Selected Papers—Innovative Research for Communication

Environment of Intellect—What we needto think about for the future
Yoshinobu Tonomura†
Abstract“Environment of intellect” is a new concept that I believe is necessary to the development of futuretechnology. It underlines the fact that we need a macroscopic view of our total environment and that theenvironment needs to embrace us and our society intellectually. This paper introduces this concept andsome research themes related to it.

1. Introduction
The environment in which we live these days is fullof high-technology tools such as broadband Internet,
mobile phones, digital cameras, high-performance
personal computers, and digital televisions. Manypeople believe that this is very convenient and beneficial. However, various issues have arisen recently
that suggest the possibility of serious trouble in thefuture. For example, we cannot keep up with the rapidchanges in our environment and its underlying technologies, cyberspace poses unexpected risks, and weare being buried in unwanted information. I believethat these phenomena are the result of the conventional industry-and-economy-oriented approach todeveloping technology, where we emphasize functionality and ease of use. We may have lost the perspective of providing important benefits to individuals and society in general. The widespread use in the
media of words such as safe and secure reflects thesekinds of issues.
Recently, there has been much discussion of thedark side of technology. However, we should now
move on from simply judging a technology as goodor bad based on results to considering how to develop
technology and from what perspective to develop itwith our eye on the future. In this paper, I present theconcept of “environment of intellect” as the basis fora proposal. When developing technology, we should† NTT Communication Science Laboratories
Soraku-gun, 619-0237 Japan
Email: Tonomura.yoshinobu@lab.ntt.co.jp

12take a macroscopic view of the total environment
including information and communication technology (ICT) to provide us with an appropriate perspective of the future. We need to design ICT in such away that the environment embraces us and our society through its use of human intellect. There isalready a research area called “ambient intelligence”[1], which we think is rather interface-oriented, thatmight be referred to in a complementary manner inour scheme. Below, I provide a rough outline ofresearch projects being undertaken at NTT Communication Science Laboratories (NTT CS Labs.) fromthe viewpoint of the environment of intellect andbased on our mission of pursuing the communication
technology of the future.
2. Environment of intellect(1) Macroscopic view
We tend to develop technology in a rather microscopic manner to achieve targeted functions with thehope of bringing great benefits. However, we are now
living in an environment where there are complex anddynamic relationships between various factors.
Unexpected events sometimes occur in unexpected
ways that have significant effects on society. We needa macroscopic view of our environment that willallow us to take these things into consideration whendeveloping technologies (Fig. 1).
ICT has become an important element in today’senvironment. Our environment can be roughly considered to comprise nature, human artifacts, and ICT(Fig. 2). Each of these appeared at completely differNTT Technical Review

in the Future

ent times in the Earth’s history: nature 3.8 billion
years ago, human beings 150 thousand years ago,human artifacts a few thousand years ago, and ICT
just 20 years ago. Although artificial constructions
including artifacts and ICT have a very short history
compared with that of nature, they have been changing too rapidly to become adjusted to the environment. The global environmental problem, which has
become a serious issue lately, is said to be caused by
the destruction of nature, which is no longer capableof remaining a balanced circulatory system. This isbecause, in the industry-and-economy-oriented
approach to developing technology, we have ignored
nature too much and have lacked a broad, long-range
view of the effects and consequences of technology.
Biologically speaking, we have evolved and reached
today’s state over a long period that has allowed us
cope with the natural environment. Although humans

Microscopic view

Range of effectCurrent target
FutureTime

Past
Macroscopic viewFig. 1. Expanding the view: a macroscopic view of theenvironment.

can adapt to some extent to unfamiliar situations
encountered in ICT, we cannot evolve in such a shorttime. This leads to gaps between what ICT offers andwhat we can actually accomplish.
We typically encounter ICT on a desktop computer,which connects us to global sources of information.
ICT is now deeply penetrating the economic andindustrial worlds. The global and complex world ofICT may present us with unpredictable and unexpected effects and risks. It is also important to rememberthat ICT has greater potential to affect our perception,and consequently our minds, than any other manmade creation.
(2) Intellect
The above discussion suggests that there are manythings to consider: we need to be more intellectual indesigning technologies so that the environment canintellectually embrace us and our society. To achievethis, the environment requires various kinds of wisdom and knowledge. For example, we may be able toutilize the ancient wisdom that has been passed downover many generations to keep our daily life and society safe and sound. It is also important to make use ofknowledge in the fields of biology, neurology, psychology, and ergonomics, the knowledge of society insociology, and the knowledge of our environmental
system. Understanding the relationship between thecurrent situation and the past is a fundamental
requirement. Forecasting methods, such as simulations with a large historical database, would also be

Humans150,000 years
Society

Human artifacts
a few thousandyears.

