The information needs of multilingual country like India, with its vast geographical area and diverse culture can be met effectively with high MIQ IT systems only. A number of IT applications have been emerging in Indian context. While computerization applications in the area like, railway reservation, airlines booking, banking & insurance sector, public utility services etc. have been successful, these efforts have been far from the bare minimum requirement of IT applications in the field of information for masses, primarily due to lack of appropriate MIQ level needed for such information systems.

�IT Applications in social services, school education, health care, public distribution system, transport assistance etc. are yet to be implemented in their true sense due to nonavailability of technological support for handling partial and imprecise information, concept extraction capability and the like which are the inherent characteristics of the IT environment for providing information for masses. These requirements are critical for achieving success because of multilingual and diverse social and cultural needs of the community. Even in developed countries, these aspects of providing support for vague information processing have not been fully incorporated in the IT systems. National Information Infrastructure is a growing phenomenon worldwide and the strategies adopted are primarily towards the convergence of IT, telecommunications, entertainment electronics etc. for interactive communication with and amongst masses as a universal service. Social Science aspects of such efforts in the context of information for masses are beyond the scope of this paper.

a) Software for users without computer background with 'mid- operation' support

b) Facility with user response behavior modeling as built- in feature of operating system

c) Specific fault tolerant implementation design & development aids for Network Histograms, Information Services Billing and the User's suggestion box

d) Facility for users with computer background to augment OS libraries.

Multimedia Multilingual Information Services Network Operation System (MISNOS) software technology addresses and focuses on the above issues. MISNOS can be viewed as a stepping stone in the direction of creating IT environment for providing information for masses. Thus, in contrast to the methodology of the past viz. the provision of multilingual support for IT proliferation as an end in itself, MISNOS focuses on multilingual concept as a starting point for IT proliferation. In fact, the Optical keyboard approach suggested in MISNOS is itself the innovative route followed for IT proliferation. The base paper on MISNOS [2] describes convergence of existing methodologies like object oriented bridgeware and liveware engineering and adoption of object oriented firmware engineering practices. It suggests a software network infrastructure in the form of nine information software network components on the lines of information tank, reservoir, warehouse, gateway, highway, motel, port, pipeline and filter. While the information reservoir utilizes the concept of catchment area requiring a very large scale network setup more in the form of a natural resource e.g. Internet, the information tank is a localized limited resource like Intranet. The other modules make significant contribution to serve the cosmic system approach in providing information for masses using MISNOS technology. Such an approach may be necessary to address information needs in a multilingual society with vast geographical area. MISNOS focuses on these issues in adopting Object Oriented methodology for MISNET menu windows. Out of the total 15 windows, 10 windows are related to information support services with a provision for rearrangement and on-screen scaling The need and role of specific setups like Software Training, Educational & Research Institutes (STERI), Development Center for Information Technology (DECIT) have been also discussed in the context of MISNOS technology. To illustrate the complexity and utility features of MISNOS environment, MISNET Menu on Indian Computer Software sector is discussed in [2]. Similarly Integrated Information System on Indian Computer Sector is described with details of Information Retrieval System in the form of a schematic diagram.

MISNOS technology identifies the IT issues of the information driven society as a consolidated and integrated approach towards:

a) Generation of information, determining its contents, including the aspects of fuzzy information inferencing and processing for imprecise/partial information;

b) Identifying specific users of various information

c) Service providers to cater to general/specific information through a network of delivery medium

Thus, soft computing based approach is needed to meet the information needs of future society. Therefore, in contrast to the existing approach of database management systems for IT proliferation, the starting point of soft computing based approach would be towards introduction of Integrated Intelligent Information Systems (IIIS). This would pave the way for Multimedia Multilingual information services to provide intelligent information, guidance & help in the virtual reality mode. The initial preliminary work carried out in this direction leads to indication of using high MIQ building blocks (operating system as an integrated extension of hardware unit) in deploying MISNOS technology for providing information for masses.

