(EID-031) “INTRODUCING EMIL”

You’ve met HAL, now meet EMIL. HAL (Heuristically programmed Algorithmic computer) is the fictional character in Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey saga, represented or presented only as his “eyes” that could be seen throughout the Discovery spaceship. EMIL is short for Electronic Multimedia Interactive Learning, a project of the University Consortium for Resource Networking (UNICORN) that will install electronic libraries in universities and schools in the Philippines.

You’ve also met ASIMO, Honda’s humanoid robot. Unlike ASIMO who took on a humanlike form, and unlike HAL who showed his “eyes”, EMIL is just going to be a cluster of personal computers (PCs) built around a room that will quadruple as a computer laboratory, an internet café, a business center and an audio-visual facility.

Unlike Ateneo de Manila’s Beowulf cluster, it will only handle simple online research tasks, and not complex computational science tasks. Simple as it is however, it is going to be as “sentient” as HAL was, being just a form of artificial intelligence that interacts with human users.

The Beowulf cluster was a successful attempt to group together ordinary personal computers to perform collective high performance computing tasks, short of what a Cray could possibly do, without spending as much. EMIL will also be built as a cluster, except that it will use “thin” clients, similarly performing the tasks of complete PCs, without spending as much.

The direction towards economical computing is very important for UNICORN, since it has the goal of making EMIL as pervasive as possible, meaning that it should be built in every school in the country, from the grade schools to the graduate schools.

In more ways than one, the client-server environment that uses “thin” clients is actually a re-incarnation of the mainframe environment, except that the “thin” clients have taken the place of the “dumb” terminals. The “secret” weapon of EMIL, the one that will make it intelligent is the new dynamic electronic forms (DEF) technology obtained by the United National Integrated Development Alliance (UNIDA).

A team of computer experts from UNIDA are now working on the design and architecture of EMIL, with the intention of piloting it in one of the UNICORN member universities in Metro Manila.