社会技術研究論文集

Vol.12, 1-11, April 2015

CHRONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS ONCONSCIOUSNESS OF EXPERTS TO SOCIETY
Kumi OKUWADA1, Yoshiko YOKOO2, and Naoto TSUTSUI3
1

Ph.D. (Engineering), Senior Fellow,
National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (E-mail: okuwada@nistep.go.jp)
2
M.A. (Domestic Science), Senior Research Fellow, Science and Technology Foresight Center,
National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (E-mail: yokoo@nistep.go.jp)
3
Ph.D. (Science), Manager of Information Engineering Department,
i's FACTORY co., ltd. (E-mail: tsutsui@isfactory.co.jp)

Visualizing through a text-mining approach for continuous foresight survey reports revealed chronological trendsof experts’ consciousness over 40 years. The direction of their consciousness largely changed after 2000 onward
having stronger relationships with society, following subdivided and relatively incremental decades before 2000.
Their consciousness to society has spread widely after 2000. The chronological changes of some frequently occurringwords revealed some emerging fields and their necessity of societal embeddedness. However, there has still been alarge inclination among the fields, which suggests an insufficiency of their consciousness to society. This has led us
to have fears of essential seeds-needs incongruency in innovation ecosystems in Japan.

Keywords: Societal embedding, Consciousness, Foresight, Text-mining, High-frequency appearance

1.

Introduction

chronological changes of experts’ consciousness to society.
There have existed huge amounts of description whichanalyzed on past events and current situations. However,documents which consist only of expectation forward thefuture are few. Among them, open data sets which can beavailable for chronological analysis are much less. The survey
reports of Japanese foresight activities are very valuable
samples which meet these conditions. The participants of theforesight surveys were experts who were researchers, engineers
and stakeholders in academia and industry in wide fields ofscience and technology. They were the optimal groups in thosedays in Japan who could describe the expectation for the future.
After the long continuity of the surveys, we have got anadequate quantity of the accumulation of the description forchronological analysis.
This research is a trial to visualize general trends andemerging fields in experts’ consciousness in relation to society
for the past 40 years through observing appearing frequencies
of words by text-mining. Text-mining has already beenwell-recognized mainly in marketing after popularization ofinternet technology. Advanced search technologies have madekeyword analyses and bibliometrics much easier. As we are
now in big data era, text-mining is again focused on as amethod which can show underlying trend and qualitativetransformation among large amount of archives4). The big
archives give us the possibility of many kinds of chronologicalanalyses in long terms. For example, visualization of human

It is well-known that “Science in society and science forsociety” was declared to supplement objects of science and theuse of scientific knowledge in the World Conference on
Science in 19991). After the declaration, the process of societal
embedding has gradually come to be regarded as an importantpart of R&D activities in Japan. However, many efforts toimplement R&D results must have occurred even before thisdeclaration, because expectations for contributions to futuresociety had always acted as a main rationale behind the ideathat the R&D activities should be supported by public
investment.
On the other hand, it is not clear that scientists and engineers
have sufficient consciousness to relate to society in their R&D
activities. Further, we could not recognize the transformation of
their consciousness after the declaration. Due to a lack of clues,
we have not been able to discuss in what specific fields theirconsciousness should be emphasized more and pushed toward
their societal implementations.
The foresight surveys are regarded as an accumulation of
expectations for the future by experts in varied fields. The textsof their past reports are regarded as very rare material tocomprehend the consciousness of experts and theirtransformation. Japanese foresight activities especially havecontinued adding some improvements over the 40 years2), 3).
With their open data of past reports, we may observe1