MISNOS is a virtual reality environment based OS software technology. Unlike the conventional types of general purpose and real time process control OS software, MISNOS approach considers computer's hardware and operating system software as an integrated unit in all its aspects. It suggests that such an approach in IT can serve its real purpose in an information service sector, opening several opportunities for providing information for masses. In this context, as brought out earlier, information gateways/highways and information motels will be necessary for data mining and associated operations and not restricting their scope as purely high-speed digital data links as telecommunications substitutes projected in the framework of National Information Infrastructure. It lays importance on creation of integrated packages in education/training in STERI and for development aspects in DECIT. It is expected that MISNOS technology will help to overcome the hindrances in IT proliferation in multilingual and diverse cultural society like India. In the coming decades, the growing needs for MISNOS software environment are likely to be seen in other multilingual and diverse operational setups arising out of globalization efforts in transborder economic activity. Especially in the Corporate computing world, with the global IT activity emerging as a key factor for economic development, the cooperative computational scenario will be a dominating consideration for trade & business. In such situations, deployment of MISNOS technology will open-up many business opportunities/avenues for achieving success.

The early efforts of developing Software Industry Intelligent Information System (SIIIS) which is capable of providing dynamic industry user responses [3] has highlighted problems of data overload primarily due to the following two main causes:

a) Data is imprecise, incomplete, vague etc.

b) Inadequacy to represent data on non-trivial cognitive terms.

On the basis of limited work carried out for SIIIS for exploring the requirement analysis and assessment towards implementation of MISNOS core modules, a need for effective 'programming medium' in place of 'programming language' was felt. SIIIS adopted a particular implementation for software industry, designed around Databases, Knowledge Bases, Processed Data & knowledge Base Integrator and an Information Processor. SIIIS used PROLOG programming language for implementation. These efforts looked into the aspects of data overload, one time referral situation, raw data, processed data, raw information and intelligent information which are all the characteristics features of MISNOS technology for providing information for masses.

In the context of applications of fuzzy logic oriented software methodologies for MISNOS, a major activity in the direction of Fuzzy Operating System (FUZOS) Support for IT was undertaken keeping in view the requirements of Corporate Computing [4]. The Corporate Computing is facing problems of

a) Total lack of fuzzy decision making support at the Operating System level

b) Limited support at the application level for handling imprecise & partial information.

FUZOS, implemented in C++, is a unique step in introducing fuzzy logic support for taking fuzzy systems' decision making capabilities of handling imprecise and vague concepts to the Operating System level using object oriented methodology and fuzzy class library. FUZOS provides a retrofit solution for DOS operating system commands like dir, list, copy, move and del. These commands of DOS were selected keeping in mind its immediate application by managers of the Corporate Computing world. Essentially, FUZOS incorporates fuzzy dynamic context sensitive decision making feature as against a Boolean filter operation in MS Window 95: View-Arrange Icons - by Size || by Dates.

Being a retrofit solution, FUZOS permits toggling between DOS and FUZOS. The redirection feature has been maintained for fuzzy commands also. The compatibility with existing DOS switches like /p, /w is also provided. FUZOS dynamically generates the membership functions. Typical FUZOS commands are given below

a) C:\MARCH\TEST\>dir recent files

b) C:\MARCH\TEST\> dir large and old files

The limited user feedback on FUZOS was highly encouraging and created motivation for migration to windows environment for FUZOS support. It was also observed that while the current implementation of FUZOS provided operating system level support, it lacked capabilities for qualifying itself as a building block component of MISNOS environment, primarily due to the reason that application programs have to pass through system kernel/shell layer of DOS. The research results of FUZOS and the feedback from the other interested groups/individuals in other countries [5] had motivated developers of FUZOS to consider new approach to study Operating System from soft computing view point and continue independent research in this area [6].

The characteristic features of the soft computing based Operating System from fuzzy logic viewpoint include

a) Flexibility requirement for OS

b) Fault tolerance as a built-in feature for OS

c) Non-reductionist methodology for file management

d) Recognition of frequency of OS command usage during life cycle of IT application

e) OS cost investment and proportionate partitioning of OS with provision for upward compatibility

f) Utilization of research achievement in related areas.

