本田賞 35回記念シンポジウム

2014 年 11月14 日（金）人間性あふれる文明を創る

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium“Creating a Truly Humane Civilization”
November 14, 2014 (Fri.)目 次 (日本語)
当日配布プログラム ................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
主催者挨拶 （石田 寛人）......................................................................................................................................................................... 13

基調講演
人間性あふれる文明の創造へ向けて （小島 明 氏）........................................................................................................... 15記念講演
パラダイム・シフト「変容する経済システム」（オーケ・E・アンダーソン 博士） ...................................................... 26
イノベーション「人間性あふれる文明の創造における技術革新の役割」（ラジ・レディ 博士） .................. 38
ライフ・フロンティア「生物学と医学における水分子エコテクノロジー」（デニ・ルビアン 博士） ............. 46

パネルディスカッション ..................................................................................................................................................... 63［モデレーター］角南 篤 教授
［ パ ネリスト ］オーケ・E・アンダーソン 博士、ラジ・レディ 博士、
デニ・ルビアン 博士、ヘルムート・クレメンス 博士

閉会挨拶 （村上 陽一郎）.......................................................................................................................................................................... 85

Contents (English)
Program distributed on the event day .............................................................................................................................. 91
Opening Speech (Mr. Hiroto Ishida) ............................................................................................................................................. 101

Keynote Speech
Toward Creation of a Truly Humane Civilization (Mr. Akira Kojima) ......................................................... 103

Commemorative Speech
Paradigm Shift: “The Changing Economic System” (Dr. Åke E. Andersson) ........................................ 114
Innovation: “Role of Technology Innovation in Creating a Truly Humane Society”(Dr. Raj Reddy) ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 126
Life Frontier: “Ecotechnology of the Water Molecule in Biology and Medicine”(Dr. Denis Le Bihan) .............................................................................................................................................................................. 134

Panel Discussion ................................................................................................................................................................ 149[Moderator] Professor Atsushi Sunami[Panelist] Dr. Åke E. Andersson, Dr. Raj Reddy, Dr. Denis Le Bihan, Dr. Helmut Clemens

Closing Speech (Mr. Yoichiro Murakami) .................................................................................................................................... 169

本田賞 35回記念シンポジウム

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

人間性あふれる文明を創る

Creating a Truly Humane Civilization2014 年11月14日㊎
日経ホール

November 14, 2014(Fri)Nikkei Hall

主催：公益財団法人本田財団
後援：日本経済新聞社

Organized by the Honda Foundation
Supported by Nikkei Inc.

東京都千代田区大手町 1-3-7 日経ビル

Nikkei Building, 1-3-7 Ohtemachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyoご挨拶 Message from the President
本日はお忙しいなか、シンポジウムにお越しいただき、誠にありがとうございます。
2014 年は本田賞の35 回目の表彰の年に当たります。これを機会に、産業の発展、文明の進化によって得られた恩恵と、同時にもたらされた現代社

On the occasion of the 35th Honda Prize, the Honda
Foundation has decided to organize a venue to review thecurrent balance between the beneﬁts of industrial development
and the evolution of civilization, and various issues facing
modern society as the consequence so as to re-realize and会が直面する様々な問題との均衡について、現在の課題を再認識・共有すshare current challenges. Also it aims to discuss what should

るとともに、その解決に向けて今何がなされるべきなのか、また科学技術が

as well as the role of science and technology in that context.

進む方向性はいかにあるべきかについて議論する場を設けることとしました。
今回開催するシンポジウムでは、基調講演に続く記念講演として、過去の本田賞受賞者から選ばれた異なる分野を専門とする3 名の科学者・経済学者が、エコテクノロジーの異なる3 つの視座に従って、それぞれの持論を展開します。
最後に、記念講演を行った3 名の登壇者に本年の本田賞受賞者であるヘル

be accomplished toward the resolution of such pressing issues
In this symposium, following the keynote speech, three
past Honda Prize laureates in different fields will share
their opinions through their speeches in the three different
perspectives of ecotechnology.
Finally, joined by this year's Honda Prize laureate, Dr.
Helmut Clemens, all four speakers will participate in a panel
discussion on the fourth perspective“Sustainability.”Throughan interdisciplinary discussion and exchange of opinions, the

ムート・クレメンス博士も加わって4つ目の視座「Sustainability」をテーマにパ

symposium intends to deliver suggestions toward "Creating a

ネルディスカッションを行い、学際的な討議・意見交換を通じて、現代の視点

most important current issues facing this modern civilization

で最も重要な課題を認識し、その解決の糸口を見いだし、シンポジウムのテーマである「人間性あふれる文明を創る」ことに向けた提言の発信を目論見ます。
ご参加いただいた皆様にとって、本シンポジウムが有意義な場になることを切に願っております。

Truly Humane Civilization" as we share the recognition of theand seek for clues to resolutions.
［Four Perspectives］
Paradigm Shift which questions the expected morals andcredentials required for an individual engaged in scienceand technology which have created a big change in terms ofimpact on society and individuals.

［4つの視座］
Paradigm Shift（パラダイム・シフト）
社会や個人に与える影響という点で大きく変革を遂げた、科学技術に携わる者に求められる資質と倫理を問う。
Sustainability（持続可能性）
地球環境問題に対し、科学者や技術者がとるべき方向性を探る。

Sustainability which explores the direction scientists orengineers should take to face global environmental issues.
Innovation which pursues the vision of innovative technologies
from a viewpoint of coexistence of humans and technology.
Life Frontier which considers advancement and possibilities
of life-science technology and, furthermore, the dignity of life
itself.

Innovation（イノベーション）
人間と技術の共生という観点から、技術革新のあるべき姿を追い求める。
Life Frontier（ライフ・フロンティア）
生命科学技術の進歩と可能性、さらには生命の尊厳について考察する。

公益財団法人 本田財団
理事長

Hiroto Ishida
President, Honda Foundation［会場のご利用にあたって］
・会場内では係員の指示に従ってください。
・会場内外での事故、盗難等、主催者は一切責任を負いません。自己管理をお願いします。
・喫煙は喫煙所をご利用ください。
・休憩時間に会場前スペースでドリンクサービスを行います。お飲物の会場内への持ち込
みはご遠慮ください。
・荷物等は会場内のクロークをご利用ください。
・お使いになった同時通訳レシーバーは必ずご返却ください。
・会場内へのカメラ、録音機器の持込は可能ですが、撮影・録音はご遠慮ください。
・危険物、火薬類、その他法律で禁止されている物の持ち込みはご遠慮ください。
・ごみは基本的にお持ち帰りいただくか、きちんと分別の上必ずゴミ箱にお捨てください。

［Notes on the Hall］
・Please follow the instructions given by the staff.
・We cannot be held liable for accidents, theft, etc., that may occur inside or around thehall. We ask that each person exercise their own discretion.
・Smoking is allowed only in smoking areas.
・Soft drinks are served in the space near the entrance during breaks. Do not take drinks into the hall.
・Please deposit your personal belongings at the cloak check.
・Return the simultaneous interpreting receiver to a member of staff when leaving.
・Although cameras and recording devices may be brought into the hall, please refrainfrom photography and audio recording.
・Hazardous materials, explosives and other substances prohibited by law are notallowed in the hall.
・Garbage must be either taken home or sorted carefully before disposing of it in the trash boxes.

プログラム Program

11：45

開場 Doors open

12：30

開会あいさつ Opening Remarks

石田 寛人 本田財団 理事長 Mr. Hiroto Ishida President, Honda Foundation
12：40

基調講演 Keynote Speech「人間性あふれる文明の創造へ向けて Toward Creation of a Truly Humane Civilization」
小島 明 氏 本田財団理事、公益社団法人日本経済研究センター参与

Mr. Akira Kojima Director of the Honda Foundation, Advisor of the Japan Center for Economic Research

質疑応答 Q&A

13：20

記念講演 Commemorative Speeches
Paradigm Shift（パラダイム・シフト）「変容する経済システム The Changing Economic System」
オーケ・E・アンダーソン 博士 Dr. Åke E. Andersson
質疑応答 Q&A

14：00 （休憩 15 分 15-minute break）
14：15

Innovation（イノベーション）「人間性あふれる文明の創造における技術革新の役割

Role of Technology Innovation in Creating a Truly Humane Society」

ラジ・レディ 博士 Dr. Raj Reddy
質疑応答 Q&A

15：00

Life Frontier（ライフ・フロンティア）「生物学と医学における水分子エコテクノロジー

Ecotechnology of the Water Molecule in Biology and Medicine」

デニ・ルビアン 博士 Dr. Denis Le Bihan
質疑応答 Q&A

15：40 （休憩 20 分 20-minute break）
16：00

パネルディスカッション Panel Discussion
Sustainability（持続可能性）

本田賞の受賞者たちがそれぞれの専門分野の視点から、持続可能な社会の実現への想いを語り、未来への扉を開く。
Honda Prize laureates will speak from their respective areas of expertise on achieving a sustainable society.
［モデレーター Moderator］［パネリスト Panelists］

角南 篤 教授

オーケ・E・
アンダーソン 博士

本田財団業務執行理事、
政策研究大学院大学教授

Professor Atsushi Sunami
Executive director of the Honda
Foundation, Professor of the National
Graduate Institute for Policy Studies

17：25

Dr. Åke E.
Andersson

ラジ・レディ 博士
Dr. Raj Reddy

デニ・ルビアン 博士 ヘルムート・クレメンス 博士
Dr. Denis
Le Bihan

閉会挨拶 Closing Remarks

村上陽一郎 本田財団評議員 Dr. Yoichiro Murakami Councilor, Honda Foundation
17：30

閉会 Closing＊テーマは変更になることがあります。
＊講演及びパネルディスカッションは日英同時通訳を行います。
＊The themes are subject to change without notice. ＊Japanese-English simultaneous interpretation available for both lecturers and panel discussion.

本年度本田賞受賞者

Dr. Helmut Clemens
2014 Honda Prize Laureate基調講演 Keynote Speech

小島 明 氏Mr. Akira Kojima
1942 年日本生まれ。本田財団理事。公益社団法人日本経済研究センター参与
Born in Japan in 1942. Director of the Honda Foundation, Advisor of the Japan Center for
Economic Research
1965 年日本経済新聞入社。ニューヨーク支局長、編集員、論説員、常務取締役論説主幹、専務取締役論説担当などを歴任。20 04 年日本経済研究センター会長、日本経済新聞社論説顧問などを経て、現在にいたる。
1989 年度日本記者クラブ賞受賞。
Joined Nikkei, Inc., in 1965. He has served as New York Bureau Chief, Editor, Commentator, Managing
Director/Chief Editorialist and Senior Managing Director and Chief Editorialist, etc. He became Chairman of
the Japan Center for Economic Research in 2004 and served as Advisor for Nikkei Inc., etc. He received theJapan National Press Club Award in 1989.

講演要旨「人間性あふれる文明の創造へ向けて：
バランス、価値観、倫理、総合性の視点」
科学技術に支援された活発な経済活動のなかで環境への負荷が増大した現実だが、同時に自然環境だけでなく時に人間さえも置き去りにされてきた発展のあり方を是正する必要がある。自然環境との調和に加え、人間環
境との調和も考慮すること。我々が 21世紀の価値観としてしっかり受け止めるべきものだ。
ローマ・クラブが『成長の限界：人類の危機』レポートを発表してから40
年目の 2012 年 1月に、ブカレストで開かれた40 周年記念総会では、資本主義・市場経済と民主主義政治が短期指向・目先指向になり、人類が直面している構造的で深刻な問題に対応できていない指摘が相次いだ。そこで議論されたのが「新しい経済学」の必要性であり、「3 つの分断」の問題、つまり①生産と雇用の分断の拡大②金融と実体経済の分断、それと③ economyとecology の分断─が指摘された。
「新しい経済学」には長期的視点、「科学技術」との総合性、それに時代
感覚、倫理観も必要になる。50 年前の1964 年東京オリンピックの当時、経済の量的な成長が最重要課題だったため、東京の川は黒く濁り魚が消え、大気は喘息になるほど汚染した。当時の社会の危機感、問題認識が公害防止につながる新技術、生産プロセス、個人のライフスタイルなど多面的な、イノベーションをもたらした。
「人間性あふれる文明の創造」へ向けての課題は厳しいが、価値観を点検し、バランス、倫理を織り込んだイノベーションにより実現可能だろう。
文部科学省が 2014 年 6月に発表した『科学技術白書 2014』は、日本が巨大災害やオリンピック開催国になることを踏まえ、「ライフ・イノベーション」や「クリーン・イノベーション」を推進することによって、このシンポジウムが目指すエコテクノロジーを世界に発信し、各国と協力する発想を示している。
このシンポジウムからの発信を通じて、世界中が享受できる「人間性あふれる文明」の創造へと展開することを期待したい。

Abstruct“Toward Creation of a Truly Humane Civilization:
Perspective of Balance, Values, Ethics,
and Comprehensiveness”
Vigorous economic activity supported by science and technology
brings an increasing burden on the environment. We have tochange the state of development in which not only the naturalenvironment but sometimes even human beings have been
neglected. We should consider harmonizing the human environment
and the natural environment. We believe this to be the 21st century
value system that we must embrace.
In January 2012, forty years after“The Limits to Growth,”the40th anniversary general assembly of the Club of Rome was held
in Bucharest. Repeatedly mentioned and emphasized was theincreasing short-term and near-sighted orientation of capitalism/
market economies and democracy and the inadequacy with which
the world responds to the profound structural problems confronting
mankind. The need to create a“New Economics”was debated. The
problem of“triple divorces”was raised.“Triple divorces”refers to①expansion of the divorce between production and employment,②divorce between finance and the real economy, and ③divorce
between the economy and ecology.
In the“New Economics,”a long-term perspective, synthesis
with technology, a sense of the times and an ethical perspective
are all important. Fifty years ago, at the time of the 1964 Tokyo
Olympic Games, quantitative economic growth was the primaryissue in Japan. And a few years later, the rivers in Tokyo became
murky and ﬁsh disappeared. The air was so polluted that it caused
asthma. But society’s sense of crisis and awareness of the problem
engendered multifaceted innovation, including new technology,
production processes, and individual lifestyle changes, all of which
contributed to preventing pollution.
Resolving the obstacles to“creating a truly humane civilization”
may be difﬁcult, but it is possible to achieve if we check our values
and make progress through innovation into which balance andethics are woven. The“White Paper on Science and Technology
2014,”published by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Science and Technology in June 2014, puts forward the idea ofcooperation between countries to spread ecotechnology through theworld, which is the very objective of this symposium, by promoting“life innovation”and“green innovation”in light of the hugedisaster that struck Japan and Japan’s hosting of the 2020 Olympics.
We hope that this symposium will work to disseminate these ideas,
and we look forward to progress in“creating a truly humane
civilization”that will beneﬁt the whole world.

記念講演／パネルディスカッション［パネリスト］ Commemorative Speech/Panel Discussion［Panelist］

Paradigm Shift（パラダイム・シフト）

オーケ・E・アンダーソン 博士
Dr. Åke E. Andersson

1936 年スウェーデン生まれ。1995 年第 16 回本田賞受賞。ヨンショーピン・インターナショ
ナル・ビジネススクール経済学教授。元スウェーデン未来学研究所長
Born in Sweden in 1936. The 16th Honda Prize Laureates in 1995. Professor of Economics
at Jönköping International Business School and Former Managing Director of the Swedish
Institute for Futures Studies.
環境保全と経済発展を骨子とした地域計画、地域経済学の理論展開、都市づくりなどに多大な功績を上げた。
地球環境問題が深刻化する中、自然環境の保全と地域経済発展の両立を図る理論モデルとして、次世代の産
業社会「C 社会」──創造性（Creativity）、コミュニケーション容量（Communication capacity）、製品の複雑性（Complexity of products）を提唱しているアンダーソン博士が、次世代型産業社会を展望する。
Dr. Anderson has contributed immensely to community planning founded on environmental protection andeconomic growth, theoretical application of regional economics, urban development, etc. He takes a look at the
emerging industrial society from the new perspective of the "C-society" featuring creativity, communication
capacity and complexity of products, which is a theoretical model aimed at both preserving the naturalenvironment and developing regional economies in the face of aggravated problems with the global environment.

講演要旨「変化し続ける経済システム」
世界経済は急速に変化し続けており、高速遠距離通信、知的職業や創造的職業、また文化的差異や対立をとりなす能力への依存度がますます高まっています。
世界経済が変化し続ける以下 2 つの現象を語ります。
持続的な経済成長
平均寿命を 90 ～100 歳とし、そのうちの 40 ～ 50 年における年間労働時間を1,300 時間とすると、労働に費やされる時間は、総生存年のわずか 7～8％ということになります。これを1900 年当時の状況と比較すると、労働時間が 70％削減されたことになります。
非常に重要な2 つの課題：•大幅に増加する余暇の時間をどのように過ごすべきか？
• 豊かな国の国民は、何歳でリタイアするのか？
相転移研究／開発／イノベーションのシステムは、科学技術がますます複雑になってゆくことにより、一定の確率で相転移を経験することになります。結果として、以下のような現象が予測されます：• 基礎科学への財政支援増加のニーズが高まる。
• 基礎科学研究と産業界の研究開発とがより密接に関連し合い、研究活動の組織化の重要性が増す。
• 創造力のある広範な地域であるアジア、欧州、北米の相対的な重要性が増す。
• 世界の異なる地域同士の研究協力、特にアジアの科学研究が盛んな地域と、その他の科学研究が盛んな地域との連携が、今後ますます重要となる。
• 各国政府は、国や地域の比較優位性は刻々と変化しており、科学的新発見の有無に左右されるため、根本的に不確かなものであることを認識する
ようになる。

Abstruct“The Changing Economic System”

The global economy is rapidly changing and becoming increasingly
dependent on rapid long distance communication, cognitive andcreative occupations, and a capacity to handle cultural differences
and conﬂicts.
The reasons for the changing global economy are to be found inthese two.
Persistent economic growth
The increasing stock of human capital, technological andorganizational knowledge has ensured a steady rate of growth of
per capita real income of two to three per cent per annum over thelast half century. A fairly safe assumption is that the next 50 years
will deliver a similar rate of increases of per capita income, at leastin the OECD countries and probably at a faster rate of increase in
the developing economies.
Two crucial issues:•How will the massive increase in leisure time be used?
•At what age will people of afﬂuent countries retire?
Phase transitions
The research, development and innovation system will withsome probability be undergoing a phase transition caused by theincreasing complexity of science and technologies. This will cause:•A greater need for increased funding of fundamental science.
•A closer interaction between fundamental scientific researchand industrial R&D, increased importance of the organization ofresearch activities and increased relative importance of the large
creative regions of Asia, Europe and North America.
•Research collaboration between different parts of the worldand especially between Asian science regions and other science
regions will become increasingly important.
•Governments will realize that the comparative advantages ofregions and nations are dynamic and dependent on scientificbreakthroughs and thus fundamentally uncertain.

記念講演／パネルディスカッション［パネリスト］ Commemorative Speech/Panel Discussion［Panelist］

Innovation（イノベーション)

ラジ・レディ 博士
Dr. Raj Reddy

1937年インド生まれ。2005 年第 26 回本田賞受賞。米国カーネギーメロン大学計算機科学科教授
Born in India in 1937. The 26th Honda Prize Laureates in 2005. Professor of Computer Scienceand Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A.
コンピュータ科学とロボット工学の世界的先駆者。その広範にわたる研究は教育・医療・福祉に大きく貢献。
中でも音声認識や人工知能に関する研究は現代のコンピュータテクノロジーの基盤となっている。国籍、言語、
年齢・性別、経済格差を問わず誰もがその技術の恩恵を享受できることが、ロボット工学と知能システムの目指
すべき未来だと考えるレディ博士。彼が標榜するガーディアン・エンジェル・テクノロジーとは？
A world renowned pioneer in computer science and robotics. His wide-ranging research has made major
contributions in education, medicine and social welfare. In particular, his research on voice recognition
and artiﬁcial intelligence has laid the foundations of today’s computer technology. Dr. Reddy believes thatthe future that robotics and intelligent systems should aspire to lies in making the beneﬁts of technology
available to everyone, regardless of nationality, language, age, gender or economic class. What is this
Guardian Angel Technology that he hopes to realize?

講演要旨「人間性あふれる文明の創造における技術革新の役割」
真に人間性あふれる社会を作りあげるためには、地球上全ての人類の基本的なニーズに応えるための、拡張性があり、持続可能で、入手可能なソリューションの創造を目指さねばなりません。基本的なニーズには、食／エ
ネルギー／水の安全保障、さらには奴隷制や拷問からの解放等の基本的人権に関する問題も含まれます。
本講演の基本的なテーマは、社会の基本的なニーズが何であれ、課題に積極的に取り組む姿勢こそが、真に人間性あふれる社会の特性を継続的に向上することのできる技術革新をもたらし得る、ということです。
一例として、台風や竜巻などの災厄が発生する恐れがある場合に、特定の地域ごとに一人一人が個別の警告を受けられるようにするという要件について考えてみます。本講演では、ガーディアン・エンジェル・テクノロジー（GAT）を開発し、常に改良を加えることにより、自然災害から人類を護り、それによって地球上全ての人々の生存可能性を高めるためのテクノロジーとして、どのような可能性があるのかを考察します。
ガーディアン・エンジェルのコンセプト／システム／ソリューションは、人間性あふれる社会を作る上でのあらゆる面に適用できます。例えば、基本的権利の侵害を事前に特定したり、人間性あふれる社会における個人の基本的なニーズや権利を保護するために利用することができます。

Abstruct“Role of Technology Innovation in
Creating a Truly Humane Society”

To create a truly humane society, we must aspire to create
Scalable, Sustainable Affordable Solutions to provide for the basic
needs of all human beings on the planet. These needs include
topics such as Food Security, Energy Security, and Water Security
as well as basic human rights such as freedom from slavery andtorture.
The basic thesis of this talk is that, no matter what the basic
need of society is, a proactive approach can lead to technology
innovations which can continuously improve the attributes of aTruly Humane Society.
As an example, let’s consider the requirement that every
person should get location specific personalized warnings about
potential calamities like typhoons and tornados. In this talk we
explore technology options for protecting humanity from natural
disasters by creating and continuously improving Guardian Angel
Technologies so that every person on the planet has a betterchance of survival.
Guardian Angel concepts, systems and/or solutions can be applied
to all aspects of creating a humane society. It can be used to
identify potential violations of basic rights and to protect the basic
needs/rights of the individual within a humane society.

