi, vice chairman of Qualcomm, Inc., who will look at the role of wireless communication in reaching underpriveleged members of society. Robert W. Lucky, corporate vice president of applied research at Bellcore, will discuss how present infrastructures can support the new technologies. Professor Kleinrock will examine support systems required for nomadic computing, in which users can take their computers anywhere and remain connected.

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