Oral-History:Yash Pal

About Yash Pal

Yash Pal was born in 1926 in Jhang, in modern-day Pakistan. His studies at the Lahore campus at the University of the Punjab were interrupted due to partition, and he earned his MSc degree in physics from the reconstituted Delhi campus of Panjab University in 1949, and later earned a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Much his career was spent at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, where he was a member of the Cosmic Rays group.

In this interview, Pal discusses his career, his interest in space, and his involvements in education in India.

About the interview

YASH PAL: An interview Conducted by Robert Colburn, IEEE History Center, 17 March 2004.

Interview #436 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

Copyright Statement

This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.

Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to Oral History Program, IEEE History, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA or ieee-history@ieee.org. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

Yash Pal an oral history conducted in 2004 by Robert Colburn, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ USA.

Interview

Interview: Dr. Yash Pal

Interviewer: Robert Colburn

Date: 17 March 2004 In The U.S./18 March 2004 In India

Place: Telephone Interview to New Delhi, India

Colburn:

I would like to ask about some of your early studies and experiences and what led you to become interested in physics – and then I would particularly like you to talk about the intimacy of communications and the need for intimacy in human relations and so forth.

Pal:

My childhood education was all over place in various parts of the country, but basically I was educated up to my bachelor's level in Pubjab, which is now in Pakistan. Then in Delhi for a couple of years. Then I got my master's degree from Punjab University in Chandigarh, India. Part of my education, self-education, has been from my participation at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) as a research assistant and Research Fellow. I was there for five years, and then I went to MIT. I got my Ph.D. at MIT in 1958. Then I went back straightaway to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay. I was associated with them for a long, long, time. After many years, I became attracted to the challenge of trying to use space for communication and development.

Colburn:

Was there a particular event that led to your interest in space?

Pal:

My interest in space came much later. My first interest of course was in physics, but I think that what I became resulted perhaps from other things as well. India was partitioned in 1947 when I was studying. Then I came to Delhi. At the same time as all that there was the Independence Movement in which I was involved. We were all greatly influenced by Jawaharlal Nehru who talked about modernizing India. It felt that science and physics were in a sense a part of the national movement. Surprisingly I liked physics very much, and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research I worked on cosmic rays and particle physics. There was an element to choosing what one did. One tried to things for which one did not particularly disadvantage. [meaning?] There were special opportunities here in developing techniques and technologies, and it was wonderful that within three or four years I was beginning to be recognized around the world. However I decided I needed to get a proper graduate education, so I went to MIT. I was a research assistant there with Professor Bruno Rossi. Cosmic rays and particle physics were together at that time. Cosmic rays was the part which connected to astronomy, and particle physics of course tied in with the intimate, minute structure of matter. I worked on various techniques there such as the cloud chamber at Brookhaven National Laboratory and so on. After I got my Ph.D. and I returned to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research where these interests were combined – particle physics, more and more cosmic rays and astrophysics. That was a wonderful and exciting time. Simultaneously, living in India and with the kind of background I had in refugee camps and so on, I had a concern for society and education, so I became involved in school education curricula and rural education as a side interest. At the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research there was fantastic freedom. I think that was and probably remains one of the best places in the world in which to work. I had a friend there who was a few years senior to me, Vikram Sarabi, who was also a cosmic ray physicist. Sarabi got interested in the possibility of being able use satellites for countrywide education and for development and so on. That excited me. We talked a great deal together. He died in 1971. A year later the new chairman of our Space Commission, Professor [unintelligible name], was another of friend of mine. He said, "If we are going to do space we have to look at the applications of space. Why don't you come help set up the Space Application Center?" I went there on what I thought was a five-year sabbatical, but got so deeply involved in it that my own career changed. My interest in high-energy physics remained, but I was no longer an active researcher in that area. Should I stop here?

Colburn:

No, not at all. That is excellent.