記念講演／パネルディスカッション［パネリスト］ Commemorative Speech/Panel Discussion［Panelist］

Life Frontier（ライフ・フロンティア）

デニ・ルビアン 博士
Dr. Denis Le Bihan

1957年フランス生まれ。2012年第33回本田賞受賞。フランス・ニューロスピン（NeuroSpin）
超高磁場 MRI 研究センター所長
Born in France in 1957. The 33th Honda Prize Laureates in 2012. Director of NeuroSpin, CEA
Saclay, France.
より精細によりスピーディーに人体内部を映像化する拡散 MRI 技術の基礎から臨床応用までを確立。拡散 MRIを用いることで、急性脳梗塞の早期治療が可能になっただけでなく、診断精度が向上したことで手術時に脳繊維を損傷してしまうなどの事故を激減した。脳内を鮮明に映像化できるため、神経疾患等の治療法の劇的な発見やさま
ざまな器官に対する応用の期待が高まっている。ルビアン博士は拡散 MRIを通して水の知られざる姿に注目する。
Dr. Le Bihan created diffusion MRI technology from its initial development through to clinical application invisualizing the inside of the human body in ﬁner detail and at speed. The technology not only made possible theearly treatment of acute cerebral stroke but also reduced the number of accidents involving surgical damage
to brain tissue through enhanced diagnostic accuracy. With crisp images of the brain now possible, there are
expectations for dramatic discoveries in the treatment of neurological disorders, etc., and applications to various
other organs. Dr. Le Bihan investigates the hidden potential of water through diffusion MRI.

講演要旨

「生物学および医学における
水分子のエコテクノロジー」
21世紀のはじめ、人類は、炭素原子1つと酸素原子2 つという3 つの原子から成る、非常に小さな分子に注目しています。大気中の CO2 の量を制御することは、経済的、社会的、政治的な面での主要な目標となりつつあります。ところで、近い将来に少なくともCO2 と同程度に重要な役割を果たす事になるであろう、酸素原子1つと水素原子2 つという、同じく3 つの原子から成る小さな分子がもうひとつ存在します。
周知のように、大気中におけるCO2 の濃度が過度になれば地球上の生命にとって有害である一方、H 2 Oは、とくに液体の状態にある時には「ブルー・ゴールド」とも呼ばれ、まさに私達の生活にとって不可欠な存在です。水資源の枯渇は、何世紀にも渡って干ばつ、飢饉、さらには戦争を引き起こし、死をもたらしてきました。充分な質と量の飲料水を確保することは、今世紀各国にとって大きな課題となるでしょう。このことは驚くに値しません。
水は人間の体重の 60 ～ 70％を占めており、生物学的機構の働きにとって不可欠な存在です。個々の生物は、水を最大限に活用するため、それぞれの生息環境に応じて異なった戦略を採ってきたのであり、水はそのようにして生物多様性に貢献しています。細胞組織による水の活用メカニズムが不全となると、重篤な疾患、または死へとつながる恐れがあります。
脳内の水拡散の状況を画像化する磁気共鳴画像法（MRI）によって解明された「生体分子」として最も重要な水を語ります。

Abstruct“Ecotechnology of the water molecule inbiology and medicine”

At the onset of the 21st century humankind is focusing its attention
on a very small molecule made of three atoms, one carbon atomand two oxygen atoms. Controlling CO 2 in the atmosphere isbecoming a major goal, economically, socially, politically. Yet, there
is another small molecule, also made of three atoms, one oxygen
atom and two hydrogen atoms, which is going to play a similarly
prominent role if not more in the near future.
While an excessive concentration of CO2 might be harmful to lifeon earth as we know it, H2O, especially in its liquid form, the“BlueGold”, is just indispensable to our lives. Over the past centuries lackof access to water has triggered death, through drought, famine
or even wars. The preservation of the quality and abundance ofdrinking water will become a major challenge for nations during
this century. This is no surprise.
Water makes 60 to 70% of the human body weight and is crucial to
the working of the biological machinery. Different organisms haveadopted different strategies in the way they get the most out ofwater, depending on their environment, and water contributes tothe biodiversity. Faulty mechanisms in the use of water by tissues
may lead to severe diseases or death.
Lecture about water as most important“biological molecule”tobe analyzed by Magnetic Resonance Imaging（MRI）which images
diffusion of water in the brain.

パネルディスカッション［パネリスト］ Panel Discussion［Panelist］

ヘルムート・クレメンス 博士
Dr. Helmut Clemens

1957年オーストリア生まれ。2014 年第 35回本田賞受賞。レオーベン鉱山業大学（オーストリア）金属物理・材料試験学部長
Born in Austria in 1957. Head of the Department of Physical Metallurgy and Materials Testingat the Montanuniversität Leoben, Austria.
職歴：レオーベン鉱山業大学 物理学部研究助手（1987 年）、プランゼー株式会社（1990 年）、シュトゥットガ
ルト大学 金属物理学研究所 教授（1997年）、ヘルムホルツ・センター、ゲーストハッハト材料研究所所長（2000年）、レオーベン鉱山業大学 教授金属物理・材料試験学部長（2003 年～）。
Employment History : Montanuniversität Leoben, Professor, Head of the Department of Physical Metallurgy
and Materials Testing（2003-）, Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Head of the Institute for Materials Research（2000）, University of Stuttgart, Professor, Institute of Physical Metallurgy（1997）, Plansee AG（1990）,
Montanuniversität Leoben, Research Assistant at the Department of Physics（1987）.

クレメンス博士は、チタンアルミナイド（TiAl）の分野において国際的に最も高名な専門家の一人です。20 年以上にわたる博士の活動および研究の貢献により、γ-TiAl 基金属間化合物合金は、次世代の先進ジェットエン
ジンや自動車エンジンに適用可能な高温構造材料として認知されるようになりました。TiAl 合金は、その比重が現在使用されているニッケル基超合
金の約半分であることから、燃焼エンジンの設計コンセプトの改良を可能とし、燃料節減や CO2 排出量削減の大きな効果が期待されています。
さまざまな研究の後にクレメンス博士が開発した TNM 合金は、鍛造および熱処理により室温で一定の延性を保持しつつ、なおかつ現在使用されている鋳造合金の約 2 倍の強度を示します。この研究開発過程において、
クレメンス博士は、TiAl 合金の内部組織を原子レベルからマクロスケール
レベルにわたって調べるために、最新の実験的手法を用いました。さらに、鍛造や熱処理などのプロセス技術をリアルタイムで調べるのに、斬新なその場観察技術も用いています。
TNM 合 金 はエアバス社 製 旅 客 機 A320neo およびイルクート社 製
MC-21に搭載されるプラット・アンド・ホイットニー社製ギヤードターボファン（GTF）エンジンの低圧タービンブレードに使用される予定です。
燃費の向上および CO2 排出量の大幅な削減を目指した、次世代の自動車および航空エンジンに使用される新しい構造用材料は、非常に厳しい条件に耐えうる「軽量かつ高強度」な材料である必要があります。TiAl 金属
間化合物は、この難しい目標を達成するための重要な材料と考えられています。
クレメンス博士が開発したチタンアルミ合金及びその加工技術は、次世
代先進低排出ガス・低燃費エンジンにとって不可欠な要素と考えられており、航空機・自動車の環境性能向上が期待されています。人の行き来に必要なエネルギーをより少なくしうるのに貢献したこの功績は、まさに本田財団設立の理念に合致するものです。

Dr. Clemens is one of the internationally most renowned experts
in the ﬁeld of titanium aluminides. His activities and research onintermetallic γ-TiAl based alloys for more than two decades havesigniﬁcantly contributed to the fact that they are presently seen
as key structural materials for high-temperature application inadvanced jet and automotive engines of the next generation. Due toalmost half the speciﬁc weight of TiAl alloys compared to presently
used Nickel-base superalloys, improved design concepts can beapplied to combustion engines. A considerable potential for saving
fuel and reduction of CO2 emission is a further consequence.
After thorough research activities, Dr. Clemens developed
TNM alloys which show approximately the double the strength ofalready used cast alloys, yet maintaining certain ductility at room
temperature. The most advanced experimental methods wereapplied to investigate the internal structure of the developed TiAl
alloy from atomic to macroscopic scale. Furthermore, novel in-situ
techniques were used to study technological processes, such as
forging and heat treatments, in real-time.
TNM alloy will be used for low pressure turbine blades ofgeared turbofan（GTF）engines manufactured by Pratt & Whitney
for Airbus A320neo aircraft and also Irkut MC-21.
New structural materials have to be“lighter and stronger”towithstand the extremely high demanding conditions in the next
generation of automotive and aircraft engines, which are targeted
to exhibit higher efﬁciency leading to reduced fuel consumption as
well as signiﬁcantly decreased CO2 emissions. Intermetallic titanium
aluminides are considered as key materials to meet this challenging
goal.
The titanium aluminum alloy and the processing technology
developed by Dr. Clemens are considered as key elements to
be used in the next generation of advanced low-emission/fuelefﬁcient combustion engines. Thus, improvement in environment
performance of aircraft and automobiles is anticipated. His
achievements could further reduce energy necessary fortransporting humans and are recognized as exemplifying thephilosophy of the Honda Foundation.

パネルディスカッション［モデレーター］ Panel Discussion［Moderator］

角南 篤 教授

Prof. Atsushi Sunami

1965 年日本生まれ。政策研究大学院大学教授・学長補佐／科学技術イノベーション政策
プログラムディレクター代理／教授
Born in Japan in 1965. Advisor to the President; Deputy Director of Science, Technology andInnovation Policy Program ; Professor, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.
専門分野：科学・産業技術政策論、公共政策論
Specialty : Science and Technology Policy, Public Policy Analysis

現在の研究対象
国家（地域）イノベーション・システムの比較研究（主に中国）、アジアの科
学技術政策、「Evolutionaryアプローチ」を用いた科学技術分野における政策形成過程の分析、「科学技術と社会」（レギュラトリーサイエンスの制度設計）
略歴1988 年、ジョージタウン大学 School of Foreign Service 卒業、89 年株
式会社野村総合研究所政策研究部研究員、92 年コロンビア大学国際関係・行政大学院 Reader、93 年同大学国際関係学修士、97年英サセック
ス大学科学政策研究所（SPRU）TAGSフェロー、コロンビア大学政治学
博士号（Ph.D.）取得。独立行政法人経済産業研究所フェロー。2003 年
政策研究大学院大学助教授、2014 年教授、学長補佐（現在に至る）。主な著書はIntellectual Property Rights, Development, and Catch Up
an International Comparative Study（Oxford Univ. Press, 2010）,“Environmental Technology: Hong Kong’s Innovation System”
in Innovation and the Limits of Laissez-faire: Hong Kong's Policyin Comparative Perspective,（Palgrave, 2 010）
, A Comparative
Study on the Role of University and PRI as External Resources
for Firms' Innovations,（ERIA Project Report 2011, No.10）

Current Research Interests
His research has concentrated on a comparative analysis of nationalinnovation systems and an evolutionary approach in science andtechnology policy and public policy analysis in general.
Education and career
Professor Sunami holds BSFS from Georgetown University.
He obtained MIA and PhD in Political Science from Columbia
University. He was a Fellow at Research Institute of Economy,
Trade and Industry established by the Ministry of Economy,
Trade and Industry, Japan. He also worked as a researcher in the
Department of Policy Research at Nomura Research Institute, Ltd.
from 1989 to 1991. He was a visiting researcher at Science Policy
Research Unit, University of Sussex, and Tsinghua University,
China.
Atsushi Sunami is currently Professor, and Special Assistant for
the President, President’s Ofﬁce at National Graduate Institute for
Policy Studies, Japan. The recent publications include Intellectual
Property Rights, Development, and Catch Up an International
Comparative Study, edited by Hiroyuki Odagiri, Akira Goto,
Atsushi Sunami, and Richard R. Nelson（Oxford Univ. Press, 2010）
and“Environmental Technology: Hong Kong’s Innovation System”
in Innovation and the Limits of Laissez-faire: Hong Kong's Policy inComparative Perspective, edited by Doug Fuller,（Palgrave, 2010）.A
Comparative Study on the Role of University and PRI as External
Resources for Firms' Innovations, edited by Atsushi Sunami andPatarapong Intarakumnerd,（ERIA Project Report 2011, No.10）

本田財団設立のきっかけとなった
ディスカバリーズ国際シンポジウムと本田賞の創設
The DISCOVERIES International Symposia as the origin of
the Honda Foundation and establishment of the Honda Prize

社会における自動車のあり方、交通社会の現状と将来のあり方をテーマとし、自由に討議・研究する場として発足した国際交通安全学会（IATTS）。
その活動を世界に広く発信すべきだとして、1976 年に「ディスカバリーズ」と銘打たれた国際シンポジウムが開催されました。
（DISCOVERIES＊）
その反響は想像以上に大きく、とりわけ文明論的、学術的なアプローチが高い評価を得て、継続的にシンポジウムを開いていくべきとの機運が高まりました。そして1977年、ディスカバリーズの運営母体として、本田財団は設立されたのです。
以下に引用するのは財団活動の根幹となる3 つの取り組みが規定された『ディスカバリーズ宣言』です。この宣言をもって本田賞が設定されました。
「ディスカバリーズ国際シンポジウム ストックホルム1979」で発表された文章の端々には、設立前夜の熱気を感じることができます。
＊Deﬁnition and Identiﬁcation Studies on Conveyance of Values, Effects and Risks
Inherent in Environmental Synthesis. 環境全体において、人間活動に何が本質的問題
かを発見する──という意味の英文の頭文字を取ったもの。

ディスカバリーズ宣言

The International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences（IATSS）was established as a venue for free discussion andresearch to explore the role of the automobile in society andthe current state and future of our motorized society. The first
DISCOVERIES＊ international symposium was organized in 1976
to communicate with other countries and to promote its activities
across a broader spectrum.
Its impact exceeded the Association's expectations, winninghigh recognition for its academic focus and theoretical approach
to examining our civilization, and it seemed certain that the
symposium would continue thereafter. The Honda Foundation was
subsequently established in 1977 as the organizing body for the
DISCOVERIES symposia.
The following is the“DISCOVERIES”DECLARATION thatdeﬁned three objectives that serve as the basis for the Foundation's
activities. The Honda Prize was established by this Declaration. The
passages from the Declaration at the DISCOVERIES International
Symposium Stockholm 1979 reﬂect the momentum building on theeve of its establishment.

“DISCOVERIES” DECLARATION

1979 年 8月17日 ストックホルム

Stockholm, August 17, 1979

人間尊重の文明を創造することは、今日、われわれ全人類にとっての大The ardent desire of mankind today is to create a
civilization in which utmost respect is paid for the humanbeing as such, and this will be possible only with mutual
support and concerted action among the intellectuals of
the world, especially among scientists and technologists.
The Honda Foundation, inspired by this philosophy, hassponsored the “DISCOVERIES” International Symposia,
first in Tokyo, then in Rome, the cradle of civilization, andParis, the capital of culture, and now in Stockholm, thisserene guardian of academic and scientific achievement.
At these symposia we have discussed the catastrophe
deemed inherent in modern civilization, recognized themegacrisis which will sooner or later confront mankind,
and, in order that mankind may overcome that crisis, madecomprehensive studies of the fundamental prerequisite forhuman activity, that is, information and communication.
The purpose of “DISCOVERIES” activity is to identify
the real problems facing the mechanical and technologicalcivilization of today, to discover the methodology which
will enable us to cope with them, and to set a stage forthe concentration of the wisdom of mankind on the task,
To achieve this purpose, we now declare that we shall:

きな願望であります。それは、現代に生きる多くの知識人、とりわけ科学
技術にたずさわる人々の相互協力によって、はじめて可能になり得るものであります。
本田財団によるディスカバリーズ国際シンポジウムは、こうした理念をもとに、東京にはじまり、文明のふる里ローマ、文化の都パリ、そして学術と科学の薫り高いストックホルムへと引きつがれてまいりました。
われわれは、これまでの国際シンポジウムにおいて、現代文明に内在するものと考えられるカタストロフィーについて討論し、人類が早晩直面するであろうメガクライシスへの認識を深め、これに対処するため“インフォメー
ション ”と“コミュニケーション ”という、人間活動にとっての最も基本的な課題について、総合的な検討を行ってきたのであります。
われわれのディスカバリーズ活動の目標は、現代の技術文明が直面している真の問題を見極め、それらに取り組むための方法論を見出し、ついで、この任務を果たすために人間の英知を結集する舞台をつくることであります。
このため我々は次の三つの活動をはじめることを宣言いたます。
1. エコ・テクノロジー確立のための国際的技術協力の推進
人間社会に真に役立つテクノロジーを確立することを目的としています。
エコ・テクノロジーの概念はエコロジーとテクノロジーの調和をはかるものであり、適合技術（アプロプリエート・テクノロジー）
をも含むものであります。
2. 本田賞の設定
エコ・テクノロジーの分野で顕著な業績をあげた方に贈呈いたします。
原則として年間一名、副賞として賞金 1,000 万円。
3.ディスカバリーズ国際シンポジウムの継続
エコ・テクノロジーの分野に関連し、今後も必要に応じ、国際シンポジウ
ムを開催いたします。

1. Promote international technical cooperation for theestablishment of Eco-Technology
The aim here will be the establishment of a technology
which will truly serve humanity, Eco-Technology being a
concept which includes appropriate technology.
2. Establish a HONDA PRIZE
It will be awarded each year to a person who has madean internationally recognized achievement in the field of
Eco-Technology , with an additional prize of ten million yen(￥10,000,000) going to the same person.
3. Continue the “DISCOVERIES” International Symposia
These will continue to be held, as the need arises, inconnection with the field of Eco-Technology .

memo

Opening Speech
Mr. Hiroto Ishida

Opening Speech Mr. Hiroto Ishida

Mr. Hiroto Ishida
President of the Honda Foundation

Opening Speech
I am Hiroto Ishida, thank you for the introduction. I
would like to thank everyone who came here today
despite your extremely busy schedule. It has been
already 37 years since Honda Foundation wasestablished with the goal of contributing to thecreation of a humane civilization. In that period,
various technological innovations have occurred,
and the political and economic worlds have alsochanged immensely.
However, there are many of us who aredisheartened by such news as the increasing sense ofcrisis from global warming despite the proliferationof activities to reduce carbon dioxide emission, theremarkable worsening of pollution also in developing
countries, and the seemingly endless regional
conflicts and terrorism. With eyes fixed on these realworld problems, looking for solutions to each one,
Honda Foundation ponders what we should do torealize the creation of a humane civilization that it
hoists as a slogan. What kind of future should weleave to the next generation?
To commemorate the 35th anniversary of the
Honda Prize awarding ceremony, I would like to invite
everyone to think together about such problems as I

102

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

open this symposium. We lift up the Honda Prize tothe men and women who have made considerable
achievements in bringing us closer to the ideals ofcivilization that we aim for.
The Honda Foundation has advocatedecotechnology, for its ability to harmonize the naturalenvironment and human society, as an approach tosolving various problems, and our invited speakers,
Dr. Andersson, Dr. Reddy, Dr. Le Bihan, and Dr.
Clemens, who will be joining the circle of the Honda
Prize laureates on the 17th, are highly recognizedpractitioners.
Today, we shall listen to four different
perspectives as these four gentlemen express their
excellent views on ecotechnology through theirlectures and panel discussion, and may theirthoughts shine a bright light into the future. I also
urge everyone to lend their ears to these
distinguished scientists and experts, and together, let
us think of what we ought to do as a step towards
creating our ideal world. It would indeed be a great
joy for me if this were possible. I hope everyone will
have a relaxing day today. Thank you very much.

Keynote Speech
Toward Creation ofa Truly Humane Civilization
Mr. Akira Kojima

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

103Keynote Speech Mr. Akira Kojima

Mr. Akira Kojima
Director of the Honda Foundation.
Advisor of the Japan Center for Economic Research

Toward Creation of a Truly Humane Civilization
would take this as a report on what I just mentioned
rather than a keynote speech.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. I am Kojima. Since
there was already an introductory video presentation
and President Ishida had already spoken precisely
about the essence of this symposium, I am somewhat
at a loss as to what to talk about. However, pleaseallow me to recapitulate the objectives and concept
in order to carry on this symposium in regard to theimportant theme “Toward Creation of a Truly
Humane Civilization.” I would appreciate it if you

104

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

First of all, the world, including present-day
Japan, is in a very chaotic state as unexpected eventsoccur one after another and the risk is increasing. The
statement in the slide is fondly remembered. The
following words appear at the beginning of Charles
Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. This speaks of 1858, but itKeynote Speech Mr. Akira Kojima

seems to speak about our present world as well.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst oftimes, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age offoolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was theepoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was
the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it
was the winter of despair, we had everything before
us, we had nothing before us...” This is a famous
opening passage.

However, even as the new era is appearing
before us, we recall that on the 9th of this month, 25
years had elapsed since the collapse of the Berlin Wallin 1989. Through this event, the process of ending thecold war had drastically accelerated. In 1991, theSoviet Union collapsed. The drama of the end of thecold war that had continued for more than 40 years
happened only very recently.
November 9, 1989 is the day that the Berlin
Wall collapsed. If we try to remember, 11 and 9 aredays on which fairly significant or unexpected events
happened by sheer coincidence. The opposite of 11.9
is 9.11, and this is the day on which the simultaneous
terrorist attacks happened in the United States. 9.15
refers to September 15, 2008 during which Lehman
Brothers went bankrupt and a financial crisis thatjolted the world set in. 3.11 refers to the greatearthquake of 2011 that we in Japan experienced. Yet,in any case, just like the rapid unfolding of the end of
the cold war with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in
1989, many people expected peace and stability inthe post-cold war world.
But this has not necessarily been the case. In
1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Japanese

bubble economy burst resulting in harsh economic
conditions that still persist. If one were to speak of
the rest of the world, as pointed out by the Nobel
Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz, the 1990’s was an
era of mega growth. In the midst of all these, there
are high expectations that the 21st century would
be one of peace and prosperity. But as pointed out
in the earlier video, the reality is that in terms ofnumber, there are more conflicts in the present thanin the cold war era, and the resolution of theseconflicts is hardly in sight. The world has become
more unstable.
Even as the economy grows, severe crises keeprecurring time and time again. Concerning this world,
the American political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski,
who in the past wrote Hiyowanahana, Nippon orJapan: The Fragile Blossom, stated the following in his
book Out of Control: “History is accelerating, however
its trajectory is becoming unstable. Establishedvalues are massively collapsing especially in theadvanced parts of the world. Consumerism
masquerades as a substitute for ethical standards.
The world is rather like a plane on automatic pilot,
with its speed continuously accelerating but with nodefined destination.” That was how he characterized
the 1990s.
That being said, our future direction and ourshared values are slowly coming within sight before
us. You may call this foresight when in December
1977, Honda Foundation was established, andcontinues with its advocacies following the principlesof Soichiro Honda, “Technology must be humble andhumane, and must give care to all aspects of thenatural environment, including man.”

