JHU Commencement 1996
Address to the Graduates
by
John Evans, president, COMSAT Laboratories

The Johns Hopkins University
Whiting School of Engineering
Diploma Ceremony for Doctoral and Master's Degree Recipients
May 21, 1996

(The following is the prepared text of Dr. Evans' speech and has not been checked against delivery.)


Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening.

It is a distinct honor for me to speak to you on this occasion. I should begin by congratulating all those who are graduating here tonight. You have worked long and hard, and deserve this hour of celebration. I salute you all. However, you should be mindful of the fact that very few of you arrived here without help. There were parents, teachers, counselors, friends and in some cases "significant others", wives or husbands who provided encouragement, financial and/or moral support. I trust you will take the time to thank them in whatever way you can.

My talk tonight centers on some of the broad impacts of science and engineering on America, and its place in the world, that I have witnessed during my career. It is a truism that one's perspective on the world is shaped by the major events in one's life. Thus, perhaps I should first share with you a few facts about myself. I was born in Britain and went to school during the grim years of the Second World War. Subsequently, I went on to college. In the British system, at that time, entrance to a university was controlled by the departments, so effectively one had to choose a major before enrolling. I elected to study physics and received a bachelor's degree in 1954 and Ph.D. in 1957. I was then 24 and remained at the University of Manchester another three years doing graduate research in the fields of my Ph.D. thesis. These were studies by radar of the moon's surface (this was long before we had any close-up pictures of the moon) and studies of the Earth's ionosphere, which is the electrically charged region of the Earth's upper atmosphere responsible for the reflection of high frequency radiowaves. In 1960, I emigrated to the United States where there were far better facilities for doing this kind of research, and in this period, immediately following Sputnik, funding for space research was at an all time high. My new employer was MIT, which operates a defense research laboratory known as Lincoln Laboratory and it was there that I went to work. Lincoln Laboratory is not unlike the Applied Physics Laboratory and provided excellent facilities and support. As time went on, it became necessary to seek funding for my work from the National Science Foundation and also assume more and more responsibilities as a manager. In 1977, I became one of four assistant directors of the laboratory and three years later also became a full professor on campus and the director of a radio astronomy observatory operated by MIT for 12 universities in the Northeast. Any one of these three positions could have occupied a person full time and after three years I was ready for a career change.

So it was that in 1983, I came to COMSAT Corporation to be the director of their research laboratories; a position I have remained in since. Thus, I speak to you from the vantage point of having witnessed the funding and management of research in both an academic and an industrial environment. The two, by the way, exhibit enormous differences.

I also come with having spent perhaps 15 years performing research, 15 years managing it and maybe twelve trying to do both. This leads me to the observation that there is nothing more exciting than doing research. The thrill and elation of a new result or a new discovery are highs that live with one a long time. I remember well the period when I was a graduate student attempting to study the moon by radar. The equipment I inherited worked, but barely got echoes that exceeded the background noise. I spent almost a year making modifications to improve the sensitivity by about a factor of ten. This effort had its own setbacks, such as finding that the newly arrived high-power transmitting tubes I'd bought were defective. However, at last, the day arrived when I could turn on the radar again. The strength of the echoes exceeded all my expectations. A loudspeaker connected to the output of the receiver announced a "pong" as each transmitted pulse was sent out and then two and a half seconds a loud "ping" of the returning echo would be heard. I went outside the radar hut and gazed up at the moon feeling that somehow I was reaching out and touching it. There were many other exhilarating moments during my research career, but that one stands out.

Yet I digress, and I should tell you about COMSAT, which is a rather unusual company. It was created in 1962 by an act of Congress, known as the Satellite Act, which was signed into law by then President Kennedy. The purpose of the act was the noble idea of creating a single global telecommunications system using satellites to link all of the countries of the world. In effect, the United States offered to share its superior technology in aerospace and electronics for the betterment of all countries that wished to participate. We now take for granted easy access by telephone to any part of the globe. But to put this into perspective, I should remind you that, had you emigrated from Britain in the mid-1800s and wished to communicate home, you would have sent a letter on a packet ship, which with fair winds could reach England in 10 days. So, all in all, you could hope for a reply in about a month.

The first undersea telegraph cables were laid around 1880 and greatly improved communications for those who could afford to send telegrams. Direct wireless transmissions across the Atlantic carrying telephone conversations were established by AT&T and the British post office around 1926, but were prohibitively expensive for most people. This service was used, by the way, quite frequently during the Second World War by President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. The Germans monitored everything that was said and it has been reported that Churchill was not as discreet as he should have been.

