Opening

by Dean Saito(Keio University), Dean Uno (Keio University)

Dean Saito = Topic/ Digital media and the high information society. Presently, we have come to the point where it has become difficult to manage and control information technology.What we need to do is to investigate the technology of the next century.

Keio University, being the oldest private university in Japan this Shonan Fujisawa Campus will be able to combine the best of both customs, old and new. We teach our students to find and propose a problems of the next century, to challenge the next century

Dean Uno = The university consists of 5 layers. and aims toward raising an international nod. This university is not only famous for the wide use of the Internet, but also the face to face contact in projects. The goal is to create and raise students with roles as international nods

Session 1

Coordinator: Prof.Umegaki (Keio University)

Prof.Umegaki - locate where we are in this information society, and to raise questions

question 1- What will we do about the gap between those with easy access and those without access to the to the internet, as well as those that are fortunate/unfortunate in affording training.

question 2- The need of a rule in unappropriate graphical messages around the internet, as well as child pornography on the net. How should we control it how should we handle it?

question 3- The rise of a new communnity through the Internet. A rise of tribalism in the imaginative community ex. Prejudice hate groups.

question 4- How scientists view their achivements, and the effect and social inpact they cause on the community. Are you conscious?

Aoyama Tomonori (NTT Optical Network Systems lab)

Cyberspace can be said to be an alternative living Space for humans The media should be defined as "an extension of man"

The structure of the cyber living space will divided in the following sections

commerce
retail
medicine
education
entertainment
transportation

It is where the infrastructure and cyberspace platforms come together and create a new living space.

The problem that we have now, is that there is an insufficiency in the following categories:

easiness in usage
anytime availability
if it is economical
security
does it provide comfort

The bottleneck lies
*Between the Boaxial cable and Fiber cable, the metallic cable is too thin

OCN - to make it as an resolution to some of the problems

Before, phone companies focused on the cheapness for long distance communication Now the phone companies focus on the time it takes to send data

The goal of NTT is to provide secure,reliable, economically affordable civil, minimum for virtual space residents of aged people.

NTT faces energy, and ecological issues that needs to be overcomed. It is said that by 2010 the amount of energy used will be doubled.

Questions & Answers

Q+C: Mr.Hirose(Johnson and Johnsons)

In the field of health care, the machines (pacemaker) are effected by the cellular phones and PHS(Personal Handyphone systems) and can mess up the functions while working on the patient. People have died from this, It can be refered as a new kind of disease as serious as AIDS New equipment can be costly on the hospital.
A:Measures are being made in labs so that there will be a limit in the amount of electrical waves and frequency being sent out. this answer may not be satisfying to the user, but we will try.

Tim Bray (Textuality)

TEXTUALITY
url http://www.textuality.com/talks/kiep-1/

Reflection of the media from the newest to the oldest

Virtual Reality = a large Data Base you can travel inside [problems]The only useful language is presently VRML.Not ready for business inplementation,it is slow.The monitor is not good enough. VR is the newest medium, but not quite here yet.

Audio/Video= is quite useful, reasonable quality, but Quicktime video on the computer is not good enough. They can be said to be cheapcopies not good as they should be.

Pictures= Quite useable on the internet, makes the page more interesting. They decrease the performance, if you want to deliver your info to the world, don't use pictures if you want to reach the widest group of people.

text- If you want to send it to the world, Text would be the best choice.

Knowledge is a text based application. Text cannot be seperated by intelligence the text consists of computer and human. The Turing test is based on language and text

knowledge lives permanently in the head of humans, but most of the knowledge that makes human knowledgeable is text. Text is high density information

People say pictures are worth a thousand words, He feels this is incorrec.The Constitutuin of Japan is written in 5000 words, can that be said to be equivalent to 5 pictures?

Presently, the internet is the golden age of text

The traditional publishing recipe is....
kill/locked up in metel/cook/freeze

The Internet on the otherhand is living, flexible in a way that the texts adjusts itself to the human. Hyperlinks find there own roots through text. To read a text, you only need a cheap phone. All texts are rich and cheap to use.

Such lifestyle can lead to a new kind of society. Nothings is going to change drasticly, all the problems of child porn graphics and hate crimes are old problems that we have had long before. As a solution, it may be important to make new restrictions and guidelines, but we must not forget, that laws are not perfect either.

new technology is a form of delivering old media

Hideh Takahashi(NCR)

We are going to be facing a Multi-Media revolution. Due to the cause of the growth in Internet technology and mass media known as "data house"

Refering to Tim Bray's arguement of text, Mr. Takahashi showed that with other features along with the text, lead to a better percentage of understanding.

words only 7%
voice 38 %
face voice 55%

He asked a question to the audience, "If a tree falls where there are no people, will there be a sound?" ANS: no sound, because sound waves would exist, but no one will be there to recognize it.

Japan is late in setting up an infrastructure. This can be seen in the lack of service providers in Japan compared to the U.S. Japan is ahead in the number of robot manufacture, but way behind in computer manufacture.

Mr. Takahashi mentions that a "value chain" will occur.Not even 1% of the people of the world have access. This can lead to a riot in information providing,and devalue, causing disintermediation.

Before, asset was built on capitalism and of ones property, but now the ones with the information win it all.

In order for people to create new business and venture, there is a need for a schedule on deregulation, so people can see ahead and plan.

Q: How do you convey one's thoughts in a picture?
A: Japan is a symbol based society, kanji is a symbol picture. Just the sign of the cult expresses alot if placed on the Internet because the net is a place to convey one's thoughts.
Q: Mr.Arakawa (SGI)
When Mr.Takahashi- refered to revolution, Mr.Arakawa pointed out that little was mentioned on the relation of capital and work which is a major part of a revolution.
A: Mr. Takahashi answered to this comment that the fact of the distance between the producer and consumer has growning closer is a good enough reason for a revolution.
Q: Mr. Imai (Nomura Research Institute) refered to Mr. Bray
If we only had e-mail and no browser on the Internet do you think it would have been such a big hit
A:If there were only pictures on the web, will people use it?
Q:Will the community be more humanlike?
A:All over the world we travel on business, but it has become impossible to go face to face. Unfortunately we are still far from a handshake on the web.
C:Dave faber(comment)
Voice mail is just as useful as e-mail, each has a good purpose, both voice and text
Q:Mr.Ichiriki(Dentsu)
, Do you think that the comic books that are popular among the young in Japan is is good or bad?
A:(Bray) culture cannot be controlled it, It surprised me to see little information in such large quantity.
A:(Mr.Takahashi) The emotion it carries is what is important.
C:(Aoyama) Pictures are needed more in the medical field than text.
C:(Andy Hopper) Unlike before, the children of today are managing to do 5-6 things at the same time like opening a number of windows on the screen. What can be said is that the expectation is changing and people are changing too.
C:(Faber) The Internet is a world wide facility, and there is no national bounderyit will be dificult to make laws.
C:(Bray)We are lucky in a way that the countries that hold the major network lines are somewhat civilized.
C:(Takahashi) advanced does not mean we are civilized

End of session.