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

105Keynote Speech Mr. Akira Kojima

The catalyst for this was the symposium
entitled “DISCOVERIES” held in 1976. This word
“DISCOVERIES” is indeed a sophisticated coinage. An
acronym for “Definition and Identification Studies on
Conveyance of Values, Effects and Risks Inherent inEnvironment Synthesis,” it is a statement signifying
the discovery of what the problems are for humanactivities in the entire environment.
There was considerable impact when the
symposium “DISCOVERIES” was opened. Expectations
rose that the discussion would continue and expand,and, in fact, Honda Foundation was born in 1977 in
response to such demand. Since the Honda
Foundation consistently identified itself with
ecotechnology as a focal point, its awareness of theissue has been very clear from the start. It has
maintained and pursued its focus on ecotechnology,
superimposed on the ecosystem and science andtechnology.
As earlier mentioned, the Honda Prize wasestablished in 1980 to recognize individuals orgroups with remarkable accomplishments inecotechnology. And now, we are commemorating its
35th anniversary. As we commemorate this 35th year,
we have the Honda Prize laureates come on stage todiscuss the ideal state of civilization.
One of the realities given attention to in
ecotechnology is the increased burden on theenvironment as a result of brisk economic activity
aided by science and technology. At the same time, it
is important that ecotechnology also seeks to correct
the kind of development that neglects not only thenatural environment but also, at times, humanity. The
idea is to give care not only to harmonizing thenatural environment, but also to harmonizing it withthe human environment. This is the 21st century—
the world has to take these ideas seriously as sharedvalues and respond accordingly.
Perhaps everybody has heard about the Clubof Rome. The Club of Rome is a private organization
established in 1970 as a Swiss corporate entity.
Consisting of scientists, economists, educators andbusiness leaders from around the world, it has been
discussing the various problems attendant to scienceand technology and economic development. It
became widely known when it published a famous
report in 1972 entitled, The Limits to Growth, Crisis of106

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

Mankind. The report The Limits to Growth warns thatunless we respond promptly to demographic
changes and economic development, we would face
the problems such as environmental destruction,
depletion of natural resources, and food crisis.

Protest and criticism arose from the global
industry against this. They argued that zero-growththeory or anti-growth theory is nonsense. But
subsequently, in 1973, the oil crisis occurred, an eventthat Japan can never forget, and because of this theClub of Rome drew a great deal of attention fromaround the world.
In 2012, an updated version of The Limits toGrowth report was released. In January 2012, or forty
years after the publication of The Limits to Growth, I
incidentally had the chance to attend the 40th
commemorative annual conference held in
Bucharest. There, an outlook on the next 40 years waspresented. This was also translated into Japanese.
Jorgen Randers, an environmental strategy professor
who was one of the authors of The Limits to Growth 40
years ago, also attended, and both the retrospectiveof the past 40 years and the perspective andchallenges of the next 40 years were discussed.
The points made by Prof. Randers can besummed up as follows. The most important issue forthe next 40 years is the short-term focus orshortsighted thinking on capitalism and democracy.
Unless this is rectified, the long-term well-being ofmankind cannot be realized, and the world’s
response to significant issues will be too late.
The second point is the problem ofgovernance. He stated that if the problem ofKeynote Speech Mr. Akira Kojima

climate change will not be solved in the next 40
years, it will not be because of the limitation oftechnology itself but because of the issue of
people, the problem of governance. There is no
dearth of what is technologically available, such asheat-insulating materials, heat-insulating homes,
battery cars, solar panel, wind power and manyothers. But if society is built solely for the purposeof maximizing short-term profit, we will lose theability to respond to this problem.
The third point is that perhaps both democracy
and capitalism have not given sufficient consideration
to repercussions on our children and grandchildren.
The burden of the responsibility and unsolved issues
are passed on to the next generation. It is very likelythat henceforth, the tension between generations will
intensify. In fact, in the last 20 to 30 years, economic
disparities have widened markedly in the UnitedStates. As a result of this, appropriate measures arebeing discussed. However, simply putting the brakes
on economic growth rates will not solve the problem.
The fourth point is that while the economies of
10 emerging countries such as India and South Africa
are growing, poverty continues among 3 billion
people globally. The fifth point is that the desire,want or demand of mankind exceeds global capacity
by 40%. How do we deal with this problem? The sixth
point is that world population will peak at 8.1 billion
in 2042. After this, the population will decline. I think
it pointed out the problems that accompany changeof value systems due to urbanization and remarkable
trends of a drop in birth rate will then be apparent.
The point that was repeatedly alluded to andemphasized in the Bucharest annual conference wasthat capitalism, market economy, and democracy will
become increasingly so shortsighted in its thinking
that the world will not be able to sufficiently address
the structural and deep-seated problems that
confront mankind. What left the greatest impression
on me were the words “Short-termism” and“Governance.”
As a matter of fact, I have been frequently
hearing the word “short-termism” in the US after the
Lehman Shock in 2008. Short-termism in the US is a
criticism against economics and management that
attach too much emphasis on the financial aspect.
Demonstrations against the short-term profit-seeking

financial industry symbolized by Wall Street havebeen in the news.

At the Bucharest annual conference of the Clubof Rome, aside from the points made by Randers,
Wirkman’s report on Bankrupting Nature and Prof.
Lietaer’s Money and Sustainability were also released.
Centered on these two reports, the conference tried
to discuss issues from a future-oriented, long-term
perspective. The Club of Rome avoids propounding
zero growth or anti-growth policies as measuresagainst the global crisis. Zero growth or anti-growthpolicies will not solve the problem. The consensus at
the conference was that the quality of growth isimportant and thinking only in terms of GNP has tochange.
What came out of this was a discussion on theneed to build “New Economics.” There, it has been
determined that the present Economics is outdated
and can no longer address real issues, the reason
raised being the triple divorces. The first is thedivorce between production and employment, thesecond between finance and real economy, and thethird between economy and ecology. There were also
reports by working groups regarding this problem.
Among the reports, the following statement
was made. The New Economics must be built not
through realistic dogmas but through rational
thinking. The Economics we should aim for is not oneof mathematical rigor but one concerned with thewell-being of mankind. The present economics isbased on the flawed accounting system that makes
growth, any form of growth, desirable.
It is pointed out that the present system of

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

107Keynote Speech Mr. Akira Kojima

accounting lacks a viewpoint that seeks to improve
harmonization of economic benefits from suchproblems as war, pollution, crimes, spikes in oil prices,terrorism, contagious diseases, natural calamities,
scarcity of water resources, and destruction of forests
with improvement of nutrition, housing, health, andsociety. Or, on the other hand, it just treats all these
problems alike. What the New Economics seeks is
consistency with science and technology as well asbalance and ethics.

The following point was raised in regard to
the second of the three divorces, namely the divide
between finance and real economy. In 1997, theAsian crisis broke out. In Japan, the financial crisis
began in November of that year. Attending theJanuary 1998 Davos Conference in Switzerland thatwas held in the midst of the Asian crisis, I had arandom conversation over breakfast with George
Soros, a financial capital guru.
He said the following. “The Asian Financial
Crisis was not an Asian crisis. Neither was it a financial
crisis. In essence, it was a global crisis of financecapitalism. The finance world is different from the real
economy. In the real economy, processes such as
product planning, design, procurement of raw
materials, production of parts, assembly,
manufacturing, sales, after-service care, and sales
service take time. In that interval, price is determinedby demand and supply, and move spontaneously
towards equilibrium.”
However, in the financial market, transactions
are instant, and as soon as an expectation of pricearises in the market, new supply and demand arise

108

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

immediately in response to it. The price of money isinterest rate, foreign exchange rate and stock price,
and as soon as this is determined a new expectationarises, which results in the shaping up of a new price,and gradually the prices undergo significant change.
On the final analysis, the price can deviate in any
number of ways from the equilibrium of neoclassicaleconomics, and the equilibrium point from thetheoretical.
This actually happened during the Asian crisis,
which George Soros pointed out was in fact a global
financial crisis. The Davos Conference was held inJanuary 1998, and by the end of the year, hepublished a book that clearly posited the problem. By
the way, if you look at the present financial capital
market, stock exchanges all over the world compete
against one another. Within that, high-speed trading
proceeds in what can only be called an abnormalmanner. A system is being developed that makes
possible trading in 1 millionth of a second or 100
millionth of a second. Competition in thedevelopment of this system has given rise to a world
which makes it difficult to make a profit unless one isable to invest in units of 100 millionth of a second.
In the recent boom in discussion of economic
systems, the problem of disparity as shown in the
introductory video has come up. The book written by
French economist Thomas Piketty on the 21st century
capitalism is gaining attention among readers aroundthe world. Originally written in French, it became aworldwide bestseller after it was translated to English,
selling 400 thousand copies three months after the
English edition came out, of which 75% were sold in
the heart of capitalism, the United States of America.
The sense of crisis towards the excesses of American
finance capitalism is very strong. Unable to address
this crisis, the Obama administration received a
considerably severe backlash in the recent mid-term
elections.
What are needed in the New Economics are
long-term perspective, consistency with science andtechnology, a sense of the times and a sense of
ethics. To deliver positive results towards the creationof humane civilization, there must be a soundawareness of social needs, the needs of the times,
and a sense of direction whether in economics or inscience and technology.

Keynote Speech Mr. Akira Kojima

If one were to speak of Adam Smith, he would
be like the originator of free competition and freeeconomy. But there is a book that he had revised
many times and he claimed was more important. It is
not The Wealth of Nations but The Theory of Moral
Sentiments which placed greater emphasis on the
ethical aspect. It is said that he revised it many times.
In 1990, I incidentally had the chance to attend
the 200th year commemorative conference of Adam
Smith held in University of Glasgow. In that
conference, the ethical issues in economics as
expounded in The Theory of Moral Sentiments drewattention. Whether in economics or science andtechnology, what will become increasingly important
are not fundamental principles or fundamentalism
but synthesis, morality, and balance. From whatviewpoint should one resolve the issues of global
environment, energy resource, aging society,contagious diseases, and medical problems isextremely important. Alongside the energy issue ofPeak Oil, Peak Water, or the problem of water
resources, is increasingly being discussed.

Be that as it may, innovation will become avery important issue. Innovation is essential to the“creation of a truly humane civilization.” However,what is more important than innovation only inscience and technology is a multi-faceted,comprehensive innovation that encompasses
government administration, policy decision-making
process, management and academic-industrial
cooperation.
In Japan, innovation is generally spoken of as
technological revolution. Therefore, partly as a resultof the translation of the word of “technologicalrevolution,” there is a tendency for “innovation” to be
used in the context of an engineer’s worksite. Thiscame about because in the 1958 Economic White
Paper by the government, “innovation” wastranslated as “technological revolution.”
At that time, Japan was a late-developing
industrial country that was catching up, so it may
have been alright to limit the word to technologicalrevolution, but now that use is being strained. The
word has to be discussed in a broader context. There
was a famous, Austria-born scholar named
Schumpeter. Discussing innovation in a systemicmanner, he defined innovation as a new combination
or a new idea that leads to the creation, practicalapplication, and diffusion of new values.
In concrete terms, he pointed out five aspects,
namely the production of new goods and services
still unknown to consumers; second, the introductionof an improved or better method of production;
third, the cultivation of a new market; fourth, theprocurement of a new source of supply of raw
materials or half-manufactured goods; fifth, therealization of a new organization. To discuss this in
the present context, a multi-faceted systemic
innovation that includes the state’s policy decisionmaking process is very important.

Next, the ability to choose our future is very
important to innovation. Fifty years ago in 1964, theTokyo Olympics were held. At that time Japan was
still in the least developed stage and the quantitative
expansion of its economy was an overriding
imperative, so everyone was happy about the high35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

109Keynote Speech Mr. Akira Kojima

growth. Seeing smoke coming from the chimney, I
remember rejoicing, “Oh, Japan is alive and kicking.”
However, several years later, rivers in big cities likeTokyo became muddy with black filth, and the fish
disappeared. The atmosphere was also so polluted
one could get asthma. Pollution was such a big issue
in the Diet during 1960s that it generated a debate so
rabid it earned the nickname “pollution Diet.”
But it gave rise to a sense of crisis that in turngenerated a multi-faceted innovation. The Muskie
Act of 1970 addressed the issue of pollution, andHonda’s CVCC took the challenge of the strict
standard to significantly reduce SOx emission.
Furthermore, someone has been conducting anocular observation to determine how many days in ayear Mt. Fuji was visible from Tokyo for even a shortinterval during the day. One year prior to the
Olympics in 1963, it was visible for 49 days of the year.
However in 1965, one year after the Olympics, it was
visible for only 22 days, and I think the environment
progressively deteriorated afterwards until thenumber of days fell to zero.
But the new innovation born insideorganizations gave rise to changes not only intechnology itself but also in management style, stateadministration, and lifestyle and, as a result, Japan
became an environmentally advanced country. In
2012, one could catch a glimpse of Mt. Fuji for 126
days in one year. Very recently, we learned from thenews that a man from Kyoto, 220 km away from Mt.
Fuji, succeeded in taking photographs of themountain. This is one symbol that Japan has beenable to address the pollution issue throughinnovation.
Now, the lower right photo shows a bullet
train. It has been 50 years since the Tokaido
Shinkansen was launched. It has transported 550
million people without accident within those 50
years. Barring earthquakes, its time is very accurate.
More than being merely an innovation in transporttechnology, it is an example of innovation ofmanagement. It is progress in operation. It has had apowerful effect on the world’s transportation system
as a whole. Therefore, when it comes to innovation, it
is important to think from a broad perspective.
Certainly, there are enormous difficulties inrealizing the theme of helping create a humane

110

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

civilization but by checking our value system, andweaving balance and ethics into innovation, it canbecome more feasible. What are essential areawareness and choice, not fatalism. In other words,
the perspective and the standpoint where we canchoose our future through our own effort isnecessary. Likewise, we can overcome the issue of
aging society through a broader definition of
innovation and create a deep, mature society.

Being one of the pillars of growth strategy in
Abenomics, robotics holds possibilities not only at the
production site but also in a variety of other fields.
The photo on the left side is that of a wearable robotthat was developed by Prof. Sankai’s group from the
University of Tsukuba. This is an excellent invention. A
limbless person’s brain can connect to a robot
through its sensor, and when that person thinks ofwalking, the machine detects minute signals andmoves forward. It is indeed a marvelous invention.
In fact, Japan’s administrative innovation ishampering the use of robotics. In Europe, mainly inGermany, robots are rapidly being adopted for use
even in hospitals. Especially in Germany, if one uses
one, it is covered by public health insurance. In Japan,
however, it can be used in nursing care to assist in
work that requires use of muscles, but not in medicalcare. It is an example of technological innovation that
holds great possibilities in Japan if such innovation
were adopted in its broad meaning.
Furthermore, Japan has already madeadvances in such fields as plant factories, renewableenergy, hydrogen energy, and fuel cell batteries, aswell as the so-called Elements Strategy for theKeynote Speech Mr. Akira Kojima

securement of rare earth functions, its areas ofexpertise, and should challenge itself further towards
the technological innovation frontier that is integral
with the economy. I believe this frontier is immense.

Next, I have also picked out some points at
issue in the NIC (National Intelligence Council)
Report. Where are the areas of possible technologicalinnovation? These areas are classified into threebased on degree. Aside from robotics that we havealready mentioned, the other areas of possibility areenergy, water treatment facilities and the ubiquitous
computer. How do we choose the field and move inthe direction that will enable us put it to actual use?

disaster and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The idea of
the white paper is to convey to the world the very
objective of this symposium, which is
ecotechnology, and to cooperate with countries in
the world.
The Tokyo Olympics 50 years ago symbolized adeveloping country’s pursuit of quantitative
expansion and growth. It has been 50 years sincethen, and the question that will be asked about thesecond Tokyo Olympics, which will be held a few
years hence, is how Japan can translate its maturesociety and new innovation into the enhancement ofsocial and global well-being. It will be an important
opportunity to showcase in concrete forms ourcontribution to today’s very theme of humane
civilization, which includes environmental issues.
We look forward to hearing specific wisdomfrom the lectures of Honda Prize laureates who arehere today. I appreciate your forbearance and thankyou for your presence here today.

Finally, I would like to mention this year’s
White Paper on Science and Technology. The White
Paper on Science and Technology 2014 released by the
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science andTechnology in June this year promotes life
innovation and clean innovation in light of the 3.11

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

111Keynote Speech Mr. Akira Kojima

Commemorative Speech
The Changing Economic System
Dr. Åke E. Andersson

Guardian Angel Technologies: Providing Right
Information to the Right People
Dr. Raj Reddy

Ecotechnology of the Water Molecule in
Biology and Medicine
Dr. Denis Le Bihan

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

113

Commemorative Speech Dr. Åke E. Andersson

Dr. Åke E. Andersson
Born in Sweden in 1936. The 16th Honda Prize laureate
in 1995. Professor of Economics at Jönköping
International Business School and Former Managing
Director of the Swedish Institute for Futures Studies

Paradigm Shift

The Changing Economic System

Ladies and gentlemen, I am very honored to be oneof the contributors to the Honda Foundation
memorial system.
When we are looking at economic
development, we must be very clear about two
things. The first is that most of the time over history
our societies have experienced equilibrium growth,and much of the time we have thus experienced
rather predictable situations.

114

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

However, once in a while there is a phasetransition or a major change of the whole economic
structure, and we are currently, after 200 years ofindustrialization, moving into such a phase transition.
The global economy is now rapidly changing
and becoming increasingly dependent on cheap,
long-distance communication capacity, cognitive andcreative occupations, and a capacity to handle
cultural differences and conflicts.
As I said before, the reasons for the changing
global economy are to be found in a phase transition
that we will soon experience and a persistentequilibrium economic growth caused by the growthof knowledge due to steady growth of education andby research and development activities of research
institutions and industry, and the innovations madepossible by research and development activities.
The recent phase transition, I will talk about alittle later, and it has to do with a soft and hard
infrastructure for communications, for financialtransactions and trade, and by the increased
openness in many respects of many countries.

Commemorative Speech Dr. Åke E. Andersson

that Japan was the world leader. It had a growth rateof 3.0% per year in terms of real per capita income.

The long-term equilibrium trends areassociated with knowledge progress. In the early
1960s, there was an extensive discussion about therelative role of different factors of production, and an
American economist, Robert Solow, claimed that infact the long-term rate of growth of per capita
income in the USA could only, to a very limited
extent, be explained by savings, or the growth of thestock of material capital, or the increases ofquantitative labor supply.
It is rather the steadily increasing stock ofhuman capital, technological and organizational
knowledge that ensures a steady rate of growth of
per capita real income of 2% to 3% per annum in theOECD countries and a faster rate of increase, in fact, inthe developing economies.
An important contribution by Angus
Madison and his associates has made it possible for
us to study the macroeconomic accounting dataover very long periods of time for a large numberof industrialized nations. This database has
increased our possibilities to explain the stable rateof growth of real national products, as I will show
in a table.
However, if we look at the factors that I willthen discuss, we have to start with knowledge
progress and look into the impact on the increases ofincome per capita and how that influences in its turnworking time per year, longevity of life of the
populations, and finally the emergence of quite newvalue structures.
So let’s look at the rate of growth of
economies. If we make a calculation from 1870 to1979 using Angus Madison’s original data, we find

However, if we extend the time until the latest
observable material in 2010, the income growth has
dropped to 2.6% and it’s now closing in on the
average rate of growth of the OECD countries. It
seems like the OECD area is now tending towards
something between 2.0% and 2.5% of real per capita
income growth.

What consequences will this have? Well, one of
the important consequences is shorter working timeand increased leisure time. A persistent empiricalregularity in growing economies is the decline in thenumber of hours a member of the labor force devotes
to work within a fixed time period.
An econometric estimate that I’ve done isbased on Madison’s data for the OECD countries forthe period 1870 to 1980, and it shows that there
tends to be a reduction of average working time by

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

115

Commemorative Speech Dr. Åke E. Andersson

about 0.3% per year in the growing industrial
economies, if we have this rate of growth of, let’ssay, 2.5% per year.
And this result supports the old hypothesis of
the backward-bending labor supply curve, which
essentially says that you’ll make a choice between
working more and consuming more when you havean increase in productivity. People simply prefer towork a little less when they can afford even moreconsumer goods. So there is a kind of break to theconsumption and demand with the increasing rate of
growth of the economies.

The other phenomenon is the increased
longevity of life. John Maynard Keynes, who may be
the greatest economist in the 20th century,
famously remarked that in the long run we are alldead. And that’s not a probabilistic statement, hesaid, it’s a certainty.
Every human being has a finite life expectancy
but this finite time period has been increasing inmost parts of the world. You in Japan would know
that. Globally, the increase in human life expectancy
averages between three and four years per
generation, which corresponds to a year-on-yearincrease of 0.6%.
However, according to a study by the National
Institute of Health, while some experts assume that life
expectancy must be approaching an upper limit, dataon life expectancies between 1840 and 2007 show asteady increase averaging about three months of life
per year. This is supported by studies by Vaupel andothers, as illustrated by the figure above.
As you can see, it’s a fairly linear development

116

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

over time of life expectancy, and what does thismean? Well, it means essentially that we areapproaching a fairly high level of life expectancy, andthat will have consequences.
Now if I would summarize some of these longterm trend consequences for people’s behavior, I
would get the following result. There will be a steadily
increasing growth of knowledge and information,even if we don’t have a phase transition, meaning that
we would move into a new economic system.
There would be an increasing income percapita at the rate of 2% to 3% per annum, with thelatecomers having 3% and the early birds having 2%
approximately.
There will be an increasing life expectancy
towards 100 years in the most advanced parts of theworld, and this will, of course, mean that people will
have to work for a longer period of their lives. The
expectation is that we will have something like 75
years as a fairly normal retirement age in the longrun, not the 60 to 65 years that we find currently.
However, the decreasing working time per year
is dropping as a consequence of the backwardbending supply curve and that will lead to something
like 7%, maybe 8%, of total lifetime being spentworking. This is in fact shorter than the share of lifethat we spend on drinking and eating currently, so in
the long run, eating and drinking will be considered amore basic part of life than working.

There will be a steady shift towards a postmaterialist value structure. What does that mean?
Well, it means that we will move from the industrial
society materialist value structure when people wereCommemorative Speech Dr. Åke E. Andersson

nationalistic, fairly religious on the average, they
believed very much in hierarchical relations,productivity was a driving force in every decision
process, nature was there to be exploited, andbrotherhood was a central aspect of life.
What does it look like in the post-materialist
C-society*, that I would call it? It would becosmopolitan rather than nationalistic, it would beagnostic, it would be emancipated, it would becreative, it would be sustainable, and it would berather tolerant. So it’s a completely different situation.

countries there is a conflict between the people
who are linked to the old structure and the people,
mainly young, well-educated women, who arelinked to the new value structure.