Cables were laid across the Atlantic after the war that could carry voice signals. These were bundles of coaxial cables of the kind we use today to connect our TV sets to their antennas. The voice signals were modulated onto carrier radio waves, but the signal loss in the cable required that there be booster amplifiers every 5 kilometers. These amplifiers were constructed using vacuum tubes (or valves as the British called them) that were specially designed and manufactured for long life.

Thus when I arrived in 1960, I could indeed call home. One telephoned the AT&T overseas operator, who would put you on a list and ask where you might be reached at a particular time--usually next day!

The Communications Satellite Act of 1962 caused COMSAT to be incorporated in 1963 and begin raising funds through a stock offering. An international body to manage this new system called INTELSAT was formed in 1964, initially with 12 members, and COMSAT was named technical manager for the new system. It continued in that role until 1978, during which time it oversaw the acquisition and launch of five generations of communications satellites.

At first there was a raging debate about whether to use a fleet of satellites in low-earth orbits or use a smaller number placed in a 24-hour orbit above the equator. Satellites with 24-hour orbits over the equator are said to be geostationary, because as seen from the earth they appear fixed in the sky. This eliminates the need to steer the ground-based antennas to track the satellites and avoids difficult handover problems. The successful launch of a NASA Syncom satellite into geostationary orbit in 1963 decided the argument in favor of this latter approach, and the first INTELSAT satellite was placed in a geostationary orbit over the Atlantic in 1965. Known as Early Bird, it doubled the number of telephone circuits between here and the United Kingdom (then about 300) and could, moreover, carry television, which the cables could not. Today INTELSAT has over 130 members and some 20 geostationary satellites in orbit each capable of supporting some tens of thousands of voice circuits. COMSAT Laboratories played a major role in developing much of the technology that made this leap in capability possible.

One of the little known aspects of the Satellite Act was that it was passed, in part, to preclude AT&T from expanding what was then a domestic monopoly into a more nearly global one. At the time--and this was before the breakup--AT&T had a revenue stream that was larger than the budgets of all but about five countries. Hence, the power of AT&T was already causing concern in some parts of the U.S. government. And here I come to the first of several ironies that I want to tell you about. The passage of the Act caused Bell Labs to cease work on satellite technology and instead invent fiber optic cables. These are now the preferred medium for voice and data signals, because of their low error rate and short propagation delays. Satellites, however, remain the preferred medium for television distribution, because their beams can reach so many receivers simultaneously. Satellites, of course, also remain the only way of providing reliable communications to mobile platforms such as ships and aircraft.

The impact of the distribution of television via satellite around the globe has been utterly profound. Little now goes on anywhere, however remote, that we cannot watch in our homes on the nightly news. It is my belief that seeing American boys killed in Vietnam on television, night after night, ultimately undermined the public support for that war. Satellite distribution of television pictures also gave the lie to communist propaganda about conditions in the West, and that, in turn brought down the socialist governments of the Soviet bloc and with it the Berlin Wall. The students in Beijing who were so ruthlessly suppressed by the Chinese authorities were demonstrating in Tianamen Square, because they had seen on their televisions the peaceful overthrow of the government of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and had hopes of effecting similar changes at home.

The telecommunications revolution, however, is far from over. Cellular phones are now in use by 20 million people in this country alone, and a race is on between several major industrial groups to launch fleets of low-earth orbiting satellites that, by the end of the century, will allow one to call home with a cellular-like phone from anywhere on the planet. Another 20 to 30 million users are connected via the Internet and the number is said to have been doubling every few months. Change is increasingly becoming the norm.

This brings me to my first piece of advice to you this evening--in order to remain a contributor to your profession you will need to continuously learn new things and be ready to accept new assignments.

The revolution in global telecommunications, while still far from over, has already brought many unforeseen consequences, and it is these that I propose to dwell on for the balance of my talk. All of them have affected America's place in the world.

First, I would liken the Vietnam War to a war that the British fought in South Africa at the end of the last century known as the Boer War. Facing stronger forces, the Boers developed what we would now call guerrilla tactics of "hit and run". To contain this, the British chose to place many of the men in concentration camps, and their handling of the Boers was seen to be so harsh that it earned Britain criticism from the rest of the civilized world--then largely Europe. The British never again fought a war without allies.

I believe that the United States learned the same lesson in Vietnam. That is, absolute military might must be tempered by the need to maintain friends and allies. One needs a justifiable basis for gaining that support. Thus, in the Gulf War, in Somalia, in Haiti, and in Bosnia we intervened because it was seen to be morally just--and here again television played an enormous role in generating public support--but also we intervened only when we had secured active support and participation on the part of our allies. True, we did this, in part, to share the cost, but more importantly we now know as a nation that "might is not necessarily right."