All the above observations and other useful information gathered through the study and experimentation of SIIIS and FUZOS indicated that a new regime of OS will be required to be designed on the lines of RISC processors i.e. partitioning the OS into two sections. The skeleton module should be integrated in the form of VLSI hardware extensions and/or firmware to improve the MIQ. The other portion of OS could be a purely software implementation. For this approach to be successful, hardware designers and VLSI architecture developers have to develop new 'structures on silicon' to support

a) Processing of fuzzy operations at instruction set level

b) Primitive data type for Register Transfer level (RTL) operations for 'fuz' as a paired tuple which can be represented as [7]

c) On-chip associative memory for information processor architecture

d) Object oriented hardware counters

Also as suggested in [8,9], optical keyboard with firmware menus will be needed for MISNOS. Further, the interface for information processor should have facilities to store and retrieve their multilingual data-cum-information bases into firmware chips. MISNOS views emergence of optical keyboard, fuzzy & virtual computers information processors including their Super Large Scale Integrated Circuit (SLSIC) chip sets with core OS as extension of hardware, to influence future integrated information processing and information banking services.

It is envisaged that for building large-scale information system using MISNOS methodology, the data entry, query and retrieval nodes would naturally be distributed. The data in the form of textual reports, audio/video clippings, images etc. arriving in all these information reservoir nodes would be unmodelled raw data. Software tools would be required to analyze and aid modeling using raw data for concept generation. The characteristic features of the software tools required for designing evolutionary information system leading to MISNOS software environment are

a) Concept modeling including estimation of data requirement based on concepts and knowledge requirements

b) Handling data and information overload at the stage of information modeling

c) Adopting design & development philosophy for developing systems on the basis of information/knowledge synthesis and not on iterative modeling.

The developmental studies for SIIIS and FUZOS confirmed the need for an effective 'programming medium' in place of a 'programming language'. The existing programming languages are more in the form of large tools which provide support for a variety of data structures and standard flowchart/algorithmic constructs like iterative loops, multiple branch (switch-case), conditional controls (if-then-else) etc. These languages are suitable for algorithmic programming which in itself is an 'iterative' philosophy as against design using 'synthesis' methodology. At present, in information system design, the process of synthesis is not adopted and the existing programming languages do not support synthesis constructs like the hardware engineering design practice. The language like VHDL for digital VLSI circuit design has standard building blocks and permit synthesis approach with the help of standard library support. After pilot study and experimentation, it was felt that for developing evolutionary information system as per the requirements of MISNOS, off-the-shelf software tools are not adequate. Similarly, the tools based on the current JAVA technology will also not serve the purpose. This led to a need for introducing basic primitive modifications at object oriented programming languages. In order to introduce synthesis support and to improve MIQ in C++ and Java, primitive data types for supporting fuzzy logic and rough set based operations are needed. Experiences in providing these operations at library support level have shown that to build evolutionary information systems with adequate performance for developing MISNOS technology, primitive data type support is must at programming language level [10]. Further, study on rough set based concept modeler [11] has also substantiated the need for primitive data type for introducing design philosophy for information system using synthesis. In the following paragraphs, we discuss the idea of programming medium and its relevance to the future information systems.

The developmental trends in programming languages extended their scopes to include debugging tools for program development. Further, Java had introduced a document feature for class library hierarchy and partial HTML linkage support. Such capabilities of programming languages are useful for the programming purposes only and do not serve any useful purpose after the testing is over and the software released to the end user. The scope for utilization of such document features is very limited in the software maintenance and practically no scope exists towards usage of document feature for the end users who uses such software at their computer installations. We therefore consider the approach of overcoming this limitation of programming language and extend its use after applications are installed on the user hardware. It is felt the interpreter/compiler mode of Java will be very useful for incorporating fuzzy logic based document support system. Such document support systems which form the part of the programming language will permit end users of production software to develop a dynamic view of the same output for variety of different view- points. By using the lower & upper approximation techniques of rough set theory, along with fuzzy relational data view, different projections of same information are feasible for variety of information consumers. This capability is a must for MISNOS technology to provide information for masses. Such technological innovations along with virtual reality based mid- operations support brings the concept of 'programming medium' for the next century IT systems; as against the high level programming languages of the past which extended structured programming and object oriented programming capabilities to the algorithmic programming languages like FORTRAN, PASCAl, COBOL etc. A full-length discussion on programming medium is beyond the scope of this paper.