社会技術研究論文集

Vol.12, 1-11, April 2015

continuity, and inclusiveness2). It covers a variety of scientificand technological fields, and a large number of experts are
involved in surveys as committee members and respondents.
Each survey has looked ahead 30 years from the time of thesurvey. Recent foresight activities in Japan have become morecomprehensive by combining the Delphi technique with othermethods. The recent foresight summarized forward-leaning
comprehensive mega-trends from the integration of somemethods3). The Delphi surveys in Japan have been unique andvaluable as they have been continued every 5 years for the past
40 years, although their participants were limited to Japaneseexperts. All results have been opened as survey reports.
As a merit to the continuity of the surveys, they have provenable to evaluate the past foresight activities10). The post-projectassessments, mainly from the viewpoint of realization, werestarted after 20 years of early surveys. The results in theassessments have also been opened together within the recent
reports. They could distinguish both the realized and unrealized
technologies. The reports lead statistical probabilities andtendencies by fields, and reveal barriers against realizations andhastiness in some technologies2).
The main analysis subject in this research is referred to as"topics" as written in the questionnaires in all of the Delphi
surveys. The possibility of realization in the future was asked
on each topic in the questionnaires. The questions on each topic
were repeated to obtain converging answers among many
experts, because the convergence by repetition is the essence of
the Delphi method. Each topic was about 40 to 50 characterslong in Japanese. Many aspects in science and technology havebeen presented in the topics. They included discoveries andinventions in basic science and technology with their hidden
potential, implementation and diffusion in society, and related
institutions and produced influences in society. The topics like
Table 1 were set by panels of subcommittee members. The
panels were established according to the scientific andtechnological fields and social goals. Each panel consisted of
10 - 15 members, covered by academics, industry people andother stakeholders. The topics were set from their fresh
perspectives while referring back to those in the previous
Delphi surveys. They examined the topics of the previous
surveys, renewed them and added more remarkable ones.
Therefore, the questionnaire in each survey consisted of a mixof continued and new topics.
For example, twelve panels were established in the latest
2010 survey2). The panel members set topics and also described
their views after looking at the questionnaire results in thereport. The respondents to the repeated Delphi questionnairesconsisted of about 3000 people in the survey, who also

mobility by text-mining in recorded history in English over2000 years gave us overwhelming sensation in our historical
understanding5). Text-mining has also been paid attention as
new foresight tools6), 7). Some qualitative transformation inchronological changes in science and technology trends could
be revealed with original data sets and contrivance oftext-mining8). Here, we may show the usability of text-mining
in a trial of finding chronological changes in experts’consciousness. Through this method, we may renew ourunderstanding over the past 40 years.
We also discuss the sufficiency of their consciousness
toward societal embedding by adopting “service” as arepresentative word. Importance and progress of service are nolonger to be necessary to explain in business. On the other hand,academia of service science has also been established in many
countries after the National Innovation Summit in Washington,
D.C. in 20049). We consider that “service” is a good example
word in order to validate the infiltration into recent experts’consciousness.

2.

Subjects and procedures of analysis

2.1. Subjects in analysis
We recognized that experts’ expectations of the future could
be found in the results of foresight activities, as scientists could
be free of their own accumulated academic works andengineers could be free of existing businesses only when they
think about the distant future. Globally, foresight studies havebeen more popular, because some specific types of evidences
are required in order to make organizational strategies at boththe company and national level. However, it is not easy to findsome chronological changes in the foresight results as mostforesight activities have been not continuously carried on.
The Delphi technique, which was developed by the RAND
Corporation in the 1950s, is one of the foresight methodologies.
It has often been used to attempt to reach a consensus among
participants or stakeholders. The same questions are delivered
repeatedly to the same group of experts. In subsequent rounds,
the former results are fed back to the respondents and they cansee how far their opinions are from the majority. Some
respondents change their former answer. The repetition of thisprocess leads to a convergent opinion. The Delphi technique
has been regarded as a useful tool for seeking long-term
perspectives that depend only on instinctive insights. In Japan,
the Science and Technology Agency started the survey mainlyin the scientific and technological fields in the 1970s.
The Delphi survey in Japan is unique in terms of its scale,2

