Another Nobel Prize | Jun Murai (Dean, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies)

2010.10.12

October 6, 2010, was abuzz with news of the winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Akira Suzuki, Professor Emeritus at Hokkaido University, and Ei-ichi Negishi, Distinguished Professor at Purdue University in the US. The Nobel Prize announcement was at 6:00 PM, and the hasty, barely prepared reports on Japan's 7:00 PM news spoke to how newsworthy it was. It was then that I received a strange message. Following the Prize in Literature on October 7, the Nobel Peace Prize would be announced at 6:00 PM Japan time on October 8, and I was asked if I could be on standby for the 7:00 PM news. The only speculation I had heard was that Chinese pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo was a candidate for the Peace Prize, so this request came as a complete surprise. I had thought the Nobel Peace Prize was an award given to people or organizations that have contributed to global peace, and that in recent years, contributions to ending wars, human rights, and the environment have been particularly recognized as reasons for winning. I believed an award for Mr. Liu would be a political human rights message, much like Aung San Suu Kyi's win in 1991, so I figured there would be no role for me to play.

The selection process for the Nobel Prizes is generally not disclosed for 50 years, and I think pre-announcement speculation about candidates is rare. However, seeing as the other prizes are decided in Sweden while the Peace Prize is in Norway, the situation with the Peace Prize seems to be different. The message I received was from a media source, saying that there were 237 candidates this year, and among them were the names of three individuals: Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Roberts.

Vint Cerf was the leader of the research group for the initial ARPANET project and is said to be the proponent of TCP/IP, which forms the core of the internet's protocol architecture. (It may be irresponsible of me to use ambiguous terms like "proponent" or "it is said," but in truth, the initial design discussions were naturally conducted as a group, and all the figures involved are accustomed to holding up Vint as the "father of the internet," so there is no issue.) Of course, he has taught classes at SFC several times and is now highly active under the title of "Internet Evangelist" at Google.

Tim Berners-Lee is a British researcher even more familiar to us at SFC. He created the WWW while affiliated with CERN, the high-energy physics research institute in Switzerland, and globally developed its standards group with MIT, SFC, and Inria, a French national research institute (now ERCIM). He remains highly active today as an evangelist for web technologies like HTML.

Larry Roberts is a bit of a senior to these two and is known as the father of the packet-switching technology on which the internet protocol is based.

So, it seems that because the information that these three were among the 237 candidates had circulated, the request from that media source was for me to be available for an interview if these three, or any one of them, were to win the Nobel Peace Prize. That much I understood. I know all three personally, and they are colleagues with whom I occasionally meet and continue to hold discussions. But why the Nobel Peace Prize?

After looking into it, there were essentially two theories: one that the award would go to the "internet" itself by listing its inventors (Vint for the internet protocol, Tim for the WWW, and Larry for packet switching), and another that listing the three of them was meant to send a message about the "internet." For the past few days, it's been a huge commotion among old colleagues! The talk ranged from internal discussions about what would happen to the position of that other guy who worked with Vint back then, to speculation that former Vice President Al Gore (who received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the environment) might win again, famous for his "I created the internet" remark (though it could only be taken as a joke). Gradually, the idea that the internet might actually receive the Nobel Peace Prize was gaining traction (strictly among ourselves, of course).

But the question of why the internet, an achievement of science and technology, would win a peace prize remained unanswered. The reasons given were all over the place, from it creating a global circle of people to the fact that environmental smart grids would be impossible without the internet—talk that was hard to tell if it was serious or a joke. Of course, I hold a sense of pride and confidence second to none that the internet brings peace to humanity, so I was ready for any interview as I waited for the 6:00 PM announcement on October 8.

And then, the 6:00 PM news finally came.

As if it were nothing out of the ordinary, it announced the award would go to Liu Xiaobo.

There is, of course, the issue of human rights, and a strong background of new international politics. For that reason, some were of the opinion that an award for the "internet" had been prepared as a political bargaining chip.

However, "Charter 08," which triggered the award, is a charter that Mr. Liu published on the internet in December 2008 to mark occasions such as the centenary of China's first constitution and the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights." It is also a signature campaign for supporters on the internet. It is a fact that his actions—conducting a human rights movement with a new method for the internet age, unlike any other in history—were the subject of the award.

Vint's colleagues from that era, who once enthusiastically insisted (half-jokingly) that the internet, created by the brilliant minds of scientists, deserved a science prize, now have a different feel. They have come to accept that this is what they worked for: a global society where new dreams and wishes are being challenged and realized. When you think about it, the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Economics, Medical Sciences, and Literature all have a mutual relationship with how people can contribute to the world. It means that in creating the future, in creating a global society, all sorts of things can be brought into the light. Ah, this atmosphere... it's very SFC.

(Published: 2010/10/12)