Nature3.8 billion years

ICT
20 years

Earth
4.6 billion years

Fig. 2. Elements of our environment.

Vol. 4 No. 12 Dec. 2006

13Selected Papers

helpful.
Figure 3 shows a rough diagram of the environmental factors surrounding us to help us picture whatis needed in what situation. For example, we use goodmanners to converse with a person when hoping togain his/her trust. As shown in this diagram, fairies
and goblins, which are referred to in the following
paper, can be understood as symbolic rules thatallowed us to coexist with nature in earlier times, andthey worked very well in a spiritual manner. This is
one non-technical way of utilizing past wisdom tomaintain the order of nature. I hope we can find a newtechnique for utilizing wisdom that replaces fairies
and goblins and appeals to our modern way of thinking. We also need to consider which human resources
are used and how they are used based on the knowledge found in human information science.
Another important aspect is the way in which theenvironment essentially matches a given situation orpurpose. For example, when we want to perform acalculation, if the purpose is simply to obtain theresult, an electronic calculator is convenient and ourbrains are not burdened. However, if one wants toexercise the brain’s calculation ability, a soroban,(Japanese abacus), which assists mental arithmetic, issurely more suitable.
If we take the above into consideration, the idealenvironment should be able to understand the current
situation, know what should be done, maintain andrespect our humanity, utilize implicit human capabilities, expand human creativity, and keep society wellbalanced. The concept also indicates the way that weshould think when developing technology.
In this article, the environment of intellect isexplained mainly from an ICT-oriented point of view,
but it is also applicable to other fields. For example,
the redevelopment of a city by designing its landscape and taking into account a wide range of macroscopic factors is also a topic related to the environment of intellect.
Peace

OrderGroupsstion

izaganCollaboration

OrcietyRules

SoPersons
Kinds ofintellectkorermeners Religion

Conve

SearchWatManLaws

sdo

Collaborate Coop

rse

TIC

onho str
us uctin iongate

Convenience

Human resourcesene/
Aw pect
resLifensliob/

ies&Coexistenceg

ReirFaTools

TrustdsexCoCre

PersonLegCistBe reawa

Tips

RelaxationleicsAmbienceaSt

TargetopEthWi

Safetysr

andPe

CustomdssourcesSurvivaletur rld)
aN wolrea

What ispursued(Balance

Humanactions

Fig. 3. Environmental factors surrounding us.

14

NTT Technical Review

Selected Papers

3. Research for future communications

research on brain science, namely, perception, recognition, motion, learning, and language acquisition.
We are also trying to invent interaction devices asinterfaces based on human sensory organs.
In our laboratories, we are carrying out threeresearch projects based on the “environment of intellect” concept. They are called the t-Room, s-room,and Mushroom. The following three papers explainthem in more detail. Here, I provide just a rough ideaof each type of research.
The t-Room is a kind of stage on which we canexperience a sense of sharing space/time even though
the other participants are not in the same location
and/or time. We can naturally feel a sense of distance,direction, and size, corresponding to the presence ofothers sharing the same virtual space. Utilizing a person’s own senses is very important here. In a t-Room,anything that occurs in the space is recorded by video
and sound recorders, allowing us to retrieve a specific recorded scene from any time. This makes it possible to share time by overlapping the retrieved scene
with the current one. The t-Room is described in thethird paper in this issue [2]. To make use of this system more intelligently, anything that occurs in thespace should be recorded not only in video and soundbut also using various kinds of sensor data that might
be useful in later intelligent processing. This is

While the environment of intellect is applicable tovarious areas, the factors and required technologies
depend on the target area. In this section, I outline,from the standpoint of the environment of intellect,
our research themes at NTT CS Labs., whose mission
is to pursue the communication style of the future.
A simple reference model of the communication
environment is shown in Fig. 4. It comprises a stage
on which human activities are performed, an interface
for human interaction, an ambience that surrounds us
but is not necessarily visible or audible, and channels
to other worlds.
The scope of our communication is rather wide—
not only through bilateral communication by telephone, e-mail, and the Internet, but also unilaterally
through books, which allow their authors to communicate with us. When we conjure up a memory bylooking at a family memento, this is also communication with the past.
We believe that research in the human sciencessuch as biology, neurology, and psychology is very
important in communication science because thesefields relate to how we feel and act and how the environment affects us either immediately or gradually
over a long period. In particular, we are undertaking

Cyberspace
Ambience

InterfaceResearch on
human sciences
Person(s)s-roomnelChanMushroom

Real world
t-RoomIntellectStageFig. 4. Reference model of communication environment.