Pal:

When I came to Ahmedabad to try to set up the Space Applications Center my motivations were twofold. The first was to develop techniques and technologies to rural communications with direct satellite broadcasting and show that it could be done in the most disadvantaged villages in India. That experiment was in collaboration with NASA. They had six experimental satellites, and this gave the possibility to broadcast television signals which could be received by dish antennas for the first time. I am talking of the very early days. The agreement was very nice. There were people in NASA who were moved by this possibility and they agreed to loan a satellite to us for one year. We also sent people out there [NASA] and a special transponder was designed and put on that satellite to do the broadcast in India. Here was a strange situation in the world. The first time any large-scale satellite broadcasting of television happened was in India – and not in Indian cities but rather in a few thousand villages in India that were purposely selected as being in the most depressed areas of the country. We developed the receivers, put in converters, low-noise amplifiers and antennas and took them to places and villages where there were people who had never before so much as turned a knob on a machine and had never seen a moving picture. Our mission was to bring messages to them. Automatically, straightaway the connection was not only technology; connection became very social also.

One had sufficient freedom at TIFR that at one time I had as many as 200 social scientists working to try to find out what we should say to people whom we don't know, how to do audience preparations and how to do need assessment studies. And there are so many languages. How were we going to handle this? We got into this and we did of course bridge the distance. The distant signal did get there and we had various languages and a lot of things were being done. However simultaneously another concern arose: one can bridge the distance with a satellite, but unless one really belongs, has empathy and understands, one may end up really indoctrinating people or telling them what is good for them rather than their discovering what is good for them. We did a very large social evaluation of the experiment. We had nine or ten anthropologists who went and lived in the villages for one and a half to two years and submitted evaluations from doing thousands and thousands of interviews before, during and after. Gains were in terms of various elements in regard to life, agriculture, health and other things.

However, there was another aspect - and this was really a transformation - happening in India as well as in the rest of the world. At that time no one in India was allowed to broadcast except the Information Ministry. We were not Information Ministry. We insisted. We made them partners really and we insisted that we would make some of the programs by involving a whole lot of people from outside. They resisted. We had big arguments and I said, and many others, that we are into this game not only for technology but for discovering what could be done and understanding it. Finally an arrangement was made. That they put one person into our operation as the station director. We built a studio ourselves. We had no background in television, but we learned. We made all the programs and the station director pretty soon became a partner rather than a director. The programs we made were interesting. One of the responsibilities given to us, and which we accepted, was to make science programs for children. I mention this because I think this element of communication is normally not realized when one talks about how all these means should provide information and that will give power to people. These are generalities.

Colburn:

Yes.

Pal:

I went around to thousands of villages myself during installation of the experiment, along with a large of number of wonderful colleagues. Engineers became social scientists and vice versa. We would go to villages to install antennas in schools, and schools quite often happened to be one room with a single teacher and a blackboard on which one could barely write. I had in my education efforts grown up believing that science could be taught only through the discovery approach – that children should have laboratories and do experiments. There were no laboratories there. I had to change my way of thinking. I wondered and agonized what to do for a month, and finally suddenly it dawned on us, "Let us turn our disadvantage into an advantage." I wrote down a credo that science programs would be to help children realize that science is everywhere – in the kitchen, bicycles, the village pond, flying kites, observing the flora and fauna around them, etcetera. Let us help them really look at all these things in an understanding way. Doing experiments is straightforward: they observe. We found that children – and I know this now being involved even more deeply in education –children are incredibly observant. They do many, many things we don't normally call experiments but which actually are experiments – even when one throws a stone at a windowpane to see how it cracks.

Colburn:

Yes.

Pal:

All these things are important. So I said, "Let's make programs on this credo: Science is Everywhere." I went around and talked to all my friends here and there, and several young people got excited, including some of my friends abroad. I said, "Look, I need help, please, for making programs like this." Philip Morris [correct name?] at MIT, a longtime friend, said, "Look, stop everything. In the next two weeks please prepare some briefs and send them to me." We got these briefs and young graduates from the film and television institutes , scientists from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and many other people got together to work on this. These programs were made and telecast and they showed tremendous promise. The briefs made at that time were revised just two or three months ago to make a new version called "Science is Everywhere." Involvement became absolutely passionate indeed. The technology, and sociology were mixed. One component of this was that in the middle of the experiment it became clear that, "Okay, we are bridging the distance, but if we bridge the distance is that good in itself? Should we try do something else?" Therefore we decided to set up a low-power transmitter in a village that was about 50-60 kilometers from where we were in Ahmedabad, and we modified the television cameras. We were using portapacks, which were simple cameras used by amateurs, and built studios and recording systems with those so they were portable and we could take them there. We asked people who worked in the villages to write their own scripts to tell us their own stories. It was very intimate as if they were making the programs. We telecast those. Therefore part of the time they saw this intimate programming and part of the time they saw the national programming and so on. That turned out to be really far more effective than just distant programming. Then came the question, "Where do we go from here with this experiment?" It was amazing that the government had agreed with and funded an experiment of this kind and given us this kind of freedom. Then the idea was to see whether India should move into a space program and if so what should be its objectives. And the origin of the Indian space program included the sociological considerations of this type. The Indian space program did not originate in the military or anywhere else. We sat down and asked ourselves, "What should be the mode of communication for true interaction and development of people?" We were addressing this issue as being not only for India but the world over. Someone asked me at that time, "Would you like your television to ultimately become as good as BBC and many American TV networks such as NBC and CBS, etcetera?" I still remember the statement I made. I said, "They are very nice, but I think it will be a tragedy if our television becomes exactly like that."