* Emerging industrial society as new theoretical model
proposed by Dr. Andersson, which aimed at both preserving
the natural environment and developing regional economies
in the face of aggravated problems with the global
environment. “C” features creativity, communication capacity
and complexity of products.

Now, let me then move to the paradigmaticchanges that we are facing. The paradigmaticchanges are actually a historical phenomenon that
we can observe. We’ve had such changes during thelatest millennium. The economic history of theworld during the last millennium has been
dominated by long periods of equilibrium growth or
stagnation interspersed by four logisticalrevolutions or phase transitions.

Now, the question is can we observe this shift
anywhere? Yes, we can. We can observe it rather
clearly. This is a classical picture from Ronald
Inglehart’s study where on the x-axis he has plugged
in income per capita and on the y-axis he has
plugged in the frequency of post-materialism.
In the upper-right corner you find the typicalpost-materialist societies at the beginning of thiscentury. You find countries like Finland, theNetherlands, Italy, Belgium, France, Sweden,
Germany, Denmark, Austria, Britain, Japan, andIreland. And in the lower part of it you find countries
like Russia, Nigeria, Belarus, Latvia, South Africa,
Brazil, Portugal, and so on.
So there is a kind of hidden conflict between
the post-materialist countries in the world and thematerialist countries in the world, and within the

The first logistical revolution was caused by
the institutional and transport-system changes
around the Mediterranean and the north of Europe,
permitting a massive trade expansion and growthof wealth among the commercial innovators likethe Medicis and the Fuggers in Europe, who

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

117Commemorative Speech Dr. Åke E. Andersson

actually transformed the European scene in very
many respects.
The second logistical revolution happened
around the 17th century and was again a commercial
revolution based on institutional innovations, buteven more by the new sailing possibilities opened upby the creation of the caravel and later the Dutch,
very efficient ship, the fluyt.
However, the most important innovation was
institutional, and it had to do with the creation of abanking system in Holland and Great Britain where
they managed to base the new banking system on
governmental guarantees, and that made trade, evenover very long distances and long periods of time,something that was viable.
The third logistical revolution, or the Industrial
Revolution, started in the 19th century and hit
country after country. It is still hitting some countries
around the world, the newly industrialized countries.
They are still moving from agricultural to industrial
structure.
And that was founded on the combined effects
of free trade, proper property rights, andspecialization of production to reap advantages ofdivision of labor, and trade was no longer thenlimited to the exploitation of given price differences
between regions as it was during the former two bigtransitions.
It was instead an industrial approach where thefocus was on the difference between the price of agood in the importing region and the lowest possible
cost of supplying the good.
Importers therefore became interested in
influencing the entire chain of logistical costs down
to the production sites and bringing the good to themarket, including the costs of organizing production
and of transporting the product to the market,
including the marketing process itself.
So the industrial revolution, which we
experienced the last phases of here in Asia andEurope and North America, is a kind of complete
logistical chain system.
Now, the fourth logistical revolution is now in
effect in parts of the former industrial world. I would
say that it’s basically a regional phenomenon rather
than a national phenomenon. No nation is fully
influenced by it, but very many nations are

118

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

experiencing it in the most advanced regions of
those countries.
Now this new revolution is based on
cognitive capacities; creative organizations;communication and contact networks; culture in
the form of institutions, values, and the arts; andthe complexity of products. There’s an enormous
increase in the complexity of products and thus
our production system.
In discussions with the Nobel laureate
Haavelmo and the Honda laureate Haken, I’ve foundthat a seeming paradox can be resolved. What is theparadox? Well, the paradox is the following: alleconomists and most engineers and policymakers
realize that the economic system is essentially very
nonlinear, and according to mathematics, the typicalcharacter of a nonlinear dynamic system is that it will
always go into chaos. So chaos is an inherent
problem of the nonlinear economic system.
But Haavelmo, when I talked to him, said,“That’s very strange because when I look at thestatistics of economic growth, it looks very stable andthat’s not compatible with the idea of a very
nonlinear economic system.”
And I discussed this with Hermann Haken, theHonda laureate who could not be here today, and I
found that some of his ideas of synergetics could
actually be applied to economic theory.
Now, what do you need to do then? Well, youhave to carefully separate the timescales. You have tocarefully separate the variables according to theirindividual, or, as they are called in American
economic studies, private goods versus collective or
public goods, in the terms of its effects.

Commemorative Speech Dr. Åke E. Andersson

Now I’ve done this in this table. I have a rate ofchange: is it fast or is it slow? And when I say slow, it’sby order of magnitude slower than the fast processes.
Effects, on the other axes, is individual or collective.
Now in the lower right corner I find the
combination of slow and public or collective, andthat is what we normally call infrastructure. And
basically the idea is that economic decisions aremostly taken by firms and households under theassumption that infrastructure is given and not
being changed by, for instance, a natural
catastrophe or something like that. It’s there as astage on which the economic games are played.

What is the infrastructure then in thisframework? It’s cognitive capital, it’s creative
capacity, it’s communication and transport networks,
it’s culture, and it’s complexity of goods. These are
the fundamentals on which the exchanges ofordinary market goods are happening and where thegrowth of private capital is determined.
In fact, with this approach we can actually see
the market activities as something that are
happening on a stable stage, as long as it is stableand does not change very much. And this was true
during the industrial revolution.
Unfortunately, the industrial structure during
the growth process goes towards a creative
destruction. Sooner or later you come to a point
where the arena has changed so much that theclassical industrial manufacturing firms do not fit thearena. They start crumbling and fall to pieces andsomething else must come in its place, and thiscauses what we call structural unemployment.

The basic argument of this paper that I’m
presenting today is that scientific creativity is
becoming increasingly important for the R&D andinnovation activities of industry. There is going to bea much closer link between scientific studies andindustrial research and development and innovation
processes.
This will not only affect the structure ofindustries and their allocation of knowledge capital.
It will also increase the spatial concentration ofscientists and the clustering of research activities inscience-oriented regions.
The accessibility of the labor force with a highlevel of education is skewed in favor of what I callC-regions, that’s regions that are rich in these new
resources. The C-regions thus have an accessibility
advantage in terms of the dynamics of knowledge
accumulation and creation. This in its turn generates
a more rapid pace of innovation and thedevelopment of new regional comparative andcompetitive advantages, as will be illustrated.
The knowledge infrastructure determining theconditions of creativity of a region is dependent onaccessibility in the spatially extended network forcommunication and contact. It is also highly
dependent on the openness, tolerance, and curiosityof the regional populations, and the allocation of
resources to creative activities, and how theintellectual property rights are used in the sciences
and arts.
Now, this table shows the overall research anddevelopment investments as a percent of GDP. And if
we look then at the countries in the north of Europe,
Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands, we

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

119Commemorative Speech Dr. Åke E. Andersson

find rather high values, especially for Scandinavia:
3.43 for Sweden, 3.06 for Denmark, 3.89 for Finland.
And if we take the average for OECD, it’s much lower:
2.17% of the GDP during the period 2008 to 2011.

Now, if we look at the scientific research, how
big is that? Well if we take Sweden, it’s much lower
than industrial R&D, which means that we have aproblem. If we look at the OECD as a whole, it is 0.44
as compared to 2.17 in total. And if we look at Japan,
it’s a very high total allocation of resources to R&D,
3.33, but only 0.45% of your national product is goingto scientific research. It’s a surprisingly small relative
allocation of funds to scientific research.
Politicians and bureaucrats who control the
allocation of resources to science often assume thatthe currently popular national innovation policies are
best at promoting future comparative andcompetitive advantages to the countries. The
implication is, however, that they tend to support
industrial R&D rather than scientific research in spiteof the much greater and more widespread long-termsocial returns that scientific creativity would
generate.
I could give you many examples. If we look at
information technology, it’s often assumed that thatis something that happened primarily in the US on
the West Coast during the 1980s and 1990s, but thebasis of it was created in the 1930s by mathematiciansin Britain and at Princeton.
Most of this was, so to say, highly dependent
on rather ill-funded scientific research being done
under very bad conditions in Great Britain in the
1930s. And it’s probable that we will have the same120

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

problems emerging today because of the low relative
share of scientific research.

There are, however, two opposing hypotheseson the role of science. The first one is called Baumol’s
hypothesis. Baumol is an American economist,
associated for a very long time with Princeton, and hesays inventors work in isolation from science. The
other counter-hypothesis by Hollingsworth says thatinventors are increasingly dependent on science
because of the increasing complexity of products,
and he went around to prove it.
Now the question is then what is complexityof products? What do we mean by complexity of
products? Well, there are numerous proposed
definitions of complexity. Most of these are, so to
say, beer talk based on intuitive reasoning. However,
Ray Solomonoff, Andrey Kolmogorov, and Greg
Chaitin, three rather famous mathematicians,
provided a mathematical and precise definition ofcomplexity.

Commemorative Speech Dr. Åke E. Andersson

They claim that complexity is measurable andcan be defined as the minimal length of a program or
algorithm that yields an exact solution to a preformulated problem. So it’s minimal length thatdefines complexity.
What did they mean? Well, I would say it’seasier rather to show you. Let’s say that we haveexample one, which says 002000300004, and thenfive zeros and 5, and then six zeros and 6 and so it
goes on towards infinity.
The other example is 121543699821345798709
81269994333. It can be shown that there is no
possibility of finding a computation formula that isshorter than the series itself. It is thus more complex
than the first example because anyone can write ashort computer code to generate the first example.

Now, can we use this in engineering andsciences and technology and so on? Well, Solomonoff
already claimed that it is possible to generalize thecomplexity of computer algorithms so that thisdefinition of complexity also applies to phenomena
such as design of products, blueprints, andproduction instructions because standard goods
must follow strict rules of composition andproduction instructions.
An example is the blueprint and production
plan for a new automobile. It has, according to thisprocedure, become possible to produce even an
automobile by 3D computing, as recently
demonstrated in the United States by some scientists.
However, there are limitations. I could give an
example. In Sweden, we make Swedish fish soup andthat’s a very simple soup. And the contrast is a Frenchbouillabaisse soup. I would claim that the Frenchbouillabaisse soup is by orders of magnitude more
complex. It takes a minimal instruction that is very
long compared to the instruction that is minimal formaking Swedish fish soup.

But it also shows that there is a limitation thatarises from the difference between a set of numbers in
an algorithm and the set of ingredients in the soup.
Soup ingredients have a much greater scope thannumbers: they are heterogeneous rather than uniform
in having an open-ended set of underlying attributes.
A second limitation is that soups, unlike
numbers, are sensitive to the skill of the individual
using the recipe. A recipe-using individual is not as
homogeneous as an algorithm-using computer. A
skilled worker can adjust the recipe if the delivery of
an input is for some reason not good enough.

Now, how can this be handled in an economic
analysis? Well, algorithmic complexities of the35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

121Commemorative Speech Dr. Åke E. Andersson

products are basically in the short term given byearlier investments in new knowledge. In a way, theinvestments in knowledge provide a stage on whichalgorithmic complexities can be calculated.
In the long term, however, algorithmic
complexities, input structure, and required skills can
all change as a result of creativity in scientificresearch. The accumulation of scientific knowledge
thus occurs through a slow and creative process thatchanges the algorithmic complexity of goods, mostly
in an increasing respect.

So, algorithmic complexity over a long time
period can be seen as the knowledge
infrastructure. The development of science
towards increasingly complex theories, models,and products causes a need for more complex
cognitive capacity among scientists withinlaboratories and other research institutes.
Now this is much talk, but it has been tested,
and the test was done by Hollingsworth who actually
addressed the question by connecting scientificcomplexity to the frequency of creative
breakthroughs and the internal organization ofuniversities, research institutes, and laboratories. And
his focus was on biomedical science, which isunusually concerned with understanding andpredicting highly complex systems. So biotechnology
is now a focus of the complexity analysis.
Hollingsworth noted that high cognitive
complexity is the capacity to observe and understandin novel ways the relationships among complex
phenomena, the capacity to see relationships among
often-disparate fields of knowledge, and it is that122

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

capacity which greatly increases the potential formaking a major discovery. These were his
conclusions.

Then he said, “Let’s look at different types oflabs. How are they organized?” And he found that
there are Type A labs, which are characterized by highscientific diversity, high and diversified network
connectivity, they are connected internationally in adiversified way, and they have access to funding,even for high-risk research.
The personality of the lab head is very central
according to this analysis. High cognitive complexity,
high confidence, and high motivation are the threecharacteristics of this type of lab head. And theleadership implies excellent grasp of how different
fields may be integrated.
The Type B labs had a low or moderatescientific diversity and high network conductivity but
only within their own single discipline. If they wereanalyzing some chemical substance, they had
excellent relations with all people looking exactly atthat chemical substance around the world. They had
low cognitive complexity, they were risk-averse, andthey had very limited funding for high-risk research.
And the leader was not concerned at all withintegrating distinct scientific disciplines. He was notinterested in interdisciplinary science.
The surprise was when they evaluated thesuccess rate of these activities: “all of the 291
discoveries in our project were made in Type A
laboratories. Significantly, none of the 291 discoveriesin our research occurred in Type B labs.” So this gives
us a fairly clear understanding of in what way

Commemorative Speech Dr. Åke E. Andersson

reorganization of research should move.

The problem is, however, because these are
high-risk problems, there were a lot of mistakes also
in the Type A laboratories. They made mistakes but
they were on the whole much more successful than
the risk-averse, highly concentrated Type B labs.

There is a need for reorganization of research
into Type A departments, labs, and research institutes.
Increasing complexity of science requires goodaccessibility of new and diversified external knowledge.
This provides strong arguments for locating these TypeA research organizations that are growing into large,
open, and diverse C-regions. It gives an advantage tosome metropolitan regions in the world like Tokyo.
My son has been working with the top 12
science city regions, and he has shown that there aresome persistent regions in the world that willprobably be the world leaders in research anddevelopment also in the future.

London is one case, Tokyo/Yokohama is
another case, and an upcoming case is Beijing, and if
we look at this table that goes all the way from 1996
to 2010, it gives a kind of stable picture of the global
leaders in terms of regions of the future.

So we have some paradigm changes ahead in
the research system. The first fact is increasing
complexity of R&D causes heavier reliance on
scientific research. Consequence: more resources
ought to be allocated to scientific research in alladvanced countries.
B. Fact: Scientific R&D on complex products
and systems is already clustered in large C-regions.
Consequence: The increased complexity implies afuture of increased clustering of scientists andindustrial R&D in the larger C-regions of the world.
C. Fact: International science collaboration
improves diversity and the quality of knowledge
inputs, according to the study by Hollingsworth, butalso studies I’ve performed together with my35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

123Commemorative Speech Dr. Åke E. Andersson

collaborators. Consequence: More funding of
scientific international collaboration is needed.
Unfortunately, the resources to do this are quite
limited in parts of Asia, and especially in China.

So let me then summarize and conclude. The
third logistical or industrial revolution has been agreat economic success with sustained growth of real
per capita income triggering a longer life, increasing
leisure time, and a value transformation towards
openness, creativity, and tolerance.
Currently, we have a parallel structuraltransformation from agriculture to industrial society
in parts of the world, and from industrial into
C-society in countries like Japan.
Industrial societies carry the seeds of theirdestruction causing backward-looking nationalistic or
sectarianist movements like we see in Europe today.
The dynamic and thus long-term comparativeadvantages of the C-regions and C-nations are driven
by scientific research on new and complex products
and production systems. Too small resources areallocated to scientific research supporting thischange, often only 10% to 30% of total R&D.
There is now a need to reorganize scientificwork in universities to handle the increasing
complexity of goods and production systems. Thereis an increasingly strong argument for locating thereorganized scientific institutions in the most diverse
city regions with a post-materialistic value structure.
Thank you.

124

35th Honda Prize Commemorative SymposiumCommemorative Speech Dr. Raj Reddy

Dr. Raj Reddy
Born in India in 1937. The 26th Honda Prize laureate in 2005.
Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at
Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A.

InnovationRole of Technology Innovation in
Creating a Truly Humane Society

Good afternoon. It’s kind of late, but I’m sure we’ll
have an exciting panel discussion so I recommendthat we get there quickly. It’s an honor to be backhere and participating in the Honda Memorial
Symposium with distinguished laureates.
The theme of the symposium today is how tocreate a truly humane civilization and to review andexplore solutions to the issues facing modern society

126

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposiumfrom an eco-technology perspective.
Technological innovation in the past haslargely been responsible for the improvement ofquality of life. If you look back 200 years ago, womenspent all day in the kitchen cooking. That’s all theydid. And men spent all day in the fields working in
agriculture. Today, as Dr. Andersson pointed out, weprobably spend less than 20% of our daily hours in
work, and it’s supposed to go to 7% in another 10 or
15 years. That’s amazing.
Technological innovation comes in many
forms, not all of which are eco-technologies, but theclosest thing I can think of that is a good ecotechnology, but it doesn’t quite fit Mr. Soichiro
Honda’s definition, is the invention of the self-drivingcar, which is just around the corner.
I’ve been working on it since 1982 and we
knew it could be done 15 years later. We went toGeneral Motors and said we should start working
together to do this, but they said, “No, no, no, no,we’re already doing it. Don’t bother us with your

Commemorative Speech Dr. Raj Reddy

ideas.” Now it’s 20 years later and they haven’t done ityet, but we do have Google doing a self-driving car. I
also hear that Honda is about to release their selfdriving car and I hope it will be the best selling car.
Unfortunately, however, this particulartechnology doesn’t quite satisfy the requirements ofscalable, sustainable, and affordable. Only less than
15% of the population has cars today and out of
those, who can afford a self-driving car? Maybe half,and even those may have to wait another 10 or 15
years for the cost to come down.
So that was affordability, and now the issue ofsustainability. The pollution and various otherproblems we have with all cars, including fossil-fuelcars, makes it not quite the eco-technology that Mr.
Soichiro Honda talked about.
Today, I’d like to talk to you about one magical
technology, or at least to me it seems like a magical
technology, that I think would enable a truly humane
society for every man, woman, and child on theplanet, and for the issue of whether it is affordable byevery man, woman, child, I’ll try to convince you it is.
The topic is to create a “Guardian Angel” that isalways with you, knows everything about you, and isable to give every person the right information in theright timeframe. The right information for you is not
the same as the right information for me. It has togive the right information to the right people at theright time.
The assumption is if each of us knew the rightinformation in the right timeframe, then we could
make appropriate decisions to avoid catastrophes like
Fukushima, the recent Mount Ontake explosion, andall kinds of things that are knowable. This wholepresentation is to convince you that this can be done;that it is affordable for every man, woman, and child;and that it’s a truly magical technology that fits
Soichiro Honda’s definition of eco-technology.
So let’s re-visit the definition of Soichiro
Honda’s 1978 vision. The Honda Foundation vision ofhelping to create a truly humane civilization is as
important today as it was 35 years ago. However,given the rapid change of pace in technology
innovation over the last five decades, it may bedesirable to re-examine the strategy and tactics
needed for achieving this vision.
To create a truly humane society, we must

aspire to create scalable, sustainable, and affordable
solutions to provide for the basic needs of all thehuman beings on the planet. This is a very importantsentence: a truly humane society will provide thebasic needs of every person on the planet.

So what are the basic needs of every person on
the planet? We all need water, we all need energy, we
all need food, we all need shelter, we all needclothing, I can go on, but the point is that these are
not negotiable. Everybody needs them. And insofar
as we can work towards making sure that every
human being has them, then we will come towards
creating that humane society.

And it is not only material possessions. If you
look at all the things I said, food, energy, water,transportation, various other things, they are all what
I call atom-based, physical things. But there are also
information solutions. When you get information,then there’s a whole set of things, as Dr. Andersson

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

127Commemorative Speech Dr. Raj Reddy

talked about, and an information economy. So weneed to kind of look at the societal needs.

There’s also a set of needs of every humanbeing that are related to human rights. Every person
has the right of freedom from slavery. Every person
has the right of freedom from torture. I went
through and got this list of 30 basic human rightsthat we are all entitled to that the United Nations
collected in 1948.
This was a major philosophical discussion in
the 18th and 19th centuries where it was decided
there are certain inalienable rights for every humanbeing or for the right to “life, liberty, and pursuit ofhappiness” as Jefferson and Madison wrote in the
Declaration of Independence.
To me, I can live without many of them. Even if
I don’t have freedom of religion, I may be able to livewith it, not completely but you know, religion turns
out to be one of the biggest sources of friction in thewhole world today when it should not be.
You take Muslims. There are two sects, Sunniand Shia, and they are constantly fighting and killingeach other. It should not be the case, and it’s not at all
obvious to me what it is that we can do, but at leastslavery and torture are things that we should try toeliminate or abolish.
There are 30 million people today that areunder some kind of slavery-type conditions. There isan index called the Global Slavery Index, if you go to
Google and type it you’ll find it, and there are 30
million people under slavery conditions.
And, unfortunately, I’m ashamed to say, I comeoriginally from India, although I’ve been in the US for

128

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

50 years, and India has the largest number of people
under slavery. Modern slavery is not like the oldslavery. It’s defined as indentured labor, where
because of debts or something you sell your son ordaughter into another family and they’re there for 20
years or 30 years or something. That is slavery.
There is also trafficking and all kinds ofexamples of this kind. They collect these things andit’s amazing to me because I never saw slavery when I
was growing up, but there are parts of the country,
India’s a big country with 1.3 billion people, which aretribal areas where there is no education, where they
are still living like they were living 500 years ago, andindentured labor is an accepted form of settling
disputes.
So the issue here is for us to understand anddefine what we mean by a humane society. I said ahuman society must provide the basic needs and it
must provide the basic human rights, and thequestion is how can we, the Honda foundation, andall of us together, make that happen? What do weneed to do to create a humane society?

To give you some examples of the kinds ofthings I’m talking about, typhoons and earthquakes
and tsunamis and volcanoes seem to be the bane ofJapan. All of these things you seem to have morethan your share of. The most recent explosion of the
volcano in Japan was so dramatic even those of us in
the United States were surprised.
No part of the world is immune to death anddevastation from natural disasters, but Japan does
seem to have more than its fair share of calamities,
and what I’m proposing is if we had Guardian Angel

Commemorative Speech Dr. Raj Reddy

technology that got the right information to the rightpeople at the right time, 80% to 90% of the deaths
could be avoided and that would be something thata humane society would do if it could do it using its
technology.

