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Guide
The book "The Age of Transportation" is a highly interdisciplinary work and a crystallization of the wisdom of many people. This in itself is an innovative work.
This article is my review opinion on Huawei's participation in the writing and publication of the book "The Great Traffic Era" (some of which was published directly in the book), the relevant briefing, and the content that cannot be shown in the book.
Very intimate design, the words "Wang Tao Huiyue" are printed directly on the cover
1. Works that meet the scene in the era of innovation
The book was published just in time for the adoption of the Law of the People's Republic of China on Progress in Science and Technology on December 24. The law was in fact introduced as early as July 2, 1993, this time in its second revision. What attracts attention in this revision is that it reflects more of the scientific and technological innovation that truly promotes originality. In recent years, this issue has become more and more of a topic of concern and discussion among the Chinese people, and it is also something that I have been vigorously promoting and advocating. This is not a concept, but a cause that is truly and effectively promoted according to the inherent law of scientific and technological development, fully learning and inheriting the original experience and lessons of science and technology in developed countries such as the United States.
When the book was published, the publisher asked me what title it was appropriate to use to appear in the book. After much deliberation, it is suggested to appear in the name of "independent scholars". To achieve scientific and technological originality, a very important thing is to exclude the adverse effects of secular standards and turn to the problem from the perspective of the inherent laws of scientific and technological innovation.
On December 19, 2021, at the Red Bird Salon convened by Wang Yang, vice president of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Professor Xia Zhihong of Northwestern University was invited to make a "Reliable Ranking and Election Method?" " keynote speech. The impact of this theme is very broad, and it involves the impact of secular evaluations on society and technology from the deepest perspective. Professor Xia discusses a very shocking mathematical theorem: Saari's theorem. The simple explanation for this theorem is that Saari has rigorously proved mathematically that there is no absolutely objective and fair way to evaluate. If given 100 candidates who need to be evaluated (can be people or products, technologies, etc.), as long as you choose different evaluation rules, they can be regarded as purely objective evaluation rules, so that these 100 candidates can become the first place! The so-called democratic elections, university rankings, job title evaluations, SCI papers... They can only be used as a reference, especially when it comes to original scientific and technological innovation, their reference significance is even more limited.
2. The original manuscript of the review opinion published in the book
Judging opinions published in the finale of the book
After reading the ninth draft of this "Great Traffic Era" (the title of the book at the time of the final review was still called "Comprehensive Great Transportation"), I felt overwhelmed. Because I was a major participant in the creation of the first edition of this book (the title of the book was "Huawei Traffic") at the time, I am particularly aware of how great changes have been experienced and how many people have invested in the process from the initial state to the ninth draft. Before October 2020, the original material of the book was a relatively scattered technical data of various transportation majors within Huawei, as well as the "Compilation of Digital Transformation Practice Experiences in the Transportation Industry", which Huawei internally called "Blue Treasure Book". At this point, the relevant information is not yet a book. At the invitation of the Electronics Industry Press and the Koala Look Professional Content team, I was involved in the work of turning this source material into a book. In the beginning, there were huge internal difficulties in this work.
Informatization or digitalization itself is a huge problem. Informatization or digitization work did not begin today, but began at the latest since the advent of modern electronic computers. However, in the past, the failure rate of informatization work was very high, and the reason was that the information system developed by a single IT system provider based on a single user unit seemed to be operational. Systems developed by different business units, especially different IT system providers, are often incompatible with each other. Not only is it difficult to communicate with each other's data, but the language expressions may be different. Even the description of this problem is described differently in the original sources of the book. Some are called "chimney systems" and some are called "data silos.". Historically, early MIS systems have often referred to this as an "island of information" problem. This problem has existed significantly since the early informatization process, and it is still one of the biggest challenges in the digital transformation process today. This issue is addressed in the descriptions of almost every different transportation operation in this book. How to solve this core challenge is one of the most important issues for digital transformation success.
If it is written about 5G, or the subway, the scope of expertise involved is relatively limited, and several or one author can finish writing this, and there are many authors who can complete this work. However, the scope of expertise involved in this book is too large, not only involving different transportation industries: high-speed rail, high-speed rail stations, aviation, airports, high-speed, urban transportation, subways, shipping, ports, the first edition even involved tunnels, bridge engineering, etc., but also involved in 5G, Internet of Things, optical transmission, sensors, video surveillance, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data, automatic driving, databases, computers, radar, navigation, logistics, passenger transport, epidemic prevention... Hundreds of different majors are different, and at the same time, a main line needs to be established to string the entire book together, rather than an isolated technical introduction, and there is a huge problem of highly interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary.
Target requirements. This book cannot be written as an introduction to related technologies, but rather as a practice to effectively serve the digital transformation of the transportation industry. The reader of this book may be an engineer or IT person in the transportation industry, or more likely to be a leading decision maker in the transportation industry, including leaders at all levels of government. Because the construction of transportation infrastructure in any place is an important task of local governments and central governments at all levels, it requires their great attention and support. In this way, the content of the book must not only be fully professional, but also easy to understand, so that participants and decision makers in the digital transformation of transportation can understand.