Colburn:

Yes.

Pal:

I think that tragedy has happened in a way, but that's another story. Anyway, the idea was to design the system in such a way, and we put on our engineering and other hats and asked, "What could be the system?" We designed and experimented with a system where we planned to have thousands of very low power transmitters spread all over the country with a range of 10 to 20 km. We recommended that these low-power transmitters be given to universities, local [unintelligible word(s)], villages and so on, and let them operate so that they can work on an intimate, close level. However if they were left only there they would just drown in their parochial wells, so they should then be connected nationally and internationally. The result is a connection where the close intimate and the long distance come together. In that way a system could possibly be created which is much more far-reaching. It is enjoyable and is also coupled with people's lives. It gives them more initiative. They can really look at their own issues and problems. The government accepted this proposition, but they didn't really know what they were accepting. Now there are a few thousand low-power transmitters in the country and the satellite came. Then of course the usual thing happened – the government, and later on the business people, all essentially preferred that all the low-power transmitters only be slaved together so that advertising could function very well, government programs could be announced and so on. At that time then the transmitters were not given to universities and colleges at all. However I am happy to see that now this is beginning to happen. What I have found is that many things which one tries to do, that one feels should happen quickly, don't happen very quickly at all – but it's amazing: they do emerge after decades. That is beginning to happen. On the basis of the success of this experiment the government decided to have a space program, acquire satellites and build satellites and all the technological elements that go along with that. Now I was there only ten years in the space program. I am still connected in a friendly way. The people who got together later and made it happen have now achieved the results that now we build our own satellites for communication, broadcasting, remote sensing and meteorology. At the moment we have about 130 to 140 transponders up in the sky, countrywide programs of various kinds and various states have their own programs. A number of things of this sort are going on. There is a National Open University, there are many other new universities that have been founded and there are new development programs in villages. These have been developed using the same type [sic; considerations? model?] we used in the beginning, but with the addition that there is more interaction and feedback and people asking questions in many, many places. Of course telecommunication, which also has used satellite, has developed tremendously. Then came advances like excellent exchanges – which could work. Anytime one thought of making small telephone or other exchanges people were saying, "Oh, but where is the air conditioning in villages?" and "They are very tough. They won't work," and all that kind of nonsense. Looking back it seems silly. However exchanges were designed and built here, and one of the first things that was done – and which I consider to be very, very important – was to marry the technological potential and capability with the social capital of the country; and that is that the emphasis was put in installing public call offices all over the country. The public call office might be operated by someone running a little kiosk or selling some vegetables or anything else, and make machines so that people can call from there. They could get paid and the commission goes to the telephone company. This very quickly connected up the country. This was because of this innovation to make these inexpensive, beautiful, tremendously reliable exchanges that were done by a team under Sam Petroda [spelling?], the C-dot [correct word?]. With all that happening in a sense it almost seems that people filtered out, developed, one led to another and so on and a community developed. All kinds of things of this sort started happening.