Another of the ironies associated with improvement in world-wide communications triggered by the Satellite Act has been the loss of many of the manufacturing jobs that once existed in the U.S. Clearly, many other factors were involved including complacence on our part, relectance to develop or invest in new technology, etc. Yet the ability to transfer information rapidly around the globe is a key component in the growth of overseas competition. Manufacturing jobs involving a high labor content have simply moved to where labor is cheapest. I would remind you that wealth is created largely by processing raw materials and adding value; consequently, the loss of these manufacturing jobs has diminished the large difference that once existed between the U.S. standard of living and that of the rest of the world. China is now the largest manufacturer of TV sets. Your GE microwave oven was probably made in Korea. These and other parts of East Asia, have, by some estimates, grown their productive capacity between 1980 and 1993 by as much as 8 percent annually. This figure represents the combined effects of the growth in GDP per capita and of the labor force. Similar growth may be replicated in the rest of Asia, the Middle East and Latin America in the not too distant future. The added irony to all this is that TV has helped demonstrate the success of free-market economies (capitalism, if you will) over the regulated economies of the communist bloc countries, so we now have the former Soviet bloc countries grappling with how to establish free-market economies, and increase the competition still further.

In the developing world there is a rapidly growing labor force, so it is always possible to increase output by increasing the labor input. This is viable because wages are still low. The high income countries (U.S., Japan, and Europe) do not have this ability and with little population growth over the next decade must raise their productivity by increased efficiency and/or adding more value to their products in order to compete. The important point is that manufacturing can survive in the United States only where there has been substantial capital invested in automation to minimize the number of employees needed and R&D continues to be supported as a vehicle for innovation.

Some observers would say we are also headed for more chaos in the market place. Under stable conditions a company might gain a temporary advantage with a newer product or increased advertising, but competitors then respond to restore their share of the market. In a chaotic situation there is both order and disorder. The car industry provides an example of a market in chaos. The oil crisis, changes in mandatory safety requirements and emission standards as well as in consumer preferences have thrown off any linear predictions based on prior experience. Despite this, some general trends (e.g., to smaller cars) could be discerned and were exploited by some companies. There are those that believe that we are likely to see an increase in the number of "chaotic" markets, in which competitive advantage goes to those firms that best read market signals and reposition their products to meet emerging needs. Such firms may depend less on their tangible assets (capital or facilities) and more on their knowledge base.

This brings me to my next point. At the end of the Second World War, science and engineering enjoyed enormous respect for the contributions they had made to the war effort. For the first time, the United States government became the principal sponsor for the scientific enterprise. The National Science Foundation was created. Sputnik jolted us into creating NASA and putting a man on the moon--all in a little more than a decade. When I arrived here in 1960, there seemed an unbridled sense of optimism. Everyone appeared to believe that progress was inevitable--a God-given right of every American, if you will, and a result of the American way of doing things.

Now, three and a half decades later, the mood has soured. The Vietnam War caused many to lose faith in their government and Watergate only aggravated the situation. The general level of prosperity has been maintained principally only for those families that have two wage earners. The enormous layoffs in steel, aerospace, the telephone and other industries have shaken confidence in the notion of guaranteed lifetime employment. There has been an enormous growth of crime in the country, of single parent families, in the number of homeless, and recognition that there is a segment of the population that seemingly is trapped in poverty. All of these things have sapped the public's sense of well-being and have given rise to a political shift to the right. In passing, I would observe that this shift may not last indefinitely. After World War II, with much of its capital spent, its empire being dissolved and its industry run into the ground to support the war effort, the British went through a similar period of difficult adjustment to new realities and oscillated back and forth between their two parties at each subsequent election in vain hopes that the next government would succeed where the previous one had failed.

For us in the fields of science and engineering, these are dangerous times. It is not our fault that poverty and crime have not been eradicated. Science and engineering largely deal with problems involving "things" and while, often complex, these can be more tractable than problems involving people. With hindsight, we now recognize that it was easier to put a man on the moon than successfully declare and win a "war on poverty." Science and engineering did help win for us the Second World War and the Cold War that followed. In this century, they have greatly increased the quality of life for us all. We have more leisure time, we do less manual labor, we live longer and enjoy better health. Food production has increased enormously and is achieved with a much smaller percentage of the population.