社会技術研究論文集

consisted of academics, industry people and other stakeholders.
They also contributed their views to the topics as well as
answered the questionnaires. Thus, the report could be regarded
as the descriptions of expectations for the future by 3000
people from various background, concerned with science,technology and innovation in Japan.
The total number of topics was 8147 in 9 surveys during the
40 years. After excluding the words that were extremely
general, the words suitable for this research wereapproximately 6700 nouns. The original data is in Japanese.
Many nouns easily transform into other forms in Japanese.
Many verbs and adjectives are made by coupling nouns andsuffixes. Furthermore, many compound words are made by thesimple combination of plural nouns. On the other hand, a noun
often has some different meanings. Some nouns should betranslated into more precise English words in the topics,
depending on the concepts that the topics represent. Therefore,
it is not important whether the extracted words are nouns orother forms in the English translation, so we describe them as
simply “words” in the discussion of this research.

Table 1

Vol.12, 1-11, April 2015

2.2. Procedure in analysis（1）Procedure for general trends
The experts’ consciousness was analyzed by text-mining inthis research. We observed transitions in the frequency of
appearances of nouns used in topics in the surveys. We
basically assume that the high-frequency appearance of nouns
indicates experts’ interests and attentions, and discuss further
what the observed transitions mean.
Their transitions were observed in the following three
approaches.
a) Extraction of frequently appearing nouns and measuring
their chronological changes from all topics in 40 years
We firstly extracted frequently appearing nouns. The
number of topics containing each noun was counted byeach survey. The top 100 nouns in all topics for 40 years
were specified in terms of total frequency of appearance.
Their chronological changes were observed in ratios of the
topics including the top nouns.

Examples of the topics including “service” in the 9th Delphi survey report opened in 20102)(Extracts from the English version of the survey report)

Topic numbering and classified area

Examples of topics including “service”

1-2
Advanced computing systems

Network systems responding dynamically to the operating status andenvironmental condition of the inside and/or outside of the systems to provide
required services with high reliability and without human intervention or any
interruption.

2-2
Cloud computing

In the system providing various services to various users by flexible connectionof more than a hundred million computers, an advanced autonomous service
creates new value-added information or new functional services from existing
functions and services or from the group of data lying in such services.

2-36
Socialization of
information

Establishment of a system that finds out whether the proposed service
conforms to the laws and regulations of each country by retrieving them, andindicates the conditions for providing such service in each country.

2-69
Contents service

Simulations of the changes in the customer's purchase activity and sense ofvalue from various standpoints before a service starts to be provided by acompany.

10-56
Globalization, value-adding andmarket creation

Recognition technology to analyze the services that the person requires and toprovide appropriate advice and guidance to the service provider.

12-20
Life support strategy

Diffusion of logistics services that deliver medicine and food for medical
treatment, without requiring a hospital visit, to support the lives of elderly
persons and patients of lifestyle diseases living in inconveniently located areas,such as mountainous regions, by establishing a remote consultation system andhealth care system using IT technologies.

3

社会技術研究論文集

Vol.12, 1-11, April 2015

In order to consider about recent situation, a detail analysis
both their topics including “service” and descriptions onservice in the recent report was added.

b) Mapping for frequently-appearing nouns and theirchronological changes during 40 years
In order to grasp an overall picture of theirchronological changes, a two-dimensional distribution
map was created by correspondence analysis among the
top nouns. There, we could also observe co-occurrence as
the relationship among the 100 top nouns of a) and thecenter positions of each survey year. This led thediscussion on top nouns that characterized each survey
and on their distances between surveys with somedirections.
c) Comparison in amounts and contents of characteristic nouns
in each survey
The top 100 nouns appearing most frequently in eachsurvey were firstly extracted. Next, the nouns whose
frequency of appearance in a specific survey accounted
for over 20 percent of their total appearances in all surveys
were specified to extract the characteristic nouns in eachsurvey. Necessarily, some characteristic nouns in c) are
not included in the top 100 words extracted in a).
In order to extract characteristic nouns in each survey,
weighting by the amount of topics was needed in order toeliminate the effects of survey size, because the number of the
topics was largely varied in the range of 644 to 1072 in 9
surveys.