Telecommunication is spreading exceedingly fast compared to what it was earlier. Not only the space program is being used now, but other means as well. However space is quite important and there is a large space segment. I might mention this connection, that we also developed a remote sensing program. My personal philosophy in most of these things is that one should try to be as self-dependent as possible. This is because when trying to do things oneself one discovers ways of putting things together in such a way that will match what is required by the society in which one lives. When I had to start this satellite remote sensing program in Ahmedabad I asked a lot of people, "What do we do? Where do we get the people?" I was told, "Come on, just pick a dozen people and send them for training for a year or two in the United States." I said, "They have marvelous scientists in the U.S., but they started satellite remote sensing only two years ago. Where did they send their people for training?" Of course there was no reply. I said, "Why can't I take a person who is beginning to do [unintelligible word] astronomy and an excellent scientist, and say, 'Instead of turning your cameras upward why don't you turn them downward to do satellite remote sensing and image processing?" That is how it developed. I cajoled and persuaded people, they came, and in a sense managed to finally – and this happened after me, so I can't take credit for this – but due to the same people, the satellite remote sensing program of India can be considered as a civilian program. It will go up against the best in the world in a sense. It is as good as anywhere else. In addition, in the satellite remote sensing program the concern was, "What is it for? Is it only for pretty pictures?" Just as in broadcasting with education and development, here the concern was the utilization. How do you get people to use it and for what purposes? Where? How? That became a major, major part of the whole program. Natural resources, management systems and so on were developed, and this has been absorbed all over the country – by the cultural universities and many different places. The images are used for all manner of things. That is very pleasing. There was, as there always is – and as in broadcasting initially – concern by the government and administration who is always worried, "For what will you use this?" These sorts of things never develop as fast as one would like. It was same in remote sensing. The [unintelligible word(s)] pictures take ages and so on – or used to take ages. Even the pictures, data and maps from the Survey of India could not be acquired easily. There was the paranoia that one's enemies would use it. I think that paranoia is slowly decreasing and it is beginning to become a part of the national life of the country. In an important sense there has been an effort to try to develop techniques and technologies that are socially connected – where the concerns, feelings and interests of the people are a part of the mix. I mentioned the social capital. There is growth in that direction. How far it will go one doesn't know, because other angles or aspects that enter in are so powerful. For example, have 50 or 60 TV channels like most other countries. More than half of those are used by people who are giving religious sermons or astrological interpretations and forecasts, and the rest are used by advertising 80 percent of the time – selling soap and creams and attempting to persuade people to do all kinds of things. It makes one wonder. One develops all these things with something short enough that things can be sold and so on, but messages or things which are meaningful, how much difference can they make when it gets all cancelled, subverted or changed by the forces that operate it? This is happening around the world.

Colburn:

Yes.

Pal:

I must say that there is something of the original spirit left however. For example we are now going to have a large satellite dedicated exclusively to education and science communication. A lot of discussion is going on and I think it is coming. The same space people are involved in this, and I think something more meaningful will emerge out of it. We have one of the largest open universities in the world now starting and many other open universities. One can get very self-centered and think that only what I thought of or we thought of and the directions we took should be followed. That's absolutely silly.

There are a lot of social dynamics and ecological dynamics. However when there are some seeds around one has hopes that things will move in certain other directions. Similarly in ordinary telecommunications. One person who I've proposed several times be given a Marconi Fellowship is Ginjin Walla [spelling?] is in telecommunications. He argues the following: "All right, I may invent something useful. However I am concerned that people cannot afford telephones and telephone service in India because it costs too much. Unless I can reduce costs it will go very far." Therefore he developed a system called Cordat [correct word?]. He worked at it and he demonstrated it and he tried to sell it. No one here would buy it. Now finally it has been taken and it is proving very, very successful. I think I can say that due to that effort probably 10 to 50 million people will for getting telephone service in that mode. This was accomplished by reducing the initial costs and keeping the quality high. This system is not cord [correct word?] modulation. This is somewhat different but working beautifully. Various systems are working and telecommunication is developing, but there are people in telecommunications and so on [unintelligible word(s)] very seldom. Usually they follow the normal fashion that got motivated this way. Similarly development of the simple computer, handheld computer that can talk in various languages and where one can talk is interesting. Many experiments of this type are ongoing. However if technological experiments are driven only by technology and are not connected with the sociology of the country I think they will not go very far. Trying to twist people in a certain way is the wrong direction to take. One should not be patronizing. One finds an enormous variety of ways of doing things even at the grassroots level. One must fit in with that and find impedance matching of a kind in which what you think and they think can communicate back and forth, You learn and they learn.

Colburn:

Yes.