Judging from the contents of the current ninth edition, it should be said that the initial goal has been basically achieved. For the problem of language uniformity, many solutions were initially envisaged, and from the last version, it was compatible with a multimode method similar to that of mobile phones. That is, when introducing related issues, several expression words: chimney system, data island, information island, are used simultaneously in the digital introduction part of different transportation majors. In this way, readers with different professional language habits can see familiar concepts.
The ninth edition takes care of ease of understanding best, compresses the introduction of technical content to the minimum possible, and is more in line with the language habits of government and transportation business decision makers. It has enriched a lot of content in the management, strategic decision-making and execution of digital transformation, and Huawei's own successful experience in digitalization. Although this is bound to lose technical content, the work in this area deserves full recognition in terms of the objectives it has achieved. For decision makers and relevant workers in digital transformation, it can provide a very good comprehensive and systematic reference.
At the same time, the focus on the theme of digital transformation, rather than the technical characteristics of various transportations, also makes the theme of the book more distinct, solving the problems caused by highly interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary.
The book is not only the writing of a book, but can also be seen as a continuous progression of a research project. The ninth edition has enriched a lot of content that was not available in the first edition, especially the case of the digital transformation of public transportation in Chongqing Jiaotong Investment City and the case of smart navigation aids at airports. These new cases are not only impressive, but they are also very important for Huawei's own core competitiveness. From the materials before and after the writing of this book, we can see the process of Huawei's enterprise BG department's understanding of the digital transformation of transportation and even the digital transformation of a wider field. It can also be seen that Huawei uses its own technological advantages to develop technologies and even chips specifically for the transportation industry. Successful digital transformation, and the resolution of chimneys and silos, requires a fundamental role for digital platform (digital base) companies. This role is equivalent to the functionality of the operating system or factual information standard. At present, Huawei is one of the few companies that can assume such responsibilities, and it also proves that Huawei has such a capability from a specific aspect with the understanding of digitalization presented in this book.
In the past, Huawei was mainly a hardware provider, and with the development of its business, it has a very rich professional experience. The tremendous pressure brought by the changes in the international situation on Huawei is not only a challenge, but also an opportunity. IBM suffered huge losses in the late 1980s and early 1990s and faced the challenge of bankruptcy. The new chairman and CEO, Gerstner, took office to transform IBM from a hardware manufacturer into a service provider. Huawei itself has highly benefited from the services provided by IBM. The current digital transformation is a highly complex project, involving not only it the IT infrastructure with computers as the core, but also basic communications such as 5G, data communications such as routers, terminals, sensors and other very extensive information technologies. Therefore, a very well-rounded company is needed to take on the work of consulting and other services. At present, there are few well-rounded companies like Huawei in the world, and even have broader professional experience than IBM, a teacher of information services, while continuing to do a good job as a hardware provider, transforming (or more accurately "expanding") into a service provider that relies less on chips is also the need and call of the times.
Digital transformation is not only intrinsically connected, but true digital transformation is about crossing the original boundaries as much as possible and expanding to a wider end-to-end whole process. It is not only necessary to realize the integration of all transportation, but also to extend and interconnect the corresponding digital network to a more far-reaching production and manufacturing end. The more information is interconnected, the greater its value. This book has already shown the prospects of cross-border within the transportation industry, and it is expected that Huawei will use this as a basis to leapfrog into a wider range of fields.
Third, what can be improved in the future
1. I originally planned to have a chapter on the history of the development of informatization, and I was willing to do this work. In this chapter, we can reflect how informatization or digitalization has developed step by step to today, and why Huawei's core technical capabilities reflect huge and irreplaceable advantages. Huawei is not a transportation professional, the original is not the protagonist of information system construction, if the lack of this chapter to fully demonstrate, it is difficult to understand what Huawei's role, positioning and advantages in the comprehensive transportation, why Huawei has reason to talk about this topic. Huawei can play a very important role in the current wave of global digital transformation, but it is far from fully demonstrated in this book.
2. A key challenge in the digitization process is chimney systems, data silos or information silos. But this book does not fully clarify what the problems this poses and how to solve them concretely. It needs to be understood that silos are the problem, but not the absolute problem. For example, his systems (medical information systems) and airline booking systems are two information islands, but do they need to be interconnected? It is possible to identify very extreme cases where this demand exists, but too accidental demand does not become a real market demand. Even within the transportation industry, there is a need for air and rail intermodal transport, but the need for air and urban rail intermodal transport is very weak. And, these are two completely different transportation systems. Aviation and high-speed rail are both need to be booked, they have fixed seats, there is a problem of attendance, similar to the fixed time slot in communication, is "circuit switching". The urban public transportation system such as the subway is similar to the "packet exchange" in communication, and there is only one maximum bandwidth. As long as it does not exceed the maximum bandwidth, you can go as you go, and as long as you can get on, you can squeeze it up desperately, there is no fixed seat number, and there is no predetermined problem. These two completely different types of transportation needs are difficult to achieve intermodal transportation, and there is no corresponding demand. Therefore, what kind of information islands need to be broken through, what kind of information is not needed, which requires in-depth analysis to have professional persuasion, rather than simply treating all information islands or information chimneys as a problem.