In the context of Java proliferation and with the wide acceptability of Internet technology, the bandwidth is like a natural resource similar to soil, water, minerals and eventually silicon. The philosophy of MISNOS to provide information for masses opens up many new research issues to be considered for developing programming medium methodology. The ecological aspects of IT revolution [12] is a study to consider the impact of globalization versus tribalization, chaos and order, information linkages between raw data, raw information, knowledge, processed information and intelligent information.

We describe an application of programming medium methodology to illustrate its advantage over programming language scenario. Some professionals express that junk electronic mail flooding Net audience, has transformed a marvelous network technology into a nuisance. With almost four-fold increase in the recent years, the junk E-mail menace has acquired the dimensions of a grave concern. This has initiated discussions towards imposition of legislation to bring junk E-mail under the purview of law on a global scale. While such legislation may be a stop- gap arrangement, this junk E-mail problem serves as a natural input to information reservoirs proposed in MISNOS software technology. The existing filter solutions from Netscape Messenger and others can considerably benefit if MISNOS technology is timely developed and properly deployed to build information reservoirs from junk E-mails using an abstract data view & fuzzy logic based document retrieval techniques.

a) Java supported platform independence and introduced network applications support required for web activities. While most programming languages are either compiled or interpreted, Java is both. Also, Java supported a 16 bit Unicode for character representation. These features make Java suitable for its usage in MISNOS development. After examining the limitations of 8-bit character set codes in the context of multilingual optical keyboard for MISNOS, Unicode appears to be a prominent approach for exploratory work planned on optical keyboard [8].

b) The multithreading capabilities of Java can permit process level synchronization amongst different MISNOS processes and IOException handlers serve the purpose of implementing guaranteed object oriented MISNET menu windows.

c) Introduction of library support for cryptography and digital signatures helps the governance of information for masses on the lines of MISNOS.

In order to consider Java's inclusion for MISNOS work, preliminary studies were conducted on the suitability aspects of Java for its immediate adoption for implementing initial modules of MISNOS. It is felt that the following developmental efforts are needed to make Java more adaptable for MISNOS work.

a) Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) should introduce window-scaling feature, in addition to window resizing

b) Artificial Intelligence support

c) Fuzzy Logic Class and methods for performing basic fuzzy logic basic operations of s-norm/t-norm including fuzzy inference

d) Development of Class library for rough-set operations

e) Modifications to java.net to help information reservoir implementation for usage of raw data

f) API level activity e.g. Java Beans API family which plans to provide a complete desktop environment mostly independent of the underlying OS, can use many features of MISNOS technology.

Management support and commitments are must for achieving targeted growth in IT. In order to realize the goals projected in this paper, the continuous cooperation from the developers of Java is a pre-requisite. Sun Microsystems have set up Java Competency Center in India and also have plans for four additional Java Centers in India at places where software development work is being undertaken. These centers can play a significant catalytic role to undertake preliminary developmental work described in this paper. This will help to give Java a status of programming medium for the next century IT systems.

a) Simple RISC-like instructions are hardwired and are mostly executed in one clock

b) Complex CISC like instructions are executed using microcode/state machines.