Vol. 4 No. 12 Dec. 200615

Selected Papers

achieved by the s-room, which is a platform forrecording and scripting events in the real world
through various types of sensors. The s-room allows
us to retrieve specific events that occurred in the realworld. An important aspect of this approach is thatwhat happens in the space is manipulated with natural language, which matches the way our brains operate and the way we gain wisdom and knowledge. Anevent that is described in words is decomposed into aset of scripts that bridge the event to the actual recorded data. A key component of the s-room, its humancentric system for searching for events that occurredin the world, is described in the fourth paper [3].
In the project called “Mushroom”, various species
of interface agents mediate a peaceful daily life, helping us in the right place, at the right time, and in theright manner. This project is based on a concept of
ambient intelligence, which is the origin of the environment of intellect. With ambient intelligence, first
we focus on how we feel. If we are comfortable indoing something, we may feel that the ambience isintelligent. With mushrooms, the main idea is to create beings like fairies and goblins from previous agesthat were virtual beings used in storytelling and thatworked to keep us safe and sound. We are trying tocreate modern equivalents of fairies and goblins
through ICT. In the Mushroom project, we need highly intelligent technology related to interaction, information handling, knowledge-base computing, andinformation retrieval. Therefore, this project is being
undertaken using an interdisciplinary approach of
integrating technologies from many of the areas ofexpertise in our laboratories. This topic is describedin the second paper in this issue [4].

future may not be very different from those of today.
We can say at least that conventional future images
just underline the scenes full of convenient and functional technology will not be what we want from ourviewpoint. I believe that for our ambience we willneed an environment that matches an ordinary andnatural way of life, as long as we can keep our Earth
as it is.
References[1][2][3][4]M. Tscheligi, Guest Editor, “Ambient intelligence: The Next Generation of User Centeredness,” Special Sections: Ambient Intelligence,
ACM interactions, Vol. 12, July & Aug., pp. 20-58, 2005.
K. Hirata, Y. Harada, T. Takada, S. Aoyagi, Y. Shirai, N. Yamashita,
and J. Yamato, “The t-Room: Toward the Future Phone,” NTT Technical Review, Vol. 4, No. 12, pp. 26-33, 2006 (this issue).
T. Okadome, T. Maekawa, T. Hattori, and Y. Yanagisawa, “EventSearching in the Real World,” NTT Technical Review, Vol. 4, No. 12,pp. 34-37, 2006 (this issue).
E. Maeda, Y. Minami, M. Miyoshi, M. Sawaki, H. Sawada, A. Nakamura, J. Yamato, T. Yamada, and R. Higashinaka, “The World ofMushrooms—A Transdisciplinary Approach to Human-Computer
Interaction with Ambient Intelligence,” NTT Technical Review, Vol.
4, No. 12, pp. 17-25, 2006 (this issue).

4. Conclusion
In this article, I presented the concept of the “environment of intellect” in a rather general way, hopingthat it will be applicable in many areas as we develop
technology for the future. I stressed the need to adopt
an environmental viewpoint to provide us with amacroscopic perspective with regard to developing
technology. We also need various kinds of intellect. I
also introduced our research approaches for dealing
with issues in communication technology.
I believe that in the current age, where technology
has a great impact on people and society and consequently on the future, it is the duty of scientists andengineers to think deeply about the environment ofintellect.
The above discussion suggests that lifestyles in the16

Yoshinobu Tonomura
Director, NTT Communication Science Laboratories.
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electronic engineering and the Ph.D. degree in informatics from Kyoto University, Kyoto, in 1979,1981, and 2006, respectively. In 1981, he joined
the Musashino Electrical Communication Laboratories of Nippon Telegraph and Telephon Public Corporation (now NTT). His research interests include visual communication systems,advanced video processing technology and services, and communication science. He was a visiting researcher at the Media Laboratory at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology from1987-1988. He is a member of the Institute ofElectronics, Information and Communication
Engineers of Japan, the Information Processing
Society of Japan, the Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers, the Association
for Computing Machinery, and IEEE.

NTT Technical Review