Pal:

What else can I say? That early period of involvement in satellite communication and children and so on has altered me. Since then I have been perennially involved with interaction with children. My assertion is that we should learn from children what to teach them rather than decide what to teach them and give it to them. Teaching and learning is not delivery of messages or educational material that teach the values only as deliverymen or postmen; it has to be created with each child. Therefore for the last six or eight years I have been involved in programs on television, first on a whole series called "Turning Point" and then on the Internet here and then in newspapers where I answer questions from children. That keeps me occupied and also keeps me rejuvenated, because they are questions that keep me young that don't occur to adults. Grownups don't really get some questions because they don't observe; children continue to observe. I think is a formula that can be used the world over. I don't know what the connection is between my sitting behind my computer answering questions every week or a column going to various newspapers and writing or getting excited about something I don't like about what government or someone else is doing. The connection of space with my early life and then to have gotten involved with all these techniques and technologies, I don't know. However being connected, it is marvelous that about ten years after that television serial which I did to institute some technology and so on to hear people say, "Oh, we are the Turning Point generation. You really motivated us to learn science and go into this field." I think that is satisfaction enough. If a small thing like that can make a difference, life is worth living.

Colburn:

That must be a wonderful feeling.

Pal:

I have talked a long time.

Colburn:

I am very delighted that you have. These are wonderful insights and a very important way of looking at education and the sharing of information. The artist Picasso once said that all children are artists.

Pal:

Yes. And scientists.

Colburn:

And scientists too. And he said that the secret is to keep the artist in the child as the child grows up.

Pal:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I have so many examples. A child writes to me about something s/he has observed and says, "I went to school and asked this question. Then the teacher said it's not a school question." The problem is that schools deal with syllabi and curricula, and most questions are not encompassed by a single subject.

Colburn:

True.

Pal:

They are encompassed by a large number of topics and subjects put together. Teachers feel it is not their responsibility. That's a major problem with the world at the moment I think, is people becoming specialists and saying, "That's not my responsibility." In that sense I feel that super-experts are becoming dangerous for the world.

Colburn:

Yes. Other people have said that too.

Pal:

I see.

Colburn:

Some of the other Fellows I have interviewed have hinted at that same thing, the overspecialization.

Pal:

Yes. The jinx between the specializations. The important thing is to then put them together.

Colburn:

Yes.

Pal:

I used to have many conversations with Joe Abraga [spelling?]. Regarding the Marconi Foundation, I personally feel that the Marconi Foundation's work in the future should not lose sight of this. We have a tremendous number of fantastic experts. Everybody has got [unintelligible word(s)] as a very special person. But there are other special people around the world who would fit into the spirit of this. There are many, many other ways of pondering great specialties in themselves.

Colburn:

Yes indeed. I was wondering, for the benefit of people who might not know what an open university is, or for scholars who might years from now be looking at this oral history and wonder what that is, I was wondering if you could describe that a little bit. What makes an open university different?

Pal:

My quarrel with the open universities, including the British open university, is that they try to prove that they are as good as the other universities. They try to become like other universities and try to give degrees and diplomas very much like other universities. This is wrong. That is not the right direction. The open universities should not emulate; open universities should try to create something different and new. I think some of that is probably beginning to happen. I think precisely this business of specialization we are talking about. However if they also prepare a lot of material now, make assessments and make programs that cost a great deal, then it is very difficult for them to change. And if there are people around who can become sort of permanent then they can become let me say excellent looking but sterile. I think that this danger exists. In the same way, there is a tremendous – in my country and everywhere else – hoopla about education through CD-ROM. Now there are primary schools here, elementary schools – very expensive ones – that put children as young as three and four years old in front of a monitor so that they can easily recognize what is red and what is green and what is blue. That is so ridiculous and so destructive. Take them out and let them see their blues and greens other than on this silly screen. The screen which may have the color right, but it does not have the feel. You cannot rub the leaf of a tree and smell it along with seeing it. That is channeling information but not becoming knowledgeable about things. To a great extent that danger exists even in distance education. I spent a lot of my time on the Internet, and I keep saying that the Internet and Web are marvelous things, but they should not be used in such a way that students merely surf, get information, copy it and make very learned-looking papers. I have seen a lot of those. Rather, I think it should be used as something that enables one to increase the dimensionality of one's learning – rather than increasing the superficiality. The dimensions in which you can have things you may be surprised. The normal ways people give diplomas and degrees in universities are a block in my opinion. It has to be changed. The present possibilities have to be used. We need a fantastic spread in dimensionalities of learning, education and awareness, and that is possible. The word "surfing" itself says it all, that it is superficial and "look learned." Information is no replacement for depth. A little depth is far more important than lots of surface.