So the main thesis of this talk, then, is thatmobile technology is sufficiently advanced today that
it is now possible to envision that every person
should get a location-specific personalized warning
about potential calamities like typhoons andtsunamis as soon as they’re known or knowable.
It assumes that we can create and deliver a
personal Guardian Angel to every person on theplanet embedded in a smartphone. Guardian Angels
will perform future-aware computation and whisper
personalized warnings in your ear about potential
problems. It assumes that a Facebook or a social
network of Guardian Angels are able to talk among
themselves to discover what is known and what is
knowable to all of them. If every person on the planet
has a Guardian Angel and they’re all on Facebook,they can discover.
The only problem is privacy. I may not want my
Guardian Angel discussing all my details witheverybody else, but it’s a solvable problem, I assureyou. We understand anonymization. We understandwhat kinds of things are already available. For
example, the traffic system in Tokyo is controlled bycellphone location and traffic jams are identified andpredicted by cellphone location, so this is doable.
So let me say a little bit more about what thispersonal Guardian Angel looks like. A personal
Guardian Angel is a virtual avatar that is assigned toprotect and guide a particular person. It knows
everything about her, except possibly her deep dark
secrets that she has not even whispered to anyone
else in the world. If you’ve said something tosomebody, the Guardian Angel knows it. If you
haven’t told it to anyone, then the Guardian Angel
doesn’t know it.

From a technical perspective, think of apersonal Guardian Angel as an intelligent agent or anapp on your cellphone that is on steroids. It would
not reside on your cellphone, you don’t tap it andactivate it, but it’s always on, 24/7, autonomic andnonintrusive, it never asks you anything, it never tells
you anything, it doesn’t bother you.
It’s always learning and self-adapting to users’
habits, preferences, and commands. A personal
Guardian Angel is expected to monitor, analyze, andlearn from experience, and then share the knowledge
with a community of Guardian Angels. It is capable ofautomated discovery of data and information
sources.
The personal Guardian Angel must
communicate with human users. The publish/
subscribe mechanism of social networks is adequate
if you know what you want and from whom. Who do
you ask when you don’t know who to ask? What if
you don’t know who to “friend?”
These technical problems are solvable, so thata Guardian Angel in a Facebook-type environment
can declare and decide what kinds of knowledge itneeds and assign them as your “friend” so that you
are actually getting all the knowledge not only thatyou have but that everybody else has that might

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

129Commemorative Speech Dr. Raj Reddy

impact you in the future.
Data suitably anonymized can be used to learn
appropriate responsible responses for every possible
situation. The system non-intrusively learns. This isvery important. It must never ask the owner anything.
It must learn by itself, and we know how to do it,believe me. These days, for example, if you go to
Google you can translate from Japanese to Chineseor Hindi or anything you want. It’s not perfect but it’salmost good enough for you to understand what themessage is. It is derived by learning from data ofliterally billions of characters, trillions of characterscollected from large numbers of people.
When you have that much data, what we call“big data,” data analysis makes it possible to predict
almost everything. When you’re typing, you see
predicted words. It is not just the word in the context
you have just typed, it is using engrams, the four orfive words before and after, so that it’s able to predictin the context of what you just said what the most
likely word is. Most of the time, even before you type,the word appears, so the predictive power inlanguages is amazing these days.

A humane civilization should be able to use
the personal Guardian Angel to get the rightinformation to the right people at the right time in
the right language, and, importantly, in the rightmedium, because not everybody knows how to read.
There are many illiterate people, and not everybody
knows English. There are people that may need
another language, so the right medium, text andmultimedia, turns out to be very important.
At the right level of detail. All of these things

130

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

are already possible to be done today. We call this the“Bill of Rights”: the right information to the rightpeople at the right time in the right language in theright medium at the right level of granularity. Six“Bills of Rights.”

By 2020, a smartphone can be expected to cost
about 20 dollars. That’s about 10% of what it is today.
That’s what makes it scalable technology. Today, atthe cost therein, like smartphones cost 200 or 300,
almost half of the population of the world cannot
afford one.
But by 2020, when the cost goes down by 90%,then it turns out that every man, woman, and childwill have at least 16 GB, maybe more, of space on thecloud from Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, which isenough to host all of your personal information.
So the information is gathered from your daily
activities, the Guardian Angel saves it there, it looks
for patterns of behavior, and then it asks are there
any other people among my friends having the same
behavior, and given that behavior, what did they do?
Then it predicts and tries to help you do the rightthing in the right timeframe.
The language divide and literacy divide areproblems that we just discussed. Sustainability andaffordability are natural consequences of an
exponential reduction in size and cost of information
technology.
Now let’s go to affordability because I just said
“believe me everybody will be able to afford one.”
Have you thought about roads and water andsystems that have infrastructure like sanitation that
all of us have? Somehow society decided it isCommemorative Speech Dr. Raj Reddy

necessary to have those fundamental things as apublic good, so the government builds the roads andthe airports and the sanitation systems and the watersupply systems.

Conversely, there are certain things thatsociety decided should be in the private sector, andone of them is the telephone. When the telephonecame in they said it was very expensive technology
and that it was only for rich people so they didn’t
need to make it a public good.
Guess what? Now every man, woman, and childneeds a phone and needs to be able to communicate
and cannot do without one, and therefore we justneed to ask the question if it’s good enough to build
an electric grid and roads and other infrastructure,
why is it not the case that governments and society
are able to provide every person on the planet with asmartphone, especially if they only cost 20 dollars?
Just so that you know, 20 dollars is like lessthan 0.1% of the per capita income of most countries.
If you take the United States and Japan, they are bothat 40,000 to 50,000 dollars per year per capita
income. One percent of that is 500 dollars; 0.1% is like
50 dollars. It’s less than 0.1%. Why can’t we, society,provide every person with a smartphone if it is as
powerful as I’m claiming it can be made to be.
So the big elephant in the room is the costenabling the Guardian Angels. We begin with theassumption that every person will have to have a free,sensor-intensive smartphone. It’s very important.
One of the major innovations that happened incomputer science in the last 15 years is the arrival of
the smartphone. Before then, all computers, alllaptops, everything had computation but it did nothave sensors and activators. Today, if you buy any of
the smartphones, Samsung or anything else, theyeven have a barometer and all kinds of sensors.
There are about 10 different sensors, GPS
being the most important one, location sensing, andit has cameras and microphones. Most of the systems
didn’t have that 15 years ago, and these are essential
parts of building a Guardian Angel.
If you don’t have sensing capability in yourenvironment, all you have is computation and it’s notuseful for building a Guardian Angel. A GuardianAngel must constantly monitor what’s happening toyou. What you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and thenit has to discover for itself how it can adapt thesystem.
In that kind of situation, a smartphone costing,let’s even say 50 dollars because I want a sensorintensive smartphone, I want every sensor in there,
an iPhone 6 let’s say, then it may be even 50 dollars.
I’m saying there are lots of beneficiaries of thistechnology, the people that make the phone, thepeople that provide the service, the government, andthe IT industry, and therefore each of them should
pay one quarter of the cost so that everybody has asmartphone.
There are all kinds of distribution issues andother kinds of things, so I’ll have to talk to my friend
Dr. Andersson to come up with an economic modelso that people don’t game the thing, but it’s possible.
I can work out systems where everybody can haveone and everybody can upgrade if they can afford
better systems and so on.
If you don’t believe what I have there on theslide, you will just have to trust me; otherwise, I’ll behappy to answer questions, but I believe we can thinkof a way of doing it without any problems.
The other biggest problem is privacy. If a
Guardian Angel on my body knows everything I’mdoing, are there no secrets at all? Is there a way I canturn off the phone? It turns out you cannot. With thisphone, even if you turn it off, if there is an emergency
it will turn the phone back on and warn you.
Current phones don’t have that capability
because they are trying to save energy, but in the
future, phones will turn on every five minutes or so andget warning systems without losing too much energy.

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

131Commemorative Speech Dr. Raj Reddy

It turns out this is a new feature that will come.
I’ve been talking to phone manufacturers and they
shake their heads, but I’m sure it will happen. They
did the same thing when I was saying we needcameras and microphones in every phone and every
laptop, and it only took 10 years for that to happen.
So for privacy, a Guardian Angel knows thelocation information of the owner at all times so as tobe able to provide alerts and detailed notifications. Ifneeded, it must be able to turn on the smartphone.
There is no privacy breach because every GuardianAngel only shares the information already known toother people. For example, the service provider
already knows where you are, so location informationis already there.

So, in conclusion, creation of Guardian Angel
technologies for providing the right information to
every man, woman, and child on the planet in atimely manner can eliminate surprises and reduce
human suffering and misery. While the cost appears

132

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

to be prohibitive, on a per capita basis it represents
less than 0.1% of the gross work product.
A social network of Guardian Angels that cananticipate potential disasters and incidents in the lifeof each person on the planet and warn and takeprotective actions might be able to save 50% to 80%
of all accidental deaths in the world. This would resultin savings of over one million lives and hundreds ofbillions of dollars of damage to property.
This is certainly the most important researchthat we computer scientists could be doing in the
21st century, and it is certainly the most importantresearch project that the Honda Foundation could bedoing and undertaking to create a humane society.

Finally, here are some options for the Honda
Foundation in the 21st century for creating a humane
civilization. The foundation could sponsor annualcompetitions and prizes and promote best practices
in creating and identifying sustainable, scalable, andaffordable solutions in all areas of basic needs ofhuman society such as food, energy, water,transportation, education, and so on; in protecting
basic human rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit ofhappiness; in providing freedom from slavery andtorture, and in ensuring safety and security fromnatural and man-made disasters.
In general, the Guardian Angel concepts,
systems, and solutions can be applied not just to
some natural calamities like the ones I showed you
but for almost any problem you can think of thatwould affect each individual. It can be used to
identify potential violations of basic rights and ensure
the basic needs and rights of human beings and allCommemorative Speech Dr. Raj Reddy

individuals in the humane society. Therefore, I submitthat this is the most important technology towards
creating a humane civilization.
Thank you.

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

133

Commemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

Dr. Denis Le Bihan
Born in France in 1957.
The 33th Honda Prize laureate in 2012.
Director of NeuroSpin, CEA Saclay, FranceLife Frontier

Ecotechnology of the Water Molecule in Biology and Medicine
Of course, these changes in the climate also have verylarge consequences on water, for instance, typhoons,and that’s what I’d like to show you today.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, and it’s agreat honor to be with you today. I’m very, very
thankful to the Honda Foundation for inviting me
again to share with you some of my views about how
I can see the future regarding eco-technology.
As you know, we are doing a lot of thinking
about a tiny molecule, CO2, because of thepredictions of global warming, the effects on the
climate, the effects on the environment, and so on.

134

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

My talk will focus mostly on this other tinymolecule, H2O, so just water, the “blue gold” as weknow it, which is of course very beautiful, and I’d liketo remind all of us that water is really a key actor forlife on earth as we know it. And I’ll show you that it isCommemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

even more important than what you think.

I think that this is not by chance. Most religions haveincorporated water into their thinking, probably
because humankind has to have a very strong
connection to water. And, of course, Kyoto water is sogood that we can make beautiful Kimonos and we
can make good sake. So I guess now you areconvinced that water is very important.

Water has always been associated with life.
Without water we cannot have any life, as we know ittoday at least. And most of the cities in the world
have been built next to water like rivers or seas, andof course, Japan is no exception.
Water is a very strange molecule. It has very
interesting properties that cannot be completely
explained today. Of course, you know very well thatthe temperature for water to boil is 100ºC and forfreezing it’s 0ºC, but I’d like to point out something
very special: ice floats when really it shouldn’t. For
other molecules, when they become solid they drop
to the bottom of the liquid.

Unfortunately, water may also be associatedwith death, for instance when we lack water, and thisis of course, terrible but that may happen in the
future if we don’t pay attention. Too much water is
not good either, for instance, tsunamis and flooding,
and water, although it is a very small molecule, has a
lot of power and can cause mechanical destruction.
So I think that while CO2 is very important, H2O mightplay a bigger role than CO2 in the current century andpeople may fight to have access to water.
But maybe not all waters are equal. I’m lucky tolive sometimes in Kyoto, and Kyoto’s water is very
important. In Buddhism water has a sacred value, but

Unfortunately, this is responsible, for instance,
for tragedies such as the Titanic, which was a big
tragedy, but it also explains why ice floats on yourwhisky. Why is that? It’s not clear.

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

135Commemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

136

Another very important property is that wateris very helpful to control temperature. This is why wesweat a lot during the summertime and this is whybabies are so sensitive to heat because they have alarge surface and they have evaporation, which could
be dangerous for them if it becomes excessive.
Water also is very important if we consider all
the molecules we have in the body such as proteins
and other macromolecules. The shape of thesemolecules comes from their interaction with water.
These are the facts we know, and we also knowthat water is H2O, two parts hydrogen and one partoxygen, but D. H. Lawrence said that there is a third
thing that makes it water, but still we don’t knowwhat it is, so I have to say that the water molecule
itself remains a mystery.

time. Let’s take sushi for instance. If you press sushi
with chopsticks water will come out even though
the fish is dead and even if it is very fresh sushi. How
is that possible?
Well we have to remember that there is what
we call the hydrogen bond. Water molecules are
sticky, not only between themselves, but also to theproteins that are present in the fish, so all thosemolecules of water are always bound to othermacromolecules. This is very crucial to explain life as
we know it. Without those hydrogen bonds, without
the special angle, 104º, between the two hydrogens
and the oxygen there would be no life on earth.
But water is also social. A single water molecule
doesn’t exist. Water molecules have to be related.
They have to communicate. They are organized likethat and if we take now the statistics supporting
those networks, water may not be H2O anymore.
Some physicists think that we may describe water as
H3O2 because the molecules are sharing hydrogenatoms between themselves. If you look at the
Facebook network and the water network, you cansee some analogies, so we have to consider thatwater in tissues is organized as a network.
We should also never forget that we are water.
Sixty to seventy percent of our body is made of water,and 75% of our brain, maybe 80% of our brain, is justwater, so we think with water, and that’s what I’d liketo show you soon.

Let’s see in more detail what the watermolecule is about. Again, one oxygen atom and twohydrogen atoms. I call it a single water molecule,but this is dynamic, everything is moving all the

Let’s go to my own research, which is using
magnetic resonance imaging to investigate thehuman body and especially the brain. Magnetic
resonance imaging, or MRI, uses a very strong

35th Honda Prize Commemorative SymposiumCommemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

magnet and with this magnet we will magnetize
water, or more precisely the hydrogen nuclei of thewater molecule, but let’s say water.
This is, for instance, a slice of the brain (upper
right/previous slide), a vertical slice of one of mycolleagues who is very much alive, very healthy, andyou can see beautiful contrast between the gray andwhite matter, you can see some details such as
vessels, and all of this comes from the magnetizationof the water molecules, which is different between
grey and white matter. Why? We have no idea, but it’s
beautiful.
With MRI technology we can see the vessels
coming out of the heart and going to the brain, we
can see what’s going on after we have a meal withdigestion and so on (lower right/previous slide), and,of course, we can see beautiful images of the brain(lower left/previous slide). But this is not a brain, thisis an artificial brain, it is a virtual brain, sometimes I
call it an avatar of the brain, but this will give us many,
many details about how the brain is made.

Let me give you some examples. Our brains arevery similar. There is only one humankind, so all ofour brains are about the same. But if you look at thedetails, look at this red line here (left figure), which is
the limit between areas linked to the motor system
and areas in the back linked to how we sense things,
for instance when we touch our fingers.
Everybody has such a structure in the brain,
but the location, the exact location, and the exact
shape is highly variable. So what I want to say is that
we make what we want of our brain.
If we look at the hippocampus, a very small

area we have in the brain, well, it’s not that small, it islinked to memory. In fact, the Nobel Prize in Medicine
this year was given to the people who discovered
that. If we look at London taxi drivers, who are very
good taxi drivers, Japanese taxi drivers are very good,also, but the study was done with English taxi drivers,
they have shown that the hippocampus is bigger insize in taxi drivers than in normal, non-taxi driverpeople (upper right/previous slide). Just because taxi
drivers use their memory to navigate, they haveincreased the size of their hippocampus.
Pianists also. Pianists and other musicians also
have over-developed regions of the brain, which are,for instance, used for coordination between thehands (right center/previous slide).
This plasticity is occurring very fast. In thisexample here, young people, students, were taught
how to juggle every day for 10 minutes (lower right/
previous slide). After just a few weeks, we can seethat some parts of the brain are developing because
they have to make an effort about spatial localization.
And this is going on all the time. I’m sorry to saythat at the end of my talk I will have modified yourbrain a little bit, and I will have modified my own brain
because there is already some interaction going on.

This is about the shape and anatomy of thebrain. Now we can do even more and that’s what I
call image resolution. We would like to see what’s
going on in our brain when we think. In fact, weknow very well that there is a link between
function and localization. Each part of our brain isdedicated somewhat to a function, so if we canimage the brain and see which parts of the brain

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

137Commemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

are activated, we will have some clues about what
the brain is doing.

circulating in the small capillary vessels. The watermolecules that are there will sense the presence offlowing blood, so in the regions that get activatedthere is an increase in the blood flow and this willtranslate into a tiny change in the magnetization of
the water molecules, which we can detect with MRI
and sophisticated algorithms.

With MRI it’s possible to do that now, to lookdeep into your brain without any invasive techniques*,
without any surgery, just normal people can go to amagnet and we can discover many things. This iscalled functional MRI.
* Any surgical or exploratory activity in which the body ispierced by a device or instrument

When you look at this screen, the image comesfrom your eyes to the back of the brain and then it isshipped to the front part of the brain so that you canrecognize what you have on the screen. Prof. Seiji
Ogawa, a good friend of mine, developed a method
to do that. Let me explain briefly what it is about.
We know, and this was known back in the
1880s, so a long time ago, that in the regions of thebrain that are active, there is an increase in blood
coming up. There is more blood in activated regions.
Now, blood is red because there are red blood cells
inside the blood, and red blood cells are red because
inside there is a very important molecule called
hemoglobin.
Hemoglobin carries oxygen from the lungs to
the tissues, not only the brain, and the hemoglobin
molecule contains an atom of iron and, as you may
guess, in the strong magnetic field of the magnet thisiron atom can be magnetized. So it’s not only water
but also iron.
So in brief, the small vessels we have in thebrain have to be seen as containing tiny magnets.
The red blood cells could be seen as tiny magnets

138

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

So let’s do a simple experiment. If you close
your eyes, and you think about a cat, you see a cat inyour brain somewhere, but my question is where isthat cat? There is no real cat and my question iswhether the regions of the brain that are used to see
the real world also used to see virtual images?
So I did this experiment. Here you say tosomebody in the magnet of the MRI system the word“cat,” you can say it in Japanese, it works also, andthey have to think about a cat. Forty seconds later aquestion, “Are the ears of the cat pointed?” and they
have to think again.
This is an image of the brain (right/previous
slide), this way, and the back here is the visual cortex,
the region we use when we see the real world. What
we see in our images is that when we just think abouta cat, there is a change in the magnetization of thewater molecules. Thinking has an effect on themagnetization of water. This is huge.
The reason, again, is that there is an increase inblood flow in this area because it has been used bythinking of an image. So what we showed in this very
simple experiment is that looking at the real world or
looking at the inner world shares some networks.
Next, Prof. Sadato in Okazaki, at that time he
was in the United States, did an experiment where heCommemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

asked people blind from birth, people who havenever been able to see, to read braille with theirfingers, and he discovered that by reading braillethose people were activating the visual cortex.

So it’s fantastic. That means that even if you
don’t use your brain as it has been designed, you cansomewhat use it in a different way. In fact, my own
view is that there are some circuits in the visual cortex
that are shared by real vision and virtual vision, or
reading braille. Reading braille is just connecting dotsin space to recognize letters so it’s a visual function
and we can say from these experiments that blind
people can see with their fingers.
But we can do something even fancier. If you
think about an object, for instance, vertical or
horizontal, we have to consider that at the back of thebrain we have a direct projection. Of course, it’s
distorted, but if you see something vertical you see for
instance that the regions that are activated have thisshape, while if you see a horizontal object, the regions
are a little bit different (upper left/previous slide).
Now if you ask people to think of a vertical or
horizontal object, you can read their mind by looking
at the images. For instance, here, this person isthinking about a horizontal bar. Here, this person isthinking about a vertical bar. And nowadays we caneven ask people to think about letters, “H,” “E,” “L”
and so on, and we can decode that this person issaying “Hello.” So this is where we are now.
You can even measure signal activities in thebrain to drive robots. This person here is playing thisfamous game in Japan, well, not only in Japan, butrock-paper-scissors that children like to play. He is

moving his hand or just thinking about moving his
hand without moving at all and the computer will
pick up the signal in the motor areas, decode thesignal, and send some electrical current to tiny
engines in an artificial hand. And you see at a
distance, it could be 1,000 km away, a hand moves
just driven by the thought of the person in themagnet (lower left/previous slide).
Even maybe more challenging is this story of ayoung lady, 26 years old, who is in a vegetative state
after a car accident. Of course, there’s no reaction
when you pinch her, nothing. When you ask her“What’s your name?,” nothing. So the group of Dr.
Owen said let’s put this lady in the MRI machine.
They asked the lady, “What’s your name?” andthere was no response; however, the MRI images
showed that the regions of language, like the Brocaarea, light up, meaning that this lady in a vegetative
state was understanding the question and was evenresponding to the question.
So they were very, very intrigued and said, “Could
you think that you are playing tennis?” and of course thelady did nothing but they saw a response in the regionsof the brain that are activated when a normal person
thinks about playing tennis (right/previous slide).
“Madam, could you think that you are moving inyour house and exploring the rooms?” Again, no
response; however, the MRI images showed that theregions that get activated are the same as those that anormal person would activate by doing the same thing.
So basically, some communication was
possible in this lady who was in a vegetative state.
Today, it has been shown that about 20% of people insuch vegetative states are in fact able tocommunicate thanks to this kind of experiment.
Today, we can use even EEG(electroencephalogram) just to pick up signals on thesurface of the skull, so there is no need for MRI. So I
think that’s where imaging is driving us.
However, our brain is like a piece of software, I
will not name any names, but with bugs. Here you
will probably see dots that are black but in fact there
are no dark dots on the image. This is an artifact
created by your brain, so we are not perfect. This isalso very famous: you can see a vase or you can see
two faces, right (next slide)? How do you decide what
you want to see?

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

139

Commemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

but you don’t decide anything. The brain is deciding
for you in advance.

What I want to show you is that you don’t
decide. The brain decides before you’re aware of it.
So the image is shown in the MRI magnet for a very
short time, 150 ms, and then you press a button. If
you want to say, “I saw a vase,” you press left, and if
you want to say, “I saw two faces,” you press right.

