IP: Tokyo Diary #3 and final

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

I am about to leave Tokyo for the trip home (first a full set of morning
meetings). Prior to a report on the conference yesterday, I did fail to
mention the cell phone situation in Tokyo. When I was at the Akihabara,
there were endless handiphones .. most interesting were the large number of
handiphone pcmcia cards for computers and pdas and the significant number
of PDA/handiplone combinations. 


I saw one that was interesting. It was a normal flip type phone (with big
display, which when properly unfolded turned into a pcmcia card to act as a
modem and I thing a voice channel so one can use the notebook as a telephone.


The meeting yesterday was quite interesting. We started with a small
private breakfast with Ira Magaziner and Glocom. IDT, NTT etc senior people
-- about 8. Ira gave a good rationalization on the domain name green paper
which I could support in large part. I did believe , as usual, the devil
was in the detail and there was a lot of devil. I will try to write up a
summary of this prior soon.


The conference itself was interesting. Ira keynoted along with the Chairman
of NEC Tadahiro Selimoto -- we had a chance to informally chat at the
reception the night before which was in the best tradition of Japanese
conference receptions -- lots of food, drink and informal talk and
precisely ending on schedule.


The conference Global Information Summit -- Cyber Warfare and Global
Collaboration -- The imperative for government and corporate change was in
my view a success with good representation from the European, Asian
communities. 


My panel on Individual rights and freedom of speech in the Internet society
went well and we easily consumed the 3 and 1/2 hours allocated.


Bottom line -- worth the long tiring trip and the terminal jet lag.


After a wonderful dinner with SUN people and others talking about primary
secondary education technology and politics, I am ready to go home.


Dave