3.

Findings in general trend analysis

3.1. Frequently appearing words and their relationshipduring 40 years
The top 100 words extracted in terms of frequency of
appearance are shown in Table 2, which experts have been paid
attentions to for the past 40 years. The high frequencies ofappearance of the words of "investigation", "development","practical-use", and "widespread" are not significant as
exceptions. They had been recommended to use in topics
through the early surveys as jargon to specify the R&D stage ofthe topics.
Figure 1 shows maps of correspondence analysis performed
in order to understand relationships between the top words andthe survey years. The larger distribution map consists ofco-occurrence in appearances among the top words. The top
words that have a close relationship in the topics are locatedclosely together. The axes and the frame were placed on it inorder to help understand the relationship, but they do not haveany meanings. The red points show the centers of the survey
years. The smaller map consisted of the pulled-out red points inorder to easily understand their general trend over 40 years.
More common top words in survey years are located near
the center of the distribution map. The positions of survey years
in 1982, 1987 and 1992 are also near the center as lesscharacteristic years. We should rather pay attention to thecharacteristic survey years and their vicinity of top words. The
position of 1971 is lower and far from the center of this map.
The top words such as "computer", "automation", and"processing" can be seen in the vicinity of 1971 and 1977.
They indicate that automation through utilization of computers
was a focus of attention during the 1970s.
The most drastic chronological change of the survey years
can be seen in the position of 2005 and 2010. They are in theleft side and out of an alignment shaped before 2000 in the map.
This indicates that another type of trend happened andaccelerated in a completely different direction in 2000s.
The top words in the vicinity in 2005 and 2010 such as"corporation", "society", "economy", and "community"
indicate social perspectives. They also related to the words
showing the fields of “environment”, “energy”, and“information”. This remarkable change will be discussed moredeeply with another result in the following section of 3.3.

（2）Procedure for “service” trend
The comparative discussions on “service” was added in thisresearch, because it is a representative word that would only
appear when concerns with society were voiced. Service
science and service innovation are relatively new concepts.
Some examples including the noun “service” in the recent
survey report in 20102) are shown in Table 1. The reason why
authors thought “service” was a suitable sample for detailed
investigation is described in 4-1 using results in Table 3.
The expectations of “service” were observed in thefollowing three approaches in this research.
a) Measurement for chronological change in appearance of“service”
The numbers of topics including “service” were counted
for each survey. The ratio of the topics including “service” tothe total topic number in each survey was observed.
b) Observation for co-occurrence of “service” and the relatedwords
The relations with the adjacent and other words wereobserved in the topics including “service” in each survey byco-occurrence network analysis.
c) Observation on “service” in a recent report4

社会技術研究論文集

Vol.12, 1-11, April 2015

Table 2 Top 100 words in frequency of appearance in all topics

technology, development, practical-use, system, widespread, use, possible, investigation, environment, function, information,
establishment, material, artificial, realize, degree, control, production, energy, automation, device, substance, structure,
management, cure, telecommunication, resource, satellite, safety, utilize, manufacture, organism, mechanism, city, computer,course, japan, efficiency, treatment, human, cell, water, forecast, home, robot, inside, space, method, present, size, region, earth,occurrence, power-generation, gene, chemical, observation, automobile, general, molecular, design, dispose, network, society,evaluation, amount, light., interval, number, machine, level, improvement, biological, pollution, ocean, company, inside,
precision, gas, various, high-level, element, body, battery, fuel, spatial, prevention, less, economy, natural, synthesize, influence,equipment, electron, heat, diagnose, style, barrier, individual, available