3. At present, there are serious problems with automatic driving, and the automatic driving system developed by Internet companies is basically impossible to succeed. To do traffic, we must look at the problem from the perspective of traffic. The success of the highway has little to do with the car, and is entirely the result of the construction of the road network. The key technology of high-speed rail is the road, which also has a deep relationship with high-speed rail trains. The autonomous driving developed by Internet companies is purely from the perspective of the car. They believe that as long as the car's intelligence ability is high to a certain extent, it can achieve autonomous driving, which is wrong in the basic technical philosophy. The result of the individual's independent and high intelligence is likely to be more chaotic rather than orderly. This book deals with autonomous driving, which is a very important technical direction, and Huawei is the most likely to make a difference in a truly successful autonomous driving solution, but this has not been discussed in depth, but only echoes the popular superficial concept. This won't be an obvious problem, but it's missing a great opportunity to showcase Huawei's capabilities.
4. The book faces five different key audiences:
Local and central government leaders related to transportation
Administrative leaders of the transportation industry, such as the party secretary of the company
Technical leadership in the transportation industry (chief engineer, etc.)
Technicians in the transportation industry
Now the transportation industry has a deep relationship with the information partner
The book needs to focus on how potential readers in this different role will perceive the contents of the book. At present, the content of this book is more fully taken care of the first two types of customers, but there may be some doubts about how the latter three types of customers will view this book. Of course, if there is too much orientation in a book, it is easy to lose sight of one or the other. Therefore, more needs can be considered in different books to meet, and I hope that highly technical professional readers do not have to ask too much about this book. The writing team did not lack relevant content, but reduced them all to the fullest care of popularity.
5. There are relatively more qualitative descriptions, and more quantitative descriptions can be added, such as the improvement of efficiency, and the reduction of costs. Corresponding reference data can be provided with the enrichment of accumulated information.
Fourth, how to avoid the trap of concept hype
When the book was about to be completed, it coincided with the explosion of the concept of the metacosm. The writing team was a little unsure, worried that the book would soon be published and would soon fall behind. The editor-in-chief of the publishing house, Hu Nan, approached me specifically to talk about this concern, and I told her to ignore the concept completely. Last year, when I first received the relevant work task of this book, I wanted to systematically sort out the harm of a lot of pure concept hype in the history of the IT industry. It is only limited to the positioning and basic ideas of the book, and this problem is not developed in the book. I've put that in a dedicated article. See: Senior IT people explain what a "metacosm" is – a breakdown of the "nothing" concepts in history. This article has caused great repercussions in the scientific and technological community, and teacher Yuan Lanfeng also made a popular science video based on this article. In fact, much of the content of this article was originally compiled for the Huawei book. It is only limited to the positioning and length constraints of the book that are not reflected.
As I was doing this, I suddenly found myself already making a huge shift. Just a few years ago, I was very upset about how my book would be published. After I was fortunate enough to meet Xin Chunlai, the science and technology editor of the former People's Publishing House, now published Oriental Publishing, I published seven books in one go, and now I have just published "Incredible India". Unconsciously, more and more editors from publishing houses and academia came to me to write book reviews of academic monographs and help publish professional books like Huawei. Not long ago, Professor Wen Yi published an academic monograph "The Code of the Scientific Revolution", which I appeared on the cover of the book as a recommender. In the process of participating in the writing of Huawei's book, there have been many changes before and after in what capacity I appeared, and finally appeared in the list of the advisory committee, hoping that readers will not misunderstand: First, when it comes to the "advisory board", it is a very senior and respected authority in the industry. In the field of transportation, I still have so much to learn from them, so I am really afraid to be. The second is to hope that readers will not think that I am old, I am still fighting in the front line, hoping to do more things and write more innovative things. Although I am regarded as a big V of a technology self-media, I never accommodate a small number of readers for the sake of fan base. These shifts are what I hope to see – titles that exclude any secular evaluation criteria and gain increasing recognition from professionals only through the results of the study themselves. More importantly, in Chinese society, especially in the scientific and technological community, there is an increasingly strong evaluation standard for pure science itself.
When I first received the task of working on this book last year, Huawei's Meng Wanzhou was still in Canada, and her future was uncertain. When the book was published, Meng Wanzhou had just successfully returned to China. In the science and technology war with the United States, Huawei is on the front line and directly bears the pressure of science and technology war. It is also a great pleasure to be able to make a small contribution to the innovation process of China's science and technology enterprises that are fighting in the front line.