The first step towards the suggested modifications in the development of Java Virtual Machine is enriching it with fuzzy logic instruction support [6,7,13] at byte code level and implementing these in either hardwired or microcode form. Unless these fuzzy logic supporting instructions are incorporated in CPU instruction set architecture the improved MIQ products can not be built around Core Java processor. This also involves data type support and also an on-chip special Fuzzy Arithmetic Logic Unit (FALU) like Integer unit in picoJava. The FALU module has to be on-chip and not optional unit like the floating-point unit of picoJava. Further, picoJava architecture needs to be modified to include provisions described in section 3 earlier. VHDL based simulations can help to assess the complexity and estimation of the efforts needed. Such efforts are now felt to be practical since the concept of the Virtual Fab is emerging as a popular future methodology in the semiconductor microelectronics industry permitting foundry operations as a seamless extension of its customer's business. The primary advantages of Virtual Fab are benefits of customer's internal fab in confidentiality and flexibility in responsiveness, allowing the designers to leverage their proprietary technology by reducing time-to-market for system-on-chip with higher MIQ. The 10 million transistor chips of the near future will escalate the demand for design solutions utilizing reusable, process verified cores, These Intellectual Property (IP) cores provide standard functions, often already supported by application software, enabling the design team to quickly introduce value added solutions with their proprietary technology. Thus, a portfolio of logic, memory, macro-cores along with hard and configurable intellectual property (IP) blocks can be made available through Virtual Fab approach.

The coming era of widespread adoption of reusable IP- based core will accelerate the development of more complex systems with increasing software content. Demands for 'system-on- a-chip' with more software content will be increasing in future and will serve as the basic building blocks for deployment of MISNOS technology to provide information for masses. These requirements translated in the domain of VLSI technology facilitators would mean more sophistication towards introducing

a) Flexibility of language-based design

b) High performance and large capacity of hardware accelerated simulation

c) Improved accuracy of full timing simulation

Since software developers and system integrators are interested in rapid prototyping activity and hence do not prefer to wait for real silicon to perform concurrent hardware and software verification, the needs to provide sophisticated tools allowing developers to simultaneously work on hardware regression, software & system debug and introducing improvement in the context of user feedback are of paramount significance. Java technology, with its bytecode processor with a single programming medium has potentials to be a leading technology for providing seamless solutions for the Virtual Fab of the near future. Thus, the need for language translators from C++ to VHDL [14] will be completely eliminated if Java is adopted as a programming medium in Virtual Fab. However, the current state- of-the-art of Java technology is still deficient in this regard and needs library support for VHDL, on the similar lines like projected for virtual reality modeling in VRML 2.0 environment [15].

The broad classification of intellectual property (IP) reuse to improve MIQ could be as follows:

a) Utilities bundled with JDK

b) Optional additions to JDK

c) Other Java related products

The collaborative efforts with industry partnerships in providing more APIs, both as core and standard extensions, have shown definite success e.g. APIs like Java Enterprise, Java Wallet, Java Beans, Java Server etc. However, these APIs will be viewed more like short-term successes in enhancing Java capabilities and promoting Java's applications base as a short-term success. The real potential of Java to serve the role of programming medium cannot be brought out by the above stopgap arrangements. In the history of programming languages, the developments from machine language, through assembly language to high level programming language had only made programming as more productive process in computer software domain. However, the growing needs of future IT systems will focus more on improved MIQ. Hence mere extensions and library improvements in Java programming language will not be adequate to develop it as a future programming medium and may even prove to be a bottleneck. The future needs of IT cannot be met by programming languages with their integrated programming environments alone. The programming environments provide support for editing, testing & debugging, and at times limited help on some constructs. This is nowhere near the programming medium requirements of the future. Initial studies in MISNOS had clearly indicated that AI languages like PROLOG, procedural programming languages like C/C++ and Java, lack the level of support which should be available in high level programming medium of the future. However, Java has an edge over other object oriented programming languages. Java with its existing features is definitely a promising beginning in this direction and perhaps it may emerge as the first programming medium much for the 21st century. This development is similar to the adoption of high level programming languages like FORTRAN, LISP which appeared about five decades back when the machine/assembly language era was dominant. Java's potential for the programming medium of the future can be felt as a single programming language with migration path in the programming medium to facilitate software development as well as VLSI design support to produce seamless operations in Virtual Fab.

Author would also like to thank Mr. WR Deshpande, Director, DoE, for providing computing infrastructural support for undertaking Java related preliminary exploratory work. Technical support and cooperation extended by Mr. GV Raghunathan, Addl. Director, DoE and Mr. S.Sivasubramaniam, Joint Director, DoE, has made it possible for timely publication of this paper.