Session 2: Visions on Media Society in the 21st century

A change socially, politically is happening in Japan today.

• Nomo
  Unique as an Japanese. Fought against his employer to go to the Major League.
• Kobe earthquake
  The earthquake was a turning point to show the presence of open networks and volunteers in Japan. Many of them used computer networks (Internet) to search the where abouts of their family and members of their community. It was the first time in Japan that a beginner used computers in a daily basis. And it changed the style of community and individuals.
• Tokyo governance
  Shows the plans for the next decade and the process of the discussions that took place. All the drafts used are on the home page and they are happy doing it this way, rather than hiding the government process, and seems to be working to some extent.

• Invisibility
  - Information technology should be invisible.
• 2 paths
  - smaller and smaller
  - melting in to the environment
  
• Applications - applications may address these desires directly with in our society. - how to provide meaning - We may realize there may be no application for a particular problem.
• Vision
  Visions carry us beyond application. But also, need to remain worried to these visions. For example we have visioned palmtop computers 10 years ago, but have we envisioned the end of Soviet Union?
• Future of Media society - ability to handle change
  - ability to interconnection
  - ability to experience
  Information technology may support individual independence but also technology help see more faces, hear more voices
• Vision or information and communication society
  Our way of thinking is influenced by the media we use. Another important aspect is layer of abilities. We are now in a stage to manage information. As long as we know the power of information, information technology will be a very powerfull tool.

• Definition of media
  
• Today
  - CALS, EC, EDI, Internet
  
• bright side
  - individual may percepitate in local and international activity.
  - We don't need university eg) virtual lecture
  
• dark side
  - CIA web server was attacked.
  - Gambling , pornography...etc
  - Heavy cyber terrorism
  - No one has excepted such progress in Internet and multimedia.
  

  We must sit down and think about how to deal with the immediate problem and long term future...

• Q: About the term "instability" used in Prof. Kaneko's talk. Can we in a democratic society accept instability? By Orson Wells broadcast people went into panic. ("Martians are here!!" ).Such thing are possible in a world wide scale now. any comments?
• A: We need more instability in Japan. For example, ministry of health mishandled HIV files and since the authority kept the info closed made some 100 people die. It shows some problem in handling information about privacy and health... The mishandling of HIV files by the ministry of health may imply that keeping the information to the authority may not be the safest way.
• Q: Agree that Japan needs some instability. However instability in a degree. I hope the instability is not destructive.
• A: I would like to add a comment from an educational point of view. We have to teach students to develop the ability to evaluate information no matter how they come to them.
• A : People have remarkably good filters towards information. They filter out info from source...
• A: Some countries are worried that the information coming from outside will corrupt their system.
• A: I received a good willed chain letter looking for a blood type which caused a lot of trouble.
• C: Is Media technology good for general society? If you have technology you will be payed more. Higher wage to higher tech? Lower wage to lower tech? This leads to more unemployment. By lowering the minimum wage this problem will be solved but the gap between earning will grow.
• C: Electronic driven society does not have a human face. In Japan you get low unemployment for high prices and high services. Japan has the potential to change itself to a cheap copy of US. For Japan, it will be important to think how to achieve information age without losing the good aspect of Japan.
• A: Only 30-50 years japan has spent in a mechanical age. Before that we had more human aspects. We have to contribute to the human side of our technology.