Under the brain there is one area, in red, here(center), that is dedicated to the recognition of
faces, and we have to consider that the brain activity
is changing all the time but we are not conscious ofit. It is fluctuating. That’s what we call “intrinsic
fluctuations of mortal states.”
At time zero you have an image, but look here
(upper right graph), two seconds before the image
is projected, this area could be spontaneously
activated or spontaneously un-activated. If it’s
activated two seconds before the image comes, youwill see faces. If the region is not activated two
seconds before you see the image, you will say, “I
see a vase.” So you feel and believe that you decide

140

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

Let’s switch now to something else, just toshow you that water is even more important. This isan experiment that you should not do, although it
doesn’t work with sake anyway. If you mix red wine
and water, at some point it gets mixed. This is called
diffusion. The reason for diffusion was shown byAlbert Einstein through his PhD thesis.
He explained this mixing by the fact thatmolecules, for instance water molecules, had arandom walk like a drunken man trying to go
home. It’s just random. He made a very
sophisticated model with an equation, whichmaybe is not as famous for you as the relativity
equation E = mc², but to me it’s a very important
equation because it’s a way to link themacroscopic world, you see the red wine being
mixed, with the microscopic world, the moleculesthat you can’t see.

Commemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

So let’s go back to MRI. There is a patient with alesion here and as a doctor the question is what is it?
Is it a tumor? What is it? I’d like to know, but theresolution of the image is only macroscopic,
millimeter-scale, so you cannot see anything. Your
dream is to have a virtual biopsy to be able to see thecells that are in this lesion, and this is what I
developed back in ‘84 with diffusion MRI.
The idea, using Einstein’s theory, was toconsider that water molecules, because they diffuse,will fill obstacles such as membranes and so on. I
used Einstein’s model, Einstein’s equation, and I
made a method that can give us images of this
diffusion of water. We don’t see the water molecules
one by one, what we see at the macroscopic scale isa message transmitted by the microscopic motion of
the water molecules.

If you take water in a bottle like that, it’s free ofdisplacement (bottom), so that means that themolecules can explore a big area. In tissues such as
the brain, because it’s compact and there are manyfibers and cells, the displacement of the molecules isreduced.
Again, I don’t want to disturb you with thephysics but on the image I made it was possible tohave a contrast from grey to white, from black andwhite, showing how much movement the watermolecules have. In a tumor with many cells, diffusion
will be reduced. If there is cyst with a collection ofwater, then diffusion will be higher.
So the very first application of this came in1990. This patient, in fact I showed you him before,
had an acute stroke. That means he had a clot in anartery of the brain, as we can see here, and all theneurons* in the territory of this artery were dying. He
was losing several millions of neurons per minute, so
it was terrible.
* A nerve cell that carries information between the brain andother parts of the body

Many patients will die from this, andunfortunately even those who do not die will sufferfrom being severely handicapped. In fact, acutestroke is the very first cause of long-term disabilities.
People will stay paralyzed for life or they will not beable to speak for life. Once they have a stroke, youhave to consider it’s for life.
What has been shown is that in the acutephase, the diffusion of water slows down. The water
movement is decreasing. Why? It’s a little bit difficult
to explain, but it has been shown even in patientsdeveloping a stroke. You see the white areas andeven though you are not a doctor you can see thatsomething is abnormal.
With conventional, plain MRI we don’t see
anything, we only see it with diffusion MRI, but themiracle is that now we have drugs called
thrombolytic agents, which if given to the patient will
dissolve the clot, re-establish blood circulation, thepatients are saved, and the paralysis disappears andthey can speak again.
But this has to be done very quickly, within thefirst six hours; otherwise, it is too late because we arelosing several million neurons per minute. So this iswhat diffusion MRI can allow, and in fact this is why I
got the Honda Prize in 2012.
Water diffusion is also very important in cancer.

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

141Commemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

For instance, if there are many, many cells in a tissue,
as in cancer, water diffusion will decrease. If the tumor
is benign or if the tumor has disappeared, for instance,
diffusion will increase again. In breast cancer,
especially, this is very important. Many, many womenare concerned because they have mammography forscreening and sometimes we see somethingabnormal and we don’t really know what it is.

For instance, this lady had a lesion, even if you
are not a doctor you can see that there is a lesion,and so she was injected with something to create
contrast and this is why we can see the tumor sowell. But this doesn’t tell us if it is a malignant lesion
or a benign lesion.
With diffusion MRI, we can obtain information
with colors telling us what is the probability of eachpart of the lesion to be malignant. For instance, we
can see that in the center of the lesion there isnothing wrong, but at the periphery it becomesvery malignant, and from this we can decide whereto put the needle for biopsy.
And we can even, by using computer
software, isolate the lesion and see inside like thesurgeons will do when they operate on the patient,but this can be done without any invasion just bymeasuring diffusion.
The next application is that it has been shownthat in white matter, diffusion was anisotropic. What
does that mean? Gray matter contains neurons at
the periphery of the brain. Everything else is whitematter, which are the wires that are connecting thedifferent parts of the brain.
It was shown that the diffusion of water is

142

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

faster along the fibers than perpendicular to thefibers. So my idea, long ago in ‘92/‘94, with mycolleagues such as Peter Basser at NIH, was todevelop a mathematical framework whereby
measuring the diffusion of water in several
directions we can obtain point-by-point estimates
inside the brain of the orientation of the fibers. In
the direction that the diffusion is higher, we knowthat the fibers must be parallel to this direction.

This was done in the 1990s and the idea, ofcourse, was to obtain some connections between
those voxels, those points. This is now very easy to
do and this is what we call the human brain
connectome. We can make beautiful images of theconnections in the brain.

In the United States they dedicated 30
million dollars to make an atlas of the connectionsin the human brain. In Europe, we have a little bit
less money, so we got only 2 million, but weCommemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

worked with 12 partners to make images like that,which were the first images of the connections in
the human brain.

We have now more than 100 brains like that. It
takes 15 to 20 minutes. You just go into the magnet,
you don’t even have to think about a cat, nothing,
you can just sleep, and we obtain these gorgeous
images of the connections in the brain.
So a very important message here is that fromnew idea to application in real life takes a long time,
10 to 15 years. I invented diffusion MRI in 1984 withapplication in stroke in 1994. For DTI, this method
for the connections of the brain, 1994 was when it
was invented, and it’s only now that it’s being used.

It was used for instance to see that in babies
who are only two months or four months old, before
they can speak, the fibers in the left hemisphere, inthe future areas linked to language, are more
numerous. There are more fibers already so the brainof the baby is ready on the left hemisphere to deal
with language.
In some schizophrenic patients, we can seethat the fibers connecting the frontal areas and theareas involved with sounds, audition, are faulty. The
connections are not so good, and you know
schizophrenic patients usually hear voices, so that
may explain it.

Now this technique is so popular that in one of
the Paris Metro stations, they put as art a figure of theconnections of the human brain. I think that it is
becoming very, very popular.

So diffusion MRI has been used for many
applications, for stroke, for orientation mapping of
the fibers in the brain, for cancer detection, and it’sused now for detecting activation in the brain. I don’t
have time to explain everything, but I would just liketo convey the message that we should not forgetwater. Water is very important and Pollack said that

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

143Commemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

life scientists have ignored water as fish forget waterin the ocean.

Water for instance, like in the sushi, may not be
organized in the same way next to membranes, next
to proteins, or elsewhere. And it’s known now fromthe discovery of Peter Agre and MacKinnon, who got
the Nobel Prize in 2003, that water molecules cancross cell membranes by using specific channels
called aquaporins.
There are specific molecules that are dragging
the water molecules one by one, breaking thehydrogen bonds, so nature has capitalized on waterand is doing tricks to the water molecule, forinstance, to break the hydrogen bond. Cells can say
they want so many water molecules in or so many
water molecules out. This is heavily controlled andsome drugs now are designed to use those features,for instance to treat patients with epilepsy or
migraine.
If we consider neurons, they have many, many
dendrites, which are like antennas for the neurons
but they have hundreds of them. And on each of
those antennas we have some connections withother neurons. One single neuron can be connected
to 10,000 other neurons.
Think about your cellphone, your cellphone
connected with 10,000 contacts, it’s huge. We have
100 billion neurons so the connections are huge.
Ramon y Cajal, who discovered or invented theconcept of neurons, said that neurons are thebutterflies of the soul that could reveal someday
the secrets of our mental life. I think he wascompletely right.

144

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

He also said that the swelling and contractionof all those structures was probably a key element
to understand how the brain works, and this is what
diffusion MRI can reveal also. This is what I call theneuro-mechanical coupling hypothesis, where thechanges in the size of the parts of the neuron’s
linked to water movement can be detected bydiffusion MRI, and they are pointing to maybe how
the brain works.

So this is where we are today (MRI image at
the top). We can obtain images of brain activation,even in people in vegetative states, and we canobtain beautiful images of the connections in thebrain, but that’s not enough. We need tounderstand more. We have about 20,000 genes, but
as I said 100 billion neurons with each of themconnected to up to 10,000 other neurons. So genes
cannot explain our brain.
We have language areas, all of us, but genes
cannot say if I use this area for French or English or
Japanese. This is the environment. So this is what wewant to understand, what I call the neural code, how
the organization in space of the neurons along thecortex make it specific for language, for vision, formotoricity. This is completely unknown today.
To do this we have to address the right scale.
We have to go now to very high-resolution images
so that we can understand better and have early
detection of diseases. Maybe we can reprogram thebrain after some injuries, that would be a dream, but
I think it’s possible. We will have to wait.
So how to do that? Well, MRI is aboutmagnetization of water molecules using a strong

Commemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

field, so just to give you an idea, this is a magnet thatyou have on your fridge, 0.005 Tesla, which is the unit
for magnetic fields.

In hospitals, magnets are usually 1.5 T, so
30,000 times the earth’s field. Nowadays, including inJapan, we can find machines working at 3 T or 60,000
times the earth’s field, and there are a few machines,
you will have five this year, in Japan working at 7 T or
140,000 times the earth’s field. There are even a few
machines working at 9.4 T. So you see there is a racefor high field. Why?
For instance, look at the hippocampus (leftcenter/previous slide). This area of the brain that isover-developed in London taxi drivers. In fact thisarea, which is linked to memory, is the first to be hit
in Alzheimer’s disease, so if you have a way to see
this area very well in great detail in patients at theearly stage we think that we may help them withdiagnosis and then be able to slow down diseaseprogression. We don’t have a treatment, but at least
we can delay symptoms.
These are images, for instance, of the
hippocampus obtained at 7 T (right center/previous
slide), but our dream is to go to an even higher field.
The problem is that to see it costs a lot of money, so
we have to share and physicists know very well how
to share their instruments.
That’s the LHC where the Higgs boson was
discovered recently, and at Riken in Japan I also know
there are huge facilities. For nuclear fusion, you knowthat in France we have the ITER site to produce
energy from nuclear fusion. Japan is also one of theleaders for this.

So this is how I decided to convince my bosses
and the administration, the politicians, if you like, tobuild in France a place where we could have a very
high-field MRI system, and the target is 11.7 T, so
220,000 times the earth’s field.

This is the magnet (next slide). It’s huge: 5 m inlength and 5 m in diameter. It will be the first in theworld of this intensity to scan the brain. It was
designed by the physicists at my institution, theAtomic Energy Commission. It’s under completion
now and it will be installed in NeuroSpin. It will becooled down to -271ºC, so 1.8 K, in order for thismagnet to get the right field strength.

So it is today being built in a factory called
Alstom in France where they make the French TGV
and where they are also making for you in Japansome special magnets for nuclear fusion. This is
how the magnet looks (left). It’s almost finishednow. It’s incredible.

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

145Commemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

And just to show you the precision, this is a coin,
this is a French coin (lower right/next slide), a European
coin, and the black line here is the position of each of
the 170 pancakes that we have to put in the magnets.
The location is extremely precise and this is crucial. We
are building what I sometimes call the “Human Brain
Explorer,” and we will get these magnets in about one
year from now. Many people thought it was notpossible so I like that they didn’t know it was
impossible, so they made it. That’s our case.

To finish I’d like to comment on the motto of the
Honda Foundation, which I like so much: “Creating atruly humane civilization.” Sustainability is crucial. I hope
I’ve convinced you that water is absolutely necessary.
Global warming might change access to water, people
may fight, and wars could be started because of accessto water. Water is also connected to natural disasters.

Water appeared on earth and this is how life
could be created. Life came thanks to water, cells,

146

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

organisms, so the life frontier is about this kind of life.
We need to have early diagnosis andtreatment of diseases to have longer lives, but
longer lives are good only if we have happy lives, so
we have really to understand mind disorders andsee how we can cure them.
The population will be growing so access towater will be even more of a challenge. Water has
permitted life and life has permitted intelligence tocome and this is what I call the “wet” human brain;
brain works with water. And in science andtechnology, of course, we use our brain to analyze
situations and to propose solutions.
I think scientists should be considered as areference frame for knowledge but only if theyremain neutral and trustworthy. This is not always
easy, but the next step, which is a little bit scary, isthat from water to life to intelligence, we are steering
to what I call “dry” intelligence, dry computers.
Maybe dry computers at some point will notneed us anymore so we have to be extremely careful
about how we control these technologies and how weinterface with water. But maybe this life without water
will be necessary if we want to explore the universe,
and with those words I’d like to show that the vision of
the Honda Foundation is really, really timely.
In English, maybe it is not so easy to go deep
into the roots of this vision, but if we consider that
life, the heart, is very important, this is something wecannot find in dry computers. We will have to be surethat we are able to preserve our emotions and ourway of living. This is our direction, this is where weare going, this is not something we have achieved,
this is what should drive our research.
Diversity, biological, that’s very clear, but now
we have to respect cognitive diversity, how people
have different ways of thinking. We should respectthem and we should focus on young people because
they are our future. We have to show them thatdiversity is important.
We should also invest and protect old people
because they have a huge quantity of knowledge
that we can learn from, and they have to be able toshare it with us, so we should do our best to protect
the well-being of old people.
Thank you very much for your attention.

Commemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

Q&A

MC: We would now like to take your questions. Does
anybody have a question?
FUKUNAGA: I am Fukunaga of the Tokyo Abduction
Research Group. I would like to thank you for that
extremely interesting talk. My question is, does thehydrogen bonding process that makes a watermolecule separate from or stick together withanother water molecule create a network that makes
atoms or molecules other than oxygen and hydrogen
within the living organism stick together or separate
in the interaction of, for instance, protein? What kindof non-water molecule or atom in the living organism
makes such a fluctuating interaction with water? Myquestion is in regard to this point.
LE BIHAN: I’m not sure I understood everything you
wanted to address, but I have to say that, of course
my talk was mainly on the water molecule, butwater molecules in fact are responsible for the
shape of many other molecules. With MRI,
especially with high field, we are now trying to seeions such as sodium and we are also trying to see
metabolites, neurotransmitters. In the brain, it’svery important also to see how the different
molecules activate neurons.
My vision is that water molecules are
responsible for the shape of those molecules, and as
you pointed out, there are a lot of dynamics in all these
problems, and I think this is something we forget.
People usually have a fixed view of the system.
For instance, the brain, neurons, connections but
people don’t realize that everything is moving all thetime and water molecules have a very crucial role.
Maybe that’s not exactly the question you
wanted to cover but we have not enough time for me
to go through everything.
FUKUNAGA: I understand what you just said. But
what I would like to ask is whether the hydrogen andoxygen atoms of H2O, or the H2O molecule—components of water—have a fluctuating interaction
with other atoms and molecules, i.e., separating fromor sticking to them, for example, when they form theshape of atoms or molecules inside the organism
such as nitrogen, phosphorus, magnesium, andpotassium. Is there a direct interaction?
LE BIHAN: I still don’t understand.
MC: Thank you very much. In the interest of time, let
us take just one more question.
Questioner: Thank you very much. The developmentof medical equipment and medicine plays atremendously significant role in prolonging human
life. On the other hand, recently, the issue of deathwith dignity concerning a woman in the UnitedStates brings to light the question of balance withhow one lives, whether a long life is everything or
not, and that is a difficult question to resolve. I would
like to ask your opinion about striking a balance
between development in medical equipment andmedicine, on one hand, and death with dignity andlife support, on the other.
LE BIHAN: So are you talking specifically aboutbreast cancer or other kinds of cancers as well?
Questioner: Not only in regard to cancer, but
medicine in general.
LE BIHAN: So the problem today is, I think, and I’m
talking about breast cancer because I think it’s a very
important issue, women when they have somethingabnormal on the mammography they may have
surgery or they get invasive treatment. But
sometimes there is nothing wrong.
This is very costly, psychologically for the
women, of course, but also for the economy because
they have to go to the surgery and they have to getinvasive treatment. Sometimes we have to remove
the breast, or maybe there is no cancer.
With these imaging techniques we think that
we can help surgeons make decisions. For instance, in
our images, if it is red, it’s cancer and we have tooperate. If it’s green, it’s not cancer so we may only
have to monitor for maybe six months or one year. If
it’s orange then we are not completely sure so this iswhen you have to do a biopsy and use a needle to35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

147

Commemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

take a sample.
The problem is that if you use a needle there
will be a trace later, so when the lady has amammogram one year later, you see a trace of theneedle and sometimes it’s difficult to sort out if it iscancer coming or just a trace of the needle. We
believe that such diffusion MRI methods have thepotential to sort the women who have cancer fromthose who have no cancer.
The problem is that MRI is very expensive so
we cannot use MRI as a screening modality. So theidea is to reserve this diffusion MRI for women who
are at high-risk genetically because we know thatthey have a high chance to develop a cancer somaybe they could have his technique available, or for
women who have suspicious lesions on ultrasounds
or mammograms.
MC: Is that okay?
Questioner: Thank you very much.
MC: Then that concludes Dr. Le Bihan’s lecture. Thankyou very much.
MC: Thank you very much.

148

35th Honda Prize Commemorative SymposiumCommemorative Speech Dr. Denis Le Bihan

Panel Discussion

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

149Panel Discussion[Moderator]

Professor Atsushi Sunami[Panelist]

Dr. Åke E. Andersson, Dr. Raj Reddy,
Dr. Denis Le Bihan, Dr. Helmut Clemens

Panel Discussion
SUNAMI: I am Sunami, professor at the National
Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. The mandate tobring together in one direction this gathering ofminds from different fields all over the world is anabsolutely impossible task. Today, we’ve been
listening to lectures on a vision of the future basedon various cutting-edge research, and one conclusionthat can be made is that perhaps, from hereon,
development will no longer be linear as heretofore,
but will change somewhere into a non-linear,

dynamic type of development.
In this sense, since minds representing diverse
fields are gathered here, I look forward to a dynamic
panel in which discussions are, in a sense, non-linear
and any idea can just pop out.
Since our time is limited, allow me first to
deliver to you the message that has arrived from Dr.
Haken who was supposed to attend this symposium.
I will read this message which is in English, andrequest the interpreter to do it in Japanese.

Dr. Hermann Haken

Born in Germany in 1927. The 13th Honda Prize laureate in 1992.
Professor emeritus at the University of Stuttgart. Former Consultant to the German Sciences Foundation

On the occasion of the 35th HONDA PRIZE Commemorative Symposium I am sending all ofyou my very best greetings.
I had planned with great enthusiasm to participate at your important event, butsudden illness prevents me from coming. Nevertheless, I wish to quote main conclusion of
my intended talk on “Sustainability and Synergetics”:“The formation of public opinion as governor of politics is essential.
We know from many examples of Synergetic Systems:
The effort of small but active groups as initiators of new developments can be decisive andcan lead to the cooperation of all nations (big and small) in politics aiming at sustainabilityof life on earth. This underlines the importance of the activities of the Honda Foundation.”
I wish your Foundation further great success.

150

35th Honda Prize Commemorative SymposiumPanel Discussion

SUNAMI: Let us now move on to the discussion.
Later on, I would also like to raise Dr. Haken’s
message in the discussion, but let me first explain
how we will proceed. Based on the presentations
that the respective participants have listened to, themessage, and the various thoughts that have comeup which we shall introduce one by one, we shallsubsequently proceed towards a discussion.
The latter half shall be a Q & A from everyone,
in which we shall take questions as we proceed withthe discussion. I would appreciate it if you could
prepare your questions or comments now.
SUNAMI: Okay, so we will start our discussion. Why
don’t we ask you first, Dr. Clemens, to initiate theinitial reactions?
CLEMENS: Thank you for staying here after thelectures. My comment is about this program and themessage of the president. Exploring sustainability is
the direction scientists or engineers should go to
face global environmental issues. I think that is an
important point.
You don’t know me that well because I havegiven no lecture, but I have developed a material
that is being used in a new type of aircraft engine,which can reduce emissions of CO2 and NOx andalso reduce fuel consumption.
I think this is something that is reallysustainable because the problem in our world is we
use too many of our resources and also we endanger
our resources by producing emissions like CO2.
I took some notes during the presentations
and all of them were very good, very to the point. So
maybe if I’m allowed to start something I will makesome comments.
Mr. Reddy, in his presentation, spoke about
freedom from slavery, freedom of religion, and also
freedom from discrimination. These are points thatwere formulated a long, long time ago; however, if
you really see how the world works it’s a big
difference.
I was surprised when you mentioned freedom
from slavery and you gave a comment about how it
is in India these days with so many people in dangerof doing slavery work. Then there is freedom of
religion, and in my opinion, because if you look at

what’s going on in the Near East now with thisIslamic war and so on, I think in Europe, especially,
we have had really a good time since we had thisso-called Age of Enlightenment when we separated
politics from religion.
I think this was very important for the
progress of Europe because we had a lot of the wars
in Europe concerning religion, but this was key so in
the last 200 years we’ve had no wars on religion.
Maybe in Ireland, where they have problems;
however, separation is good when you separate
politics from religion.
Freedom from discrimination is also an
important point. We spoke about women, the roleof women in our society, and the fact that women
have not reached a point in their recognition in oursociety. Women still earn less money doing thesame work, do not have the same chances to haveas good an education that men have, and so on.
Maybe one point on your presentation with
CO2 and water, I think CO2 and water they are reallyrelated, and this comes back to my research because
if you have too much CO2 in the environment, youhave a change of the climate, and this is what you
see everywhere now, especially now in Europe.
In the last 10 years, we have had a lot ofchange in the climate so we have lost a lot ofmoney by damage. Things that never happened

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium151Panel Discussion

before have occurred in Europe, like heavy rains,
flooding, and so on.
These are related to the increase of CO2 andthis is where my invention comes in, or where I
have helped a little bit. People know that morethan 3.5% of the change of climate is related to air
traffic, more or less. Just to give you a number,more than 600,000,000 tons of CO2 is released into
the environment per year. One ordinary car runs atfour tons per year, but when you multiply that by
the number of cars, you get enormously highnumbers of CO2 emissions.
Maybe one point from my side because you
told us that this diffusion of water molecules isvery important for the human body. In my case,because I’m a materials scientist, I do not likediffusion at all because diffusion at hightemperatures leads to very serious problems withmaterials. Very simply said, if you have a rotor
blade and it’s rotating, you have a force on it, andduring high temperatures, with the help ofdiffusion of the elements, the blades become
longer. This is something that is not allowed.
So, this is my statement, maybe, for the firstround.
SUNAMI: Okay, thank you. Now I would like toinvite Dr. Le Bihan. You’re welcome to use Japanese
if you want to.

152

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

LE BIHAN: So, if we have to talk about sustainability,
I would like to talk about sustainability of the mind. I
think what makes humankind a little bit special
compared to the other animals on earth is that wehave developed a writing system.
It started in the caves long ago and the firsthumans, as we know, started to use drawings tocommunicate and to transmit information fromgeneration to generation. Then the real writing
system came, and then we had books, and books
were a tremendous invention to transmit knowledge
over generations.
Nowadays, we have IT. We have Facebook,
Google, Microsoft, and we have clouds, so we canstore a lot of information. But my point is that we canonly transmit what we are aware of. We can transmit
only what we are conscious of. There are many things
that we use to communicate that we don’t know how
to translate.
For example, when we exchange email overthe Internet, it’s very easy but you don’t know exactly
how people will react to what you write. I think all of
us probably have some experience of emails that wereally regretted sending, for instance, and that’s easy
to explain.
How people communicate is mainly outside oflanguage. We use, for instance, facial expressions, andthere is eye contact, which is very important because
we know that autistic people, for instance, are notable to get eye contact, and so this kind oftransmission of knowledge has to be preserved.
We should not forget that if we increase thenumber of robots, for instance, that we should be
able to program something that is closer to how thehuman mind works.
I’ve seen experiments done at MIT, I think,where they had robots imitating human behavior. For
instance, if you look happy, the robot will be kind toyou, but if you speak with nasty words, the robot willreact in a nasty way. And it was very funny to see thatthe robots have no emotion but because of this kindof behavior the people were responding as if they
were talking to real human beings.
So we have to be extremely careful that weshould preserve our way of communicating until atleast we have understood very well how the mind
works, which is not for tomorrow.

Panel Discussion

SUNAMI: Thank you. Okay, so Dr. Reddy.
REDDY: This is a very interesting topic. I have somany different random ideas that I would like toshare with you, but let me just stick to two. They are
not related to each other.
The first one is I was asking what makes us not
so humane? Why is society not humane today? I
believe that’s maybe not a fair question because I
think we are a lot more humane today than we were
500 years ago, 1,000 years ago, except we don’tknow all the things that they did at that time.
Looking at the specifics, for example, we now
have terrorism and people are going around killingothers. I thought maybe it’s just a religious thing,even among the Muslims, the Shiites and Sunnis areblowing up each other, and the same thing
happened at 9/11, and the same thing is happening
with ISIS and ISIL. I don’t agree that Europe in thelast 10 or 20 years has been free of wars and things
like that.
Take Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example. It’s
kind of a complete disaster. I could not believe a
civilized society would behave like that in this day
and age. It’s part of Europe, right? We can go back to
the Holocaust and even the First World War and theuse of chemical weapons, and people seem tobehave in ways that a thinking reasonable person
would not behave, right?
But this seems to be something about theway our brain is built, and that’s why I want to go
back to Dr. Le Bihan. We are aggressive humanbeings. There seems to be some aggression in all of
us and under certain appropriate conditions weforget everything else we have learned and we
become aggressive.
The question is is there some way we can zap
those water molecules to get rid of the aggression?
That’s one kind of thought.
The other one is more positive and uplifting.
It turns out, if you look back at what happened
500 years ago, 1,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, inJapan, not much existed. It is very difficult to findanything even 100 years ago because people havenot been keeping most of it and whatever is there
is in archives so most of us cannot have access to.
Some documents are there and ultimately they

will stay in those basements and they will
ultimately rot in a few hundred years more andthey will be lost.
Finally, we have the technology, we have theopportunity to capture our culture, our heritage, ourknowledge, and everything we do everyday. That is,in the old days people used to think of books andmusic and movies as different media and different
things. Not anymore, they are all bits and we cancapture them and store them forever.
And not only the famous musicians, not only
the famous movies, I can make a movie and store it
on YouTube and it will be there, I’m hoping, for
1,000 years. So if you take a newspaper, anewspaper after it’s published, two days
afterwards, it’s worthless and no one keeps it. But
they are all born digital so they can be captured
and stored forever.
One of the great things about information
storage technology is I paid 2 million dollars in 1972
to buy 40 MB of memory. Today, I can buy 4 TB ofmemory, which is 1 million times more, for 100
dollars, so memory costs are becoming cheaper. To
give you a number to remember, it’s doubling every
year, which means in 10 years you get a thousandfold improvement in magnetic storage. In 20 years,
you get a million times improvement, and that’s
going to continue for at least 10 more years or 20
more years.

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

153Panel Discussion

The cost of memory is getting cheaper, so
now you can afford to store everything, and weshould be doing that. That is, we should be
capturing all the books and all the music and all thenewspapers and all the movies and make themavailable free for the whole society forever.
It doesn’t have to be free today. Caruso’ssongs I should be able to listen to for free today, but
if it’s making money, let them keep it as copyright.
But if it’s not making money they should let it
become public domain.
There are ways in which we can do this, and I
don’t want to take up much more time, but theimportant thing is there are so many things that we
can do to make society more humane and weshould do those.
SUNAMI: Thank you. Now, I would like to ask Dr.
Andersson.
ANDERSSON: Okay, I will tag onto one of the points
made by Prof. Le Bihan on communication and thecomplicated nature of communication.
There is somehow a rather common
confusion of information and knowledge in thediscussion about communication. We are allteachers and we know that you cannot assume that
if you have given absolutely correct information
over an email to a number of students that it will
actually be transmitted in the true sense.
Teaching and learning is a very complicatedprocess and one has to be skillful as a communicatorin much more sophisticated ways than any
information technology has mastered. Teaching andlearning is kind of a transformation of information
into knowledge, and knowledge to me is models
and theories and sometimes even superstitions, butbasically its models and theories that are the soul ofteaching and learning.
Therefore, I don’t have such a great trust in
the information revolution or in the communication
revolution. It contains aspects like persuasion. You
have to persuade, and John Maynard Keynes
actually wrote a number of essays on persuasion
where he showed that the trick in getting people tounderstand his theory had nothing to do withprinting the books in very abstract ways.

154

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

He said that you have to persuade, you haveto convince people that they must give up their old
ideas and they must learn these new theories, these
new models, and that’s very time-consuming andhard work, and it depends on very intensive
personal communication where movements ofhands, contact with the eyes, iterating the same
information over and over again, and getting
people to be friendly with what you are saying arekind of tricks of the trade.
So beware of seeing the information andcommunication revolution as the solution to the
problem of getting learning as a basic aspect of our
future. And even more, creativity and innovation areimportant aspects of development.
SUNAMI: Thank you. Dr. Reddy, are you ready to saysomething?
REDDY: It’s a short comment. Dr. Andersson, I
agree with what he has just said, except that I don’t
want to read into his comment that you should not
be reading books or attending classes because
your teacher will communicate.
Whether we like it or not, the informationtransfer process is imprecise and there areexperiments that were done where somebody said
something, it was copied many times, and thenPanel Discussion

ultimately it’s called hearsay in legal terms. Hearsay
is not admitted because when something istransliterated by many people it’s not the samething anymore. Therefore, we have this problem.
But nevertheless we educate people insociety, we communicate, somehow the imperfectknowledge is communicated, sometimes maybe
some innovation happens or maybe other things
happen, but we have to be aware of the problem
that is impreciseness of communication. That
doesn’t mean we shouldn’t write books.
ANDERSSON: I’m a great friend of books, but myfeeling is that it’s only after teaching verbally andtutoring that I have managed to get the students toactually read the bloody books that they should’ve
read at the start. It’s an interaction between reading,tutoring, having lectures and seminars, and so on,
and there is no substitute in the form of looking at ascreen and becoming skillful.
Especially if you take a field like music, there
has not been any successful first-rate musician who
hasn’t had intensive tutoring as part of going frominformation to knowledge and from knowledge toskills. The same is true of the lab physicist or thelab-oriented chemist or the doctor in a hospital.
They have to be in this very important process
where information from books and from screensand so on are a very small part of the total learning
experience. That’s what I would like to say.

SUNAMI: It’s very nice to hear from an economist
nowadays about the importance of reading books
rather than modeling.
Dr. Le Bihan?
LE BIHAN: I agree with what you said and I would
even go further away, that now you have so muchinformation available that the brain cannot handle
it. You have to model it, so we take only what wewant. The problem is that, for instance, I have seenthat the brain needs to have many inputs to keep
memories and to understand.
In the good old times, as we say, teachers
were using the blackboard, they would write things,
equations and things, they would talk, and students
had to write quickly because it would disappear.
This was a way to get imprints in their own brain.
Today, you have a PDF and this is awful
because you feel that you can see many things,
maybe to prepare for an exam it’s enough, I’m notsure, but just a few months or years later what will
you keep? Nothing.
I think the problem with information
technology is that we are invaded by so muchinformation that we really don’t know anything. For
instance, let me give you an example. I’m sure someof you live in a house, and you have a set of stairs inyour house. If I ask you, for instance, to imagine thestairs, you can see the stairs very well because you
see them every day. But if I ask you how many steps

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

155Panel Discussion

you have in your stairs, usually you cannot respond,even if you have used the stairs for 20 years. The
brain has recorded some information that is useful,but the number of steps is not so important
information.
We are filtering information so even if wehave hundreds, thousands, millions of books, wewill retain only what we want and this is why weneed to have people communicating so we canshare common knowledge and we have to be very
careful about that.
SUNAMI: Let me explore that a little bit more.
Last week I was in Scotland and on the way backfrom Scotland I was on the airplane watchingmovies as I usually do on a long flight and there
was a movie called Transcendence. It’s a
Hollywood movie talking about the singularity
problem in 2045, and you see the huge expansionof big data that transforms the world andeverything that we know.
And there are big discussions in Europe, forinstance, about how big data changes the way we
produce new ideas and new knowledge, science 2.0,
right? Because we do networking and you’re
communicating. How, in your field, do you view the
impact of big data? Will it change or transform yourfield? What is your vision or what do you think theinfluence will be?
LE BIHAN: I have positive and not so positive views
about it. Big data, especially to understand thebrain, is crucial, and maybe you know, in Europe
now they have what is called the Human Brain
Project. It’s a very, very rich program and the idea isto get as much information as possible from many,
many brains to understand the brain. So it’s great
and we have to do it because the only way for us tounderstand is to have a lot of information.
But what I usually say to my colleagues is thatthe information will not create the model. We havevery smart computers with many, many data, but
you need to have a program corresponding to yourmodel. If there is information that is not modeled,
you will not see it. It is like dark matter, if you like:
we don’t see it and we don’t feel it, so we don’tknow it is there, but in fact it is a lot of the energy

156

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

we have in the universe.
So I think it’s the same. The problem with big
data is that we promise to retrieve the information
but we need models. Unfortunately, so far,computers, to my knowledge at least, cannot reallydo that. Of course, you can use some learning
processes, algorithms, that are able to see some
information and classify information like vector
machines and so on, but it’s not the same ascreating a model like we have in physics, forinstance, that comes out of the human brain. We are
not ready for that.
SUNAMI: Dr. Andersson.
ANDERSSON: Well, there have been some tries atusing neural network theory to, so to say, have an
endogenous production of a theory or a model.
Unfortunately, when you look into these, it turns outthat they are critically dependent upon certain
assumptions at the bottom. There must be sometriggering mechanisms that somebody has come up
with in order to get it going. The model is there,
although it looks very implicit. So that’s one part of it.
However, we have a school in financial
economics that claims that we have already theconsequences of enormous information flows in thestock market. The stock market is said to be a “superbrain” because it aggregates all the wishes, demands,
projections, and so on of all the investors into a price.

Panel Discussion

Unfortunately, it’s not very stable so even if it works
we have the stability problem.
My problem with these mass data, forinstance, the mass data in the transit traffic system,
is that if it’s transmitted to people who are very
reactive on each other and on this dataflow, they
can actually generate catastrophes because theymight be moving in massive conformity just tocause the problems that this massive set of data wasassumed to solve.
If we were completely independent of eachother and not interdependent individuals in a social
system, then it might work, but we are, fortunately
or unfortunately, social creatures who imitate andreact on each other, and that can very often causevery severe instabilities in a rapid process.
SUNAMI: Dr. Clemens.
CLEMENS: I’d like to step back to memory because I
like your statement in your presentation that weshould take care especially of old people because
there is a lot of information stored. I’ve also
problems with my father-in-law. He’s now 79, and hehas started to lose his memory. It’s some type of
Alzheimer’s disease.
Because there’s a lot of memories stored in his
brain, I think they are still there, do you think inmaybe 10 to 15 years it will be possible to read out
such information from a brain?

of your stairs but if you are asked a question about
them you cannot respond, so that means that you
didn’t memorize the stairs properly.
I think that we have to be very careful about
what we call memories. If there is an accident andyou have 10 people next to the scene of the accident
and you ask them what they have seen, usually you
have 10 different versions, right? If everybody had in
their brain a camera, well, only one person would beenough, right? But we have to average out 10
different responses to get a clear response.
So I think that what memory is exactly is not
so clear. It has been proven now that some of what
we call memories are in fact reconstructions. Veryoften, children claim they remember something
they did when they were 3, 4, or 5 years of age, but
we know that memory is not very clear at that time.
Actually, they heard their parents telling them what
they did at that age. At some point this became “I
remember what I did” when in fact, no, this was told
to them.
So I think we have to first understand really
how memory works and what it is before we canretrieve it artificially.
SUNAMI: As you know, there is a worldwide effort
now on the problem of dementia and I think theEuropeans and the US and Japan are collaborating
to find the answer. There’s so much economic loss
and social problems associated with this, right?

LE BIHAN: That’s a tough question. I think it might
be possible to retrieve some information in sometime, but 10 to 20 years I think is too short. We are
not ready to do that. The problem is that it’s likewhen you have recorded information on a tape, forinstance. You need a device to read the tape. If
you’ve lost the device or if you have no device what
do you do?
So today, in the brain, the only way we know
to retrieve information is to talk, right? We don’t
have anything to pick up the information. We don’teven know what memory is exactly about.
If you want to retrieve information, we haveto communicate, so you have to regeneratesomething, but as I said, for instance, look at yourstairs in your house. You think you have a memory

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium157Panel Discussion

LE BIHAN: Yes, but I think so far the idea is that if
you lose your memory you cannot live in everyday
life. If you forget, for instance, how to drive a car or
where you are then you cannot live. So I think theurgent question is to have those people not lose
their memory. It’s not to extract information stored
in the brain to transmit to other people.
This is your question, and I’m sure at somepoint we will be able to do that, to suck up theinformation and transmit it, but we don’t know therules, we don’t know how it works.
But dementia is a very important problem,
especially in Japan because you are lucky to havelong lives. And it is the same in France, people havelong lives, and in many advanced countries now, but
if you have a long life and you cannot profit from it
because you have lost memory or you have strong
cognitive impairment what is the point to have along life?
We should really focus on trying to maintainthe brain level. The brain will decline with age, but
that’s okay as long as we can think properly.
SUNAMI: So, Dr. Reddy, what’s your reaction to theworld with big data? I mean you are working on a lotof cultural heritage or diversity problems, but they
really come from this idea that we have controlled
this big data and can manage it, right?
REDDY: Basically, I agree with many of thecomments but with a complementary, additional
thing. It turns out there is no question we have adata glut problem. Because of that, you know, we
are not even able to process all the stuff that we aresupposed to and a lot of things just stay there.
That problem has always been there, it’s justthat we were not even exposed to it before because
all those books were in the library and we never got
to read them. Now, they are all in a PDF and I havethem on my Kindle, but they still can’t be read.
Having said that, I want to caution you not tothrow the baby away with the bathwater, as theysay. It turns out there are a lot of things we used tohave to remember, the skills that Dr. Andersson
talked about, where we go from information toknowledge to routine skill, but that is no longer
necessary.

158

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

You don’t have to remember yourmultiplication tables. You don’t have to remember
your phone numbers; they are already on yourcontact list. You don’t have to remember a lot ofthings you used to have to remember.
More importantly there are a lot of things thatyou might know but you forget, and sometimes you
may not even know but you want to find out. All ittakes is a Google search. There is not a day goes by
where I don’t search for some piece of information I
used to know and I know I ought to know.
Ten times a day I find something that I should
remember. I don’t try to remember anymore, youknow, I’m not trying to, and that’s okay. You don’t
have to remember multiplication tables anymore.
You don’t have to remember phone numbers
anymore because they’re there.
So in that sense, we need to kind ofcompliment the fact that we have this big data andsomebody else can search and give you somepotential uses of information, which is very
important.
For example, yesterday I was coming here on
flight Japan Airlines 9. In the past, for any amount ofmoney I couldn’t find out, but now all I have to do is
type “JL 9” into the search box and it tells me exactly
where the plane is, when it’s going to land, all of theinformation.
It comes out of a data glut. Every plane, all thePanel Discussion

information is there. I don’t need to know it, butnevertheless if there is a tool I have and I can use it
effectively then big data is good. There’s a data glut,but I don’t have to deal with it. Somebody else isdealing with it.
SUNAMI: Okay. Yes, Dr. Andersson.
ANDERSSON: I think at this point we agree that it’s
good to have a toolbox, and if that toolbox is very
easily accessible and I see the information systems
as parts of a toolbox then it works much, muchbetter now than it did long ago.
I would like to return to the issue that was
mentioned on the growth of people who areannoyed at development, who might like to fight in
Iraq or Syria or who might join an extremist
movement in France or in Sweden or in Norway or in
Denmark or in any other democratically, very wellfunctioning context.
We’ve done some studies of this and it turns
out that the growth of extreme-right movements inthese countries is driven primarily by the loss of
traditional jobs and the impossibility for those wholost them to find an employer who would like to hirethem to do the new jobs.
With the transformation of the economies in
Europe, we are bound to have this kind of growth of
extremist movements, and some of them are
actually then immigrants who have come from Syria
and Egypt and Iraq and so on and they are doubly
confused about the future, so they might evenaccept a job with ISIS as a very attractive, althoughextremist, alternative to being unemployed.
I think one of the sustainability problems inthis change process is to have the machinery andinstitutions that will generate new jobs for thepeople who are losing them when the old activities
are abandoned in society.

We are very much in that sort of a rare realm where
education becomes very important to make thiskind of transition to be more sustainable.
So would you care to comment on education
because tomorrow the Honda Foundation will behosting the Young Engineer and Scientists getting
together for the next-generation engineers andscientists?
Yes, Dr. Reddy.
REDDY: This is a very important question. Basically,
if you think of education in the last century,
basically, what the teachers used to do is teach us all
the things that are known, known facts. These days
all those facts are already available on the web. The
question now is what is the role of education?
I’ll give you a simple example going back to
Dr. Le Bihan. There is all this data and all the otherthings. If I did not know that I could find some
information, I would never know it. So it is not thecase that I don’t have to know the calculus, I justneed to know the basic principles of calculus so that
I can apply more advanced ones when I need to do
it by just-in-time learning.
The issue is how to restructure education sothat you no longer have to simply give facts that are
already available. What you need to do is give them
the reasoning abilities to do problem solving andapply knowledge to solve the problems you have.

SUNAMI: That’s a very important point. My
professor, actually, when I was doing my PhD at
Columbia, did a study on innovation across thedifferent sectors and which sector is moreinnovative than the other sectors. As it turned out,
education is a sector that is less innovative. We
haven’t changed the way we teach people for years.

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

159Panel Discussion

The question is how do you do that?
I was giving the example of flight information.
I have a problem, I need to know what’s going tohappen. I knew that I could type it and get the
information and that is the problem-solving
process. So we need to begin to give every child,every person, a series of skillsets to survive in the
21st century. That is not learning all the facts
because the facts are there.
LE BIHAN: If I may say something. We have twothings to learn. We have to learn how to learn, so theprocesses, but we have also to learn how tomemorize. So, at least in France, when I was astudent, a child, there was some conflict about
people who are good at math. For instance, withmathematics you learn how to think, except
calculation, and you don’t have things that you learn
just by heart. You have to think to make some newideas arrive. While if you go to people who
specialize in history or geography, they have tolearn by heart many, many things.
But we need both; we need to memorize. I’ve
been studying a little bit of Japanese and for kanji,
for instance, to write kanji is very important tomemorize. If you just look at kanji on a computer
you will never memorize them and you will neverlearn what they mean. I admit it is my problem.
I think we need everything. This is how thebrain works. As I said, many inputs, and we need toconsolidate our memories. So even learning by heartthings that you can retrieve with Google doesn’t hurt
because it is training your memory. And you know for
people who get Alzheimer’s disease, for instance, we
try to maintain their memory even by learning
mundane things, it’s good enough.
So I think we have to balance how to learn
things that you can find and things that you can’t
find, but today if you lose your smartphone and if
you have put all of your phone numbers there, youwill have nothing and you are dead.
REDDY: I want to reinforce what Dr. Le Bihan said.
There are three phrases used: “learning to learn,”“learning to think, reason, and solve problems,” andthe third one is “memorization is equivalent to,”what Dr. Andersson called “skills.”

160

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

Supposing you needed to do something andthere is no substitute for learning kanji unless youpractice them so all the three skills are needed.
Except now what used to be thought of needed
skills in the 20th century are no longer the skills youneed in the 21st century.
For example, I come from India where thesounds are the same but the letters are different. In
20 different languages there are 20 different scripts.
Europe is safe that way because they only use one
script. The problem is I don’t want to learn all 20
scripts, and so what I do is I have the same letterstransliterated into my language. I know how to
speak with intonation, everything, so when I see it
in my language I can figure out what to say.
So it turns out, depending on the technology,
depending on where you are in time, we need to beable to say what should you memorize and whatshould you not have to memorize.
For example, this kanji character-learning
thing may go away in the following sense. All I needis a smartphone and I take an image of it, it reads it,
and tells me what it is. Then I don’t have to actuallylearn the letters. And it can be done today.
The same is true with respect to translation.
I’m in a meeting in another country. I don’t know
how to speak. All I need is my smartphone totransmit it, translate it, and then play it back to me.
This technology was demonstrated in the last 3 orPanel Discussion

4 years. We can do speech-to-speech translation
now, and that doesn’t mean we don’t need regulartranslators, but there will come a point in time
where no matter what language you grew up with,you don’t have to learn all the other languages
because you can listen.
SUNAMI: Okay, Dr. Andersson.
ANDERSSON: I once studied a famous
mathematician Polya, who was from Stanford, and hekind of summarized his learning as a teacher. He
wrote a book called How to Solve It and what heclaimed I found very useful as a complement to what
you said.
He said that, first, the trickiest thing to getpeople to understand is how to not only elegantly
but also productively generate problems. Formulate
problems. How can you formulate a problem that
nobody has formulated before in a way that it isamenable to analysis?
Once you’ve done that, and if you are a
student you have learned to see this as the basicpart of creativity, then you come to the question,
how can you solve it? How can you solve thisformerly unknown problem because there is
obviously nothing in the toolbox to be useddirectly?
So he said you can use analogies. There areanalogies maybe from very strange parts of theknowledge field. You might be a physicist who
wants to do something that no physicist has done,so maybe you should go into the deep cellars ofmathematics or chemistry to dig up something that
seems to be similar and sufficiently similar.
And I found this is a very nice way of opening
up some students’ eyes. They come and ask what
they should write their dissertation on, and theywant me to formulate the problem, and I tell themthe only important thing is that they do something
completely different from what I’ve been doing andthen they look very confused.
But some of them come back after a couple ofmonths and have actually by themselves formulated
a new problem, and then we can start discussing
what analog structures are available to solve thisproblem.

LE BIHAN: In fact, we know today that the brain
works a lot by analogy. What learning is, basically, ishaving an experience about what should be done
and what should not be done. If I say for instance“cat,” you can think about a cat because you haveseen one. Otherwise, there’s no way, right?
Children, especially, when they learn, theylearn by analogy so they try to compare different
situations and try to mimic. Sometimes it is not
appropriate and they make a mistake, so they learn
not to do it again. And it goes very well.
For instance, some people have shown alsothat the way Einstein’s vision came was just byanalogy. If you look at the two articles he wrote
about relativity, in the one in 1905, it’s not E = mc²,
it’s E/c², where E is some kind of mass. Even Einsteinhimself didn’t catch what he found. And in his paperon the general theory two years later, then herevised the equation to E = mc² and said that thismass must be the mass.
So, I can see what he was thinking, from what I
could read now, just by comparing different fields or
different ideas and trying to propagate knowledge
from one area or one field to another one, and I thinkthat is really how the human brain works. So we don’t
have a digital brain; we have an analog brain.
SUNAMI: Okay, now I would like to invite questions
from the floor.

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium161Panel Discussion

FUKUNAGA: I am Fukunaga of the Abduction
Research Group, and I’m making a presentation at
the Cognitive Science Society. I once heard about
the following discussion. This has something to dowith Dr. Andersson who, it seems, earlier made theimportant remark that a complex system is theshortest algorithm.
This is something I heard from a chaos
researcher, that in one’s brain one can knead a pie, inMathematics the so-called baker’s transformation, atransformation activity in which chaos comes out. A
complex system comes out. One kneads a pie bystretching it far or near. This so-called baker’stransformation is a process that occurs in one’s brain.
There exists this kind of complex system throughwhich the brain scans broader knowledge. I heard
from this researcher that the brain, making the mostof this chaos, might be scanning broader knowledge.
I think it fits splendidly with what Dr.
Andersson earlier said that the complex system isthe shortest algorithm. Is the professor’s viewcompatible with my present example? Do you think
it is a comparable example?
SUNAMI: Dr. Andersson.
ANDERSSON: There is one problem for me inanswering this question, and that’s I know too little
about the brain, so I think that part Dr. Le Bihan will
have to deal with.
The basic idea or the basic relation between
complexity and chaos is a very sophisticateddiscussion that’s now going on among
mathematicians because it turns out that complex
systems are at the heart of Godel’s theorem. Thismeans that there are certain problems where you
cannot actually prove that a statement is correct, but
you can know intuitively that it is correct somehow.
And that’s especially in situations where, let’ssay, a number series is so complex that it can only bedescribed as chaotic, and yet you can somehow
grasp, or the brain can grasp, that there is somestructure to it even if you can’t get a computer, forinstance, to solve the problem or even if there is awell-behaved algorithm around.
Already Turing struggled with this problem
and made a version of Godel’s impossibility

162

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

theorems adapted to general computing. So this is avery, very complicated issue as far as I’m concerned...
LE BIHAN: May I just complete your response withthe brain side?
Well, it is obvious that the brain is complex,
but we should take the words or the definition. We
know today that complexity is really how the brain
works. In fact, in a sense, if you go to the bottom, tothe molecular level, if you sum up all the molecules,
you cannot create the level which is above themolecular level, so there is some synergy, something
new that is coming out of each element at themolecular level.
Then when you go to the cellular level, again,
if you put all the neurons together and everything,that’s not enough, something else is coming,
synergy is coming out of the collections of theneurons. Then you have regions and again andagain, so each level is not the sum of the elements at
the level below. This is complexity.
Also we know that the brain doesn’t work
linearly. It’s highly nonlinear. Some people even thinkthat it’s similar to quantum mechanics, if you like.
When I talk, for instance, about the fluctuation in thebrain, this is what we see now. There are fluctuations
and the system is somewhat chaotic. There are somefractals that have been used, for instance, to describe
the electric waves produced by the brain.

Panel Discussion

But we are not aware because what we feel ina conscious state is only a very small part of all themachinery that is permanently occurring in ourbrain. And as you know very well, when we’recompletely asleep and we start to dream, the fourthlevel of sleep, we are totally unconscious. We are
dreaming, but then this is the time the brain is themost active. A lot of information is processed at thistime and this information processing shapes thebrain. This is how we make our memories and this is
how we learn, so the brain is really a model ofcomplexity in a real sense.
SUNAMI: Okay, let me call Prof. Suzuki.
SUZUKI: I am Masuo Suzuki, a councilor of the
Honda Foundation. I study Theoretical Physics andso I have a lot of comments regarding the earlier
discussion. But I will not touch on those to save timeand ask instead a general question.
On today’s theme of Creating a Truly Humane
Civilization, discussing the future based only on thepresent state of affairs gives us quite a narrowperspective. Learning from history—and there’s asaying that history repeats itself—in thinking about
a future sustainable civilization, and citing Japan’sculture as an example, we can point to such stablecultures, in the spirit of “mottai nai” or not allowing
anything to go to waste, although the aristocratic
culture of Heian period, and the very plebian culture,such as kabuki and painting, of the Edo period
flourished.
From the perspective of discussing the future
based on what we learn from history, are there
precedents in Europe that can serve as our reference
when we think of a future sustainable society? I
would like to address this question to wise panelists
from Europe and India.

but at some point some chaos started and this is how
you change from one system to another one, from theMiddle Ages to the modern time.
In France, it was exactly the same. In the
Middle Ages the system was very, very stable withthe king and the people and everybody had his own
territory and that was very stable. At some point, forsome reason, people started to think differently andthe system had to change.
I’m not sure history is repeating itself, it’s justthat for some time we had something stable as asociety and then we switched to another system.
This has happened in Asia, in Europe, of course theUnited States has a much more recent history, but I
think it’s not reproducing the same. It’s evolution,
but you have steps where everything looks stable.
That’s what I feel.
SUNAMI: Okay. Anybody? Yes, Dr. Andersson.
ANDERSSON: Well, I think that there are certain
things to be learned from history and that’s
especially true for the countries who have not yet
become industrial societies. We know that Japan
got a remarkable rate of growth because they were,like Sweden, latecomers into industrialization, so we
could benefit from all the errors and mistakes that
had been done or experienced in Britain.
It was very common in Sweden, and Japan, to

SUNAMI: Who wants to go first?
LE BIHAN: This is a very interesting question, but I
think it’s not specific to Japan. There are periods
where things are stable, like if we take the Middle
Ages period, for instance. In Japan and in France it wascompletely different, but it was somewhat stable. You
had the organization with the shogun and everything,

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium163Panel Discussion

make trips among innovators to Britain, or a little
later to Germany, to see how they have organizedproduction or how they have been working.
And today it’s even more useful to look at thehistory of the countries that have had a very rapid
expansion like we had earlier. Now we are a slow
grower, but earlier we were very fast growers
because we were imitators and learners.
Today, in Africa for instance, some of thecountries who have started their industrialization
process benefit from benchmarking and going toand seeing what other people have done before
them, and using the useful organizational principles
and the useful technologies and so on, and thus
they grow much faster than we could do.
China is a good example of very systematiclearning from history, but one shouldn’t go too far
back to learn. I don’t think it’s meaningful to go backto the Medieval times, for instance, in Europe andtry to learn anything except negative things.
You can see how it works when power ismonopolized by small groups and hierarchies
become too stable and not inclusive and so on.
Otherwise there is not much to be learned by goingvery far back. But going, let’s say, 100 years back can
be a very useful type of historical study fordeveloping countries.
SUNAMI: Thank you. Any other comments?
Questioner A: Thank you. I have also watched themovie “Transcendence” and got to thinking about
singularity these last 3 to 4 months. In chess,between Kasparov and Deep Blue, Deep Blue won in
1996 and 1997, and presently, in the battle between
chess and man, teams are formed and those teams
fight against one another. In Japan, last year and thisyear, five professional shogi players played against
five software programs, and won only once in eachyear if my memory is correct. The humans did
poorly in that competition.
The difference between chess and shogi isthat there are more pieces in shogi, and since you
can reuse a piece taken any number of times it’scomplicated, but it is said that even in the world ofshogi, the computer has also caught up.
Interestingly, the shogi player who lost to the164

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposiumcomputer last year, was in a slump when he studied
using that computer software and played with it,
but this year, his performance has improved
remarkably. This year, that computer software waslent to shogi players and the one who studied it
thoroughly and polished his strategy won.
As I thought subsequently about therelationship between man and computer, in theend, even a professional shogi player learns
unexpected moves from the computer software.
One can learn from the computer by way ofgaining new ideas that are different from what one
has studied so far. Earlier there was talk about big
data, with big data, the world that is invisible to
man expands rapidly in such a way that a medical
doctor, for instance, makes a diagnosis fromcomputer results that he/she does not fully
understand.
In this way, I would imagine the relationshipbetween man and computer changing dramatically.
May I hear somebody’s opinion on this?
SUNAMI: Okay, so I will ask Dr. Reddy.
REDDY: What you say is very true. It turns out there
was a phrase coined by J. C. R. Licklider in 1962. He is
the grandfather of the Internet. He is the one that
actually started the work, started the research inthat area, and he also coined the term “intergalacticPanel Discussion

computer network” or something like that.
One of the other phrases he coined was thephrase “man-computer symbiosis,” so essentially
any time you can have a human being and amachine who have worked with each other,understand who is good at what, they will always
win over a computer or a person because they bring
to bear the best of both worlds in some sense.
In particular, for most of the games of thekind that you’re talking about, chess, Go, and so on,
it is now possible, given the terabytes or petabytes
of data available, to put inside every chess gamethat has ever been played and every move for every
condition. That’s not the same as all possible moves,which is more than the number of atoms in theuniverse, but every game that’s ever been played
can be put.
If you have that, then all that you have to do is
do a table lookup or a search, in the Google searchsense, to just look at that particular move and say
does it lead to a win or not and then do it.
If you come up with a new position that
nobody has ever seen before, what you do? That
point is where the computer’s power comes in. It
can actually explore millions of possible moves andfind out what is the best solution. Once it finds thebest solution it becomes part of the folklore andevery chess player will learn that particular thing
saying, “If I know this, I can make this move.”
And as we know, Grandmaster chess players
know 50,000 different patterns, whereas most of therest of us maybe know 1,000 patterns, and that’s thedifference. They have so much more knowledge andwhen they find a new position, a new winning
strategy, it becomes their winning thing.
So basically coming back to the discussion on
cognitive science and cognitive memory, theevidence now is, if you look at what happened with
Kasparov and Deep Blue, the evidence is that it won
mostly by brute force. A little bit of knowledge anda lot of brute force search.
The evidence now, at least looking at thebrain research, is that a lot of the stuff in the brain isbrute force, namely it can recognize there aredifferent parts of the brain, 10,000 faces, each one
has a separate computer that detects your motherand father and your brother and everybody, it’scompletely differently localized.
At the same time that doesn’t mean there
shouldn’t be a complexity model that tells us thisconcept is understandable, it’s simple in thiscontext. That’s where mathematics comes in. It
doesn’t mean the brain uses that particular
structure, but it’s better to understand it.
Similarly, for example, not everything can beformed into a mathematical principle that Dr. Le
Bihan was talking about. A lot of the things that weknow currently are all completely statisticalmodels. It is not precisely formulatable as a model.
I think you mentioned quantum mechanics.
Quantum mechanics is mainly probabilistic
mechanics and so the issue here is that the brain
may be operating on a quantum mechanical basis
and that may be an interesting possibility.

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium165Panel Discussion

LE BIHAN: When I was a student learning IT at theend of the 70s, I remember very well my teacher
gave us a definition of a computer: “It’s something
stupid with a very, very good memory.” And in fact
I think for our brain it’s exactly the opposite. We
don’t have such a strong memory but we can think.
The advantage of the brain is that it is highly
parallel. We have millions and millions of cells that can
do processing in parallel, and so far, even with the bestcomputers we have we are very far from that.
Now there is evidence also that the brain isusing the Bayesian theory so waiting for different
outcomes and comparing with what has beenlearned in a completely non-conscious way todecide what is the best behavior.
In fact, the brain we should consider is amachine to protect ourselves, to avoid dying, and soit’s a learning machine. It is always learning. Even for
old people, we are always learning and we aretrying to decide what the best is for us. Sometimes
we make mistakes, of course, but our brain is here toprotect us, to preserve our life.
SUNAMI: Can I just invite one more question
because we are running out of time and then we willgo back to Dr. Andersson.

LE BIHAN: Yeah, I think we have to be careful toteach our children that life is not all in computers.
There is real life and more than what we call social
networks like Facebook. I hate this word because
there is nothing social about them. We have to be
extremely careful.
On the other hand, I talked about genes andthe brain. If you give to a child a smartphone, in a
few minutes he or she knows how to operate it
although he or she cannot even read the manual. So
genes are not responsible for us to use oursmartphones.
So I think that if such devices are used in agood way, it can benefit the development of ourchildren. For them, we have to realize that it will belike a pencil is for us today. One thousand years
ago this would be a very strange instrument, right?
So we shouldn’t make a mystery about suchdevices and we should make them just part ofdaily life. As you say, there is nature andcommunication, and these should not be
forgotten. Unfortunately, there are teenagers
playing games, for instance, on the Internet andfor them this is society. That’s very dangerous, ofcourse, so we have to be careful.
SUNAMI: Dr. Andersson.

SUNAMI: The lady over there, you raised your handearlier. Do you have any question?
Questioner B: I am presently raising a child. Sincebirth, this child has been surrounded by IT and PCs,
which, with all due respect, if I may guess their ages,
was a very unlikely environment for the professors
here. I would be very glad if you tell me, for instance,that contact with nature is very important as anexperience in early childhood, but in your opinion,
at what age should a child start to have contact witha computer?
SUNAMI: Dr. Reddy.
REDDY: Always, but that doesn’t mean that theyshouldn’t go out into nature. As Dr. Andersson was
saying, you spend only 7% of your life, maybe 10%,working, so 10% of the time let them work with IT,
90% you do whatever else you want to do.

166

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

ANDERSSON: I would just like to ask a question to
the brain specialist. I have been wondering if

Panel Discussion

Haken’s idea of fast and slow processors might not
be useful in understanding the workings of thebrain because if you have a nonlinear system likethe brain is, it would be chaotic most of the time.
And we know that we are not chaotic most of thetime. It happens now and then but on the whole
people are quite predictable.
I discussed this once with a famous
differential equations guy who wanted to model thebrain, and he actually said that in order to model thebrain with his mathematical tools he had to separate
it into two parts: one that was slow and one thatwas fast. I wonder if this is the case that the brain is
actually subdividable into two interactive
processors, where one is kind of stabilizing theother part?
LE BIHAN: Well, it’s not completely that way. There
are different scales, as I said before, different scalesin space, so from molecules to cells to network, andit’s the same with time.
There are different timescales at themolecular level, at the cellular level, so, yes, we cansee that, for instance, in the electric waves producedby the brain. There are different frequencies. But it’s
not only two. Some processes are slow, some arefast but they are interacting all the time, and even if
chaos is present it doesn’t mean that the brain is
globally chaotic.
It’s like the weather. We know that there is a
lot of nonlinearity in the weather but we can predict
it somewhat, and so it depends on the timescale

you are talking about.
SUNAMI: Okay, Dr. Reddy.
REDDY: So there is a Nobel Prize that was won by
Kahneman on slow thinking and fast thinking and it
is another way of talking about cognitive science.
What we know is there are things you
memorize and if you memorize them you
immediately recognize them; therefore, they
become fast thinking. Things that you don’t know,that you have to reason about, that’s kind of slow
thinking. There’s nothing magical about them. It’s
all been known in psychology and cognitive
psychology for many years.
SUNAMI: Thank you. I think we are almost runningout of time, so I think we should close now, but
before we go there is one sort of importantquestion that you raised, and I have some questions
that I have been collecting.
How do you make us more humane, in a way?
Is the innovation of eco-technology a solution? You
know, you talked about the separation of state andreligion, or state and faith, and that’s sort of the
beginning of the rise of modern science, yet now weare facing so many complex problems including
religion and other sorts of things. Would anyone liketo comment on this? Let’s take turns to make ashort, brief statement. Dr. Reddy.
REDDY: The only solution I know is education

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

167Panel Discussion

about ethics, and Dr. Andersson mentioned that somaybe he should talk more about it, but mainly
until we train the next generation about what isright and what is wrong, and put them in the shoesof the people that are being tortured and build up
their empathy, we are not going to have a humane
society because most people have not beentaught. They think they can do anything and getaway with it.
LE BIHAN: I think maybe I will respond with aquestion. If we say “more humane,” what is “humane,”first? I think it is a big question. Researchers now,some of my colleagues, are trying to understandwhat makes us different from animals, for instance. Is
there a difference or is it just continuity?
I know especially for the brain, people arefocusing now on if there is a way to understandwhat makes humans different from nonhumans, andthat I think is an important question because if you
want to be more humane we should understandfirst what humans are. And that’s not so easy. In fact,
that’s a very difficult question.
CLEMENS: I think maybe it’s quite simple, theanswer to getting a truly humane society. I think if
you give everybody a chance for the future that willsolve all the problems. I think the problem is thatyou have areas in the world where people have nofuture, especially young people.
I agree fully with you that what we really needis a full education, a good education, for young
people. And then we also need a transfer of money
because in Europe, or here in Japan, everybody’s
living at a high standard. If you give the others alittle bit of our high standard, I think we can solve a
lot of problems.
ANDERSSON: I think that the keyword is “tolerance”
because you know the old saying in France aboutbrotherhood, I think that’s a devastating idea
because brotherhood means you care for yourbrothers and you don’t care for the ones who are
not your brothers or sisters. Tolerance means thatyou can accept anyone and you will look uponanyone as a human being and accept the deviations.
I think that’s the first thing.

168

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

The other thing is, as you said, to provide aplace in society for everyone. Everyone should beneeded somehow. You can be needed by being
employed or you can be needed in some other way,
but everyone should have a feeling that he isneeded. Otherwise, he will migrate to any society,criminal or whatever, where he will be needed.
The third thing is something I don’t know,
but I heard a lecture on. That was a lecture by abiologist, I think he was a zoologist, who said thatwhat makes humans unique compared to the otherprimates is that this is the only part of the primate
system that has an inbred capacity to educate, thateach of us, starting already with our babies, starts
educating our babies and goes on teaching them
how to solve simple problems all the time byimitation and so on.
So tolerance, a place in society, and properuse of our inbred capacity to educate each other,
especially the younger generations, I think these arethree parts of a humane society.
SUNAMI: Thank you very much.
SUNAMI: Since time is up, let’s conclude thepanel discussion here. Let us give the panelists a
big hand.
SUNAMI: Thank you very much.

Closing Speech
Mr. Yoichiro Murakami

Closing Speech Mr. Yoichiro Murakami

Mr. Yoichiro Murakami
Professor Emeritus, The University of Tokyo.
Professor Emeritus, International Christian University

Closing Speech
I am Murakami, just as introduced. As one of thecurrent councilors of Honda Foundation, I havebeen involved with this foundation from its
incipiency and am one of the persons to have close
association with Soichiro Honda. It is indeed withpride and gratitude that I participate in the 35th
Honda Prize commemorative symposium anddeliver this closing address.
At any rate, first, I would like to express mygratitude to the four participants of this symposiumfrom around the world who are laureates, one ofwhom, Dr. Clemens, who is this year’s laureate, will bejoining us at the award ceremony on the 17th.
Regrettably, Dr. Haken cannot physically come here
now but I am sure he is with us in spirit. Including
him, these are the five gentlemen to whom I would
like to express my gratitude.
I would also like to thank Mr. Kojima who
delivered the keynote speech, Mr. Sunami who
displayed excellent skills as a moderator, and also themembers of the secretariat who exerted considerable
effort in the planning, preparation, andadministration of this symposium. Likewise, I would
like to thank everyone who patiently stayed with us
throughout the long five hours.
As everyone very well understands how

170

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium

complex, diverse, and multi-faceted the problems weconfront in this symposium are. When it comes tonature, disasters have intensified, and there areproblems such as desertification, diminution offorestation, reduction of fertile soil, depletion ofwater resources, exhaustion of energy resources, letalone global warming. When it comes to social
problems, we have the population problem, namely,
its increase in the south and decline in the north, andthe issues attendant to market-based economic andsocial systems.
Furthermore, there is the North-South gap,
and gap within countries in the south and withincountries in the north. Alongside the problem ofdisparities, there is also displacement, and while
there are positive aspects to the information
revolution that we have been discussing earlier,there are also negative aspects. Moreover, thinking
about problems in the human environment, threats
to the very existence of man and problems
concerning those cannot be ignored. Perhaps I
should call it a spiritual crisis, but the actual situationin Japan is that suicide is increasing, now advancing
to the 5th cause of death.
Each problem does not exist by itself, but
creates a network where an extremely complex

Closing Speech Mr. Yoichiro Murakami

interrelationship exists among other problems.
Therefore, if one draws a vision of the future, one canonly paint an extremely complex picture, and will
have to think of multiple scenarios. So we refer to thescenario of “The Next 40 Years” by the Club of Romethat was mentioned in Mr. Kojima’s keynote addressin the early part of this program. The scenario has an
aspect that is rather tragic.
As demonstrated or expounded in this
symposium, I believe only man’s wisdom can changesuch a tragic vision of the future into one of hope,and is the sole factor that can save mankind andearth from its own destruction.
Thirty seven years ago, Honda Soichiro, who
was gifted with sharp insight and humanism and who
was driven by his belief in such hope and salvation,
carried on with a social movement which includes
this symposium. We carry on his cherished desire byencouraging everyone to join us in forging ahead
with task in the next 35 years. I express my heartfelt
gratitude to everyone.

35th Honda Prize Commemorative Symposium171〒104-0028 東京都中央区八重洲 2-6-20 ホンダ八重洲ビル TEL: 03-3274-5125 FAX: 03-3274-5103
Honda Yaesu Bldg., 6-20 Yaesu 2-chome, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0028 Tel: +81-3-3274-5125 Fax: +81-3-3274-5103

http://www.hondafoundation.jp