Fig.1

Correspondence for the top words and survey years

5社会技術研究論文集

Vol.12, 1-11, April 2015

Fig.2

The top words showing characteristic chronological changes

3.2. The top words showing characteristic chronologicalchanges
The most remarkable chronological changes in theappearance frequency of the top words are shown in Figure 2.
The ratios of topics containing "energy", "environment", and"information" have increased since the 1990s and 2000s,
respectively, which have reached to 8 - 10%. This suggests asurge in the consciousness of experts to global problems insociety.
The contrastive changes in “Information” and “computer”
are very interesting. The gradual downward trend in"computer" suggests that experts have unconsciously become
to use computer machines and related technologies in various
aspects of society. In other words, the decreasing trend is a
result of the societal embedding of computer technologies. The
main interest of experts seems to have shifted into
“information”, the contents brought about by computer
technologies after the spread in internet technologies in the last
half of the 1990s.
3.3. Change in characteristic words in each survey
The words that are more frequently used in only one survey
are considered as characteristic focuses of attention for thesurvey year. In the frequently appearing words ranked within100th in a survey, the words whose appearances in the survey
occupy more than 20% of its total appearances in all surveys
were extracted as characteristic words for the survey. In order
to eliminate the effects of survey size, the data on frequency of
appearance was weighted by number of topics of each survey.

6

The difference between before and after the weighting by the
number of topics is shown with characteristic words in Table 3.
We firstly found in Table 3 that the number of the characteristic
words before weighting has been out of proportion to thenumber of topics in the surveys. Furthermore, it is remarkablethat the characteristic words after weighting were less inamount during from the 1980s to the early 2000s, when thesurvey sizes were large. However, it was not the decades whenthe variety spread, though the survey sizes were large inamount. Resemble finding had already shown that the common
top words gathers around the center of the distribution map in
Figure 1. We could recognize the decades as a subdivided andrelatively incremental period in Japan. The experts of thosedays may have been less sensitive to social changes.
We should pay more attention to the characteristic words
after weighting in the 2000s. They are greater in amount andqualitatively different from the characteristic words before
2000.The topics in the 2010 survey have the largest number ofcharacteristic words. The report3) stated that this survey design
was intended to break the walls between fields and redundancyof perspective among the subcommittees was permitted inorder to prioritize finding the attentions among experts rather
than covering large fields. However, more new characteristic
words appeared. There are many words that show relationships
with society and its changes, for example, "society", "region","life", "economy", "organization", and "aging". Such words as"efficiency", "evaluation", and "institution" present the concern
for a lack in previous perspectives. Most symbolic is “society”
was a one of the characteristic word s in 2010.

社会技術研究論文集

Table 3
Surveyyear

Size（Numberof Topics)

NumberbeforeweightingNumberafter
weighting

Vol.12, 1-11, April 2015

Characteristic words in each survey
Characteristic words after weighting by the number of topics in the survey year

establishment, degree, computer, utilize, perfect, style, education, factory, overlap,
1971

644

-

22

progress, unmanned, medicine, television、main, telephone, nuclear-power, cultivation,
fiber, plant, search, appearance, massive-scale
establishment, style, pollution, methodology, prevention, metropolis, work,

1977

656

6

15

1982

800

4

4

house, unmanned, coal, maintenance

1987

1071

20

4

application., science, intelligence, physiology

1992

1149

22

4

application, intelligence, build, carbon-dioxide

1997

1072

22

1

japan

2001

1065

26

6

widespread, japan, company, electron, process, support

2005

858

23

14

countrywide, condition, facility, swift, exchange, main, training, network

general, evaluation, company, nano, activity, actively-use, correspondence, our-country,
form, service, risk, support, analysis, regenerateenvironment, energy, resource, efficiency, manufacture, evaluation, region, size, society,actively-use, economy, design, natural, nano, support, life, risk, fuel, activity, battery,

2010

832

39

39

service, circulation, product, institution, simulation, our-country, organization,correspondence, CO2, bio, construct, aged, disease, infrastructure, cost, efficiency,
disaster, electric-power

4.