There has been a virtual explosion of new knowledge secured by engineering as the handmaiden of science. We built the Hubble telescope, and other satellites that have allowed us to view the universe from x-rays to infrared. We built linear accelerators at Stanford, Brookhaven, CERN--the list goes on indefinitely. There were marvelous feats of engineering performed on behalf of science. They have given us new information into everything from the formation of the universe down to the inner construction of the nuclei of atoms.

A small sampling of some recent achievements might include studies of the free oscillations of the sun--this is called helioseismology--that are yielding for the first time information about the internal structure of the sun and may greatly change our current models of stellar evolution. Computer models of the atmosphere now allow us to forecast how the weather will behave for periods of up to a week. Climate models are being developed that offer promise of predicting future climatic variations as well as explaining those of the past. The discovery of sea-floor spreading, which lead to the acceptance of the theory of plate tectonics and with that the formation of the continents, was a relatively recent landmark in geophysics. The human genome project is a massive task presently under way to map all the human genes. It was expected to take 20 years, but with advances in computer science it is said to be now almost 80 percent complete. Incidentally, this project has enormous implications for society. Then there is gene-splicing which allows us to do genetic engineering and has spawned a whole new industry we now call biotechnology. For those of us engaged in any of the sciences, these are indeed incredibly exciting times.

Yet for all that may have been accomplished, others would point to Three Mile Island or Chernobyl as the examples of science and engineering that are uppermost in their minds and would question the need for continued investment in research and development. In Congress, we see misguided efforts to abolish the Commerce Department by members who seem to have forgotten that this is the home of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Weather Service and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Other factors are also affecting the funding for science and engineering in our country. In order to increase its short-term profitability, U.S. industry has already halved the amount of R&D it performs in just the last decade. I might add that the long-term consequences of this have yet to be felt, and in light of the remarks I made earlier about increasing global competition and the need for us to remain innovative, this does not bode well for us.

In sum, there has been a sea-change from the 1960s. We now have a public that is less trusting of government, of its employers, and of the scientific enterprise. We need interpreters of what we do to reassure the public and excite its curiosity. While there are the Carl Sagans, they are too few in number. Norman Augustine, one of your prior commencement speakers, in a celebrated speech lamented that engineers don't feature in any of the TV series--there is not "L.A. Engineer", for example. Thus my second piece of advice to you is to seek every opportunity to explain what it is you do and why it is important, not just to your colleagues, but to the public at large.

And this brings me to the moral of my story. You leave here and go into a world that is vastly changed from the one I knew at your age. A world in which America's economic prowess has been diminished. A world that is a much smaller place--a "global village" if you will. Yet the very shrinking of the world and loss of economic independence seem to have intensified the desire for many groups to stress their uniqueness. We see it in Europe, which has grown united economically while causing the Basques, the Scots and others to insist on asserting their distinctive identities and the Norwegians to opt out of the European Union altogether as a result of similar concerns.

Michael Sandel, at Harvard University, has written a book called "Democracy's Discontent," in which he argues that modern democracies must find ways of contending with the global economy while also giving expression to their population's distinctive cultural and other differences.

To quote from a New York Times article, "Mr. Sandel asserts that we have to learn to push our politics in two directions at once: upward beyond the nation-state and downward below the nation-state. For the purpose of dealing with global issues--from the environment to human rights to trade--we need to inspire a larger sense of global citizenship, because these are global problems requiring global solutions. But the planet is no substitute for the neighborhood. Modern democracies need to be nourished closer to home--in families, schools, congregations, work places and social movements. Only in these settings can people have a direct hand in exercising responsibility for their communities. And it is the actual exercise of democracy--which is better done in the PTA that the World Trade Organization--that gives moral authority to the governing institutions we need to control a global market."

"It is not enough just to equip citizens with the economic skills to compete in the global economy," Mr. Sandel argues. "If you really want people to think globally, you have to give them the confidence that they will not be swamped by the wider world. And you do that by building democratic institutions--starting small and working upward--that draw people out of the merely private, self interested concerns and engage them instead in deliberations about the good of their communities as a whole." End of quote.

An example of all this, cited in the book, is the Civil Rights movement born in black churches in the South, that grew to become an Equal Rights Movement across the nation, which in turn lead to a world-wide concern for human rights. And there I will end this talk. I end it on what I trust is a hopeful note, for I believe America with its fine universities, such as this one, is in the best position to equip its citizens with skills to compete in a global economy. I also believe that America, with its democratic institutions and traditions, has the best chance to engage its citizens in ways that lend moral authority to the governing institutions of the world.

I wish each and every one of you success. Go out and do good things. Be happy, and, above all, get involved. You can make a difference. Thank you and good night.


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