MESSAGE FROM PROF. ZADEH: I should like to extend to you my best wishes for the holidays and the New Year. Special thanks to those of you who have posted stimulating and thought-provoking messages commenting on a wide variety of issues.  Two years ago, in December 2008, we were emerging from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The world of finance came close to total collapse. Today, the worst is behind us but the sky is cloudy. Greece, Portugal and Ireland came close to defaulting. Several other countries in the Eurozone have piled-up high debts. In the United States, the Federal Reserve is printing money.

Some prominent economists predict that the United States is heading toward bankruptcy.

What caused the crisis? As always, there is more than one cause. An underlying cause relates to what I called--in a paper published in 1974 "On the analysis of large-scale systems"--the crisis of undercoordination. An updated version is attached. 
The world is becoming increasingly interconnected due to advances in technology and growth in numbers. System theory tells us that highly interconnected systems are vulnerable to catastrophic failures. To prevent failures, it is necessary to resort to coordination. Coordination is associated with regulation and control. Since nobody likes regulation and control, the degree of coordination in modern societies falls short of what is needed to insure stability. This is a reality that underlies the crisis of undercoordination. A visible result of undercoordination is a tendency to pile up debt which will have to be repaid by future generations. The problem is that in democratic societies future generations have no vote.

As a member of the academic world, I do not have to worry about losing my job, though I can understand the despair of those who have lost theirs and cannot find a new one. Beyond unemployment, an issue that is of serious concern to me is the growing domination of money and commercialism in our society. In the United States, universities--in particular private universities--are much more money-oriented than they were when I entered the academic world. It used to be the case that money was what was needed to support research. In large measure, today research is what is needed to bring in money. Today, in many universities, assistant professors are warned that if they do not bring money they will not be given tenure. To me, this is deplorable. Crass money-centricism is degrading our culture and our moral values. 

Unfortunately, money-centricity is infectious. In many countries, money-centricity is in fashion. This is particularly noticeable in the case of Russia, where pursuit of money-centricity has become an official policy. Looking into the future a time will come when Moscow State University will be renamed Abramovich University--named after the richest oligarch in Russia. After all, in the United States we have Rockefeller University, Carnegie-Mellon University, and many others named after rich donors. 

Regards to all,

Lotfi

-- 
Lotfi A. Zadeh 
Professor in the Graduate School
Director, Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC) 

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Computer Science Division
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
University of California 
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zadeh@eecs.berkeley.edu 
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