Findings in analysis on “service”

Co-occurrence relations with the adjacent words on“service” were shown in Figure 4 in a style of network analysis.
The arrows show the sequence tendencies in their appearances.
The topics including “service” before 2000 were too few toconstruct clusters with the adjacent words. The adjacent words
and the clusters indicate the contents of expectations for service.
The adjacent words in the 2001 survey mainly show theapplication fields of service. The most adjacent words in the2005 survey show social values that service could bring about.
The adjacent words in the 2010 survey are implicated in
more diversified concepts. Technical words and application
fields already disappeared in the adjacent words. On the other
hand, more abstract and more general words increased. This
allows us to consider possibilities of diversification in service
science and service innovation.

4.1. Chronological changes in topics including “service”“Service” is regarded as one of the words that are used byexperts only when they strongly have a consciousness toward
society. Many technologies would be embedded into society as
some kinds of services. Although “service” was not included in
top 100 words over the past 40 years, as shown in Table 1, it is
one of the characteristic words in the 2010 survey, shown in
Table 3. As described in the introduction of this paper,
importance of service concept in business was fully recognized
and service science has established its research field inacademia in those days. We can assume that these should be
the reason why “service” appeared as the characteristic word inthis timing. We considered that this word was suitable for moredetailed investigation as recent trend in Japan.
Figure 3 shows a chronological change in the number andratio of topics including the word of “service”. The ratio of the
topics including “service” to the total number in each survey
has slightly increased after 2000, which” reached 2.9% in 2010.
The attention or expectation to “service” corresponds to around
1/3 the amount of “environment”, “information”, and “energy”,
shown in Figure 2.

4.2. Inclination in fields on consciousness to “service”
In order to discuss the current situation regarding “service”, amore detailed analysis is shown here on both topics including“service” and descriptions on “service” in the recent report2).
The report opened in 2010 stated that the recent survey was
carried out under a fully worked-out plan to synchronize withtransformation in science and technology policies in Japan11).

7

Vol.12, 1-11, April 201530

4.0
Number of topics including "service"

25

3.0

Ratio(%) to the total number of topics
20
15

2.0

10
1.0
5
0

0.0
1971

1977

1982

1987

1992

1997

2001

2005

2010

Survey year

Fig.3

Fig.4

Number and ratio of topics including “service”

Chronological changes after 2000 in the networks surrounding “service”

8

Ratio (%)

Number of topics

社会技術研究論文集

社会技術研究論文集

Table 4The panels were called only as numbers, not as existing fieldnames, to avoid preconceptions. The panels set their discussion
fields on their own as shown in Table 4. The duplication among
panels in their discussion of a selection of topics was tolerated
because the extraction of more remarkable keywords forinnovation was given priority over covering all fields and areas.
In other words, it was done with some trials in order to takeaway existing concepts of fields as well as to break up someborders on disciplines and sectors.
Having pre-known these conditions in the survey, the resultsin Figure 5 surprised us. They showed a marked inclination of
topics including “service”. The classified areas including“service” in their area names were only two. Furthermore, themembers in three panels and their respondents over 3000
experts did not describe “service” at all in all texts in therelevant sections of the report.
Figure 4 shows that the expectation to “service” is extremely
deficient except in the information, management, and related
fields. This reminds us that service science in Japan started
from a comprehension of foreign documents that were
described on bounded scopes with information, economy, andmanagement studies, and with financial business12).
It also suggests that service science has not subsequently
developed forward into wider fields and areas in Japan.

Fig.5

Vol.12, 1-11, April 2015

Panel structure in the 9th survey2)

Needless to say, service concepts have already been paid
attention to many businesses and public works. For examples,
medical services and environmental services have produced
big business opportunities and created significant employment
opportunities. There are many kinds of private services andadministrative services in our society, which suggests that there
is still a considerable estrangement between the developmentof service in society and the research for service innovation inacademia. Some kinds of political measures have recently been
attempted to increase interdisciplinary approaches toward
service innovation. However, they have not been able to bringabout sufficient effects to upsurge the consciousness of experts
in most fields.

Inclination in expectation to “service” in the topics and description in the 9th survey report9社会技術研究論文集

Vol.12, 1-11, April 2015changes of experts’ consciousness using simple text-mining ofextracting single words. On the other hand