Colburn:

Hear, hear. Yes, indeed. I completely agree with that. What year were the small telephone exchanges you talked about built?

Pal:

Let's see. It started around '84-'85. Sam Petroda came from the U.S. I was at that time in our department of science and technology, and I was excited by his vision. He was a marvelous guy. He said, "Three years and 30 gross [correct 2 words?] and we will have the exchange." The growth [correct word?; gross?] is 10 million rupees. There were people who became involved that were working in the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and so on. He collected people. It was a fantastic challenge for all [correct 3 words?]. Sure enough, they were ready in three years. [Unintelligible word(s)] was passed on to various companies. There was tremendous opposition from many fronts, including the government. However it continued on and on. Then finally he said, "Let's do these public call offices everywhere." Once they went there and started working and a lot of people abroad wanted those, it was a fantastic journey. In between all that the government here changed and they were not doing this. I had many trips abroad – I went to Hong Kong and so on and had nothing to do with it at that time except that Sam was a friend and I sensed the importance of this. Therefore I changed my trips and wrote letters in order to help. I think one wants to be engaged. I always keep saying that if you live in a country where people don't occasionally get angry, that's not a country in which to live. One should live in a country where people feel so strongly about things that they get annoyed and angry and involved. That's the way to live. I am delighted to see that I can go to the tiniest apartment someplace and have access to a public call office with international trunk dialing and so on and call anyplace very inexpensively and so on. I consider that to be most appropriate – technology that is such a bargain that it is affordable to people. In addition, it utilizes the people who run these call offices. And this means that we have made use of – what I keep on saying – social capital in the country along with technology.

Colburn:

Yes.

Pal:

And incidentally, this is beginning to happen in [partial word; cyber cafes?] —[tape turned over, end of sentence lost]

Colburn:

I am very glad to hear that, because it is important. What you are saying about how the technology has become so accessible is, believe it or not this call that I'm making to you costs me about the same as to call another part of the state in which I live.

Pal:

Yes. It is beginning to be so also here now. The prices have come down to tremendously, more or less. Previously a telephone call to the United States was considered a reasonable part of one's month's salary – not for you, but for me.

Colburn:

I think that's true. I remember as a small child in London what a tremendous advance it was to be able to direct dial across the Atlantic back to our relatives in the United States. That seemed like an amazing breakthrough.

Pal:

People ask me, "What are your qualifications?" I say, "None." I have taught, I have been [unintelligible phrase] science and technology and [unintelligible word(s)] and so on. I became chairman of the University Grants Commission for five years. Again I felt that people were isolated in their compartments, so we helped set up inter-university centers, five or six of them. They are functioning beautifully, and it's been eleven years since I was doing that. Academic stuff , colleges and things of this nature. Essentially structural and architectural aspects were and are introduced where people can get together from various places. I am a strong believer in things emerging out of that direction. If you give respect to those you think are not experts you learn a great deal in the process.

Colburn:

Yes indeed. I think that is a very, very good way of looking at collaboration and the importance of collaboration.

Pal:

Yes. At the moment, the world is moving in a direction that puts a lot of people in the position of being only idle consumers or spectators, rather than creators, collaborators or participants. Sociologically, I feel that the future of the world depends on the extent to which it can achieve participation and collaboration. It is a crime to be only a consumer; and it is a crime not to be a creator at all. It us a crime. People must be creators as well as consumers. If that scenario spreads across the world then we will probably have a more peaceful world. That's my critique of the way in which globalization is proceeding. It could proceed very differently, made possible by modern technology and techniques. Modern technology allows it. The old technology did not allow it. We have to work in that direction.

Colburn:

Yes, indeed, and that is something that is very much a concern, is the growing passiveness of people who simply watch and observe. Meanwhile we are paying all these sports people millions of dollars to do our exercising for us.

Pal:

Yes. Nice talking to you. Do you want some more factual information or anything? If you have any questions, let me know.

Colburn:

I certainly will. Thank you very, very much for your time and for agreeing to this interview. I have really enjoyed talking to you.

Pal:

It's been a pleasure.

Colburn:

Thank you very, very much indeed.