Honorary Graduates
Orations and responses
Response by Brian Oakley
9 JULY 1998
Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Fellow Graduands, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is a great honour that you do me this day and I must say it was very
embarrassing to hear the nice words of the Public Orator; though I do have to
say that he missed perhaps the most important factor in my life and that is
luck. When I was young I couldn't understand why Napoleon insisted that
his Generals had to be lucky. I think I understand it now. For
it has been my great good fortune that my working life has neatly spanned what
is sometimes called the second industrial revolution - the start of the computer
age. As a young Army signaller in 1945 I worked with many of those who had spent
the war years intercepting the enemy's communications, and sending the resulting
information on to Bletchley Park where that remarkable bunch of geniuses
stripped out the encoding to read the enemy's mail, something that of course
gentlemen do not do! Almost in passing they launched the computer age,
building what were some of the very first digital machines. And then
at TRE, the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern in 1950 I heard
Alan Turing lecture, though of course at the time most of us did not know that
it was he who had been at the heart of that remarkable bunch. But we did
know that he had just written the long division routine for that Manchester
University Baby computer which the Public Orator has just referred to. It had
been designed largely by ex-TRE people and which first ran fifty years ago last
month - as has been well documented by an Essex man, Professor Simon Lavington,
Incidentally, members of that Manchester team subsequently moved to Essex
to help found the computing department here.
At this other end of my career I spend some time, courtesy of the European
Commission's funding, encouraging Quantum Computing and Communications research
in Europe; for the last 50 years has been only the first chapter in the computer
age. There is much more to come, much more to discover and create - and
Quantum Computing may be one way to open the next great chapter. As
well as doing some of the things that we cannot and indeed will never be able to
do with classical computers, the quantum approach will lead to a revolution in
the security of communications and may well eventually lead to
teletransportation and eventually to "Beam me up Scotty" becoming a reality.
The quantum approach may even perhaps provide an explanation for how the brain
achieves its miracles of computation and pattern recognition. Of course,
this is only a 'maybe'.
In between these two extremes, the alpha and omega of one man's career, I
have been able to observe, perhaps even assist a little, in the steady
convergence of computing and communications. In these hard times I realise
it is very difficult for universities to see through the mist, or perhaps it is
a fog, that is generated by the funding depression. But shortages can also
sometimes act as a stimulus to change. One change I would dearly like to see is
more ready co-operation emerging between departments in our great universities.
This University is rare amongst British universities, indeed rare on the world
scene, in having departments that are outstandingly strong in both elements of
the second industrial revolution, in both computing and communications. I
am delighted to learn today that there are changes coming in the organisation
here which will serve to bring those two departments closer together; and I
think it is very brave of the University to tackle that, and wish the change all
success. This revolution has depended not only on the conversion of
information into knowledge, though perhaps not into wisdom, but also on
communication of information - not just over distance but also between machine
and man, and indeed man and man. And that must be developed further as we
advance into the future chapters of this revolution.
Now, you may observe that in this great revolution I have never really been a
primary actor in the work, only an agent. I would like to believe that the
real actors that I have had the good fortune to work with, found me, well taken
all in all, supportive and perhaps even at times encouraging and facilitating.
They also serve who only stand and wait. Perhaps for that reason I am
particularly delighted and immensely gratified that a University - and that this
University in particular, with its twin strengths at the heart of the second
industrial revolution - should have recognised me in this way. In thanking
you, may I wish the University every success in the part it will undoubtedly
continue to play in the unfolding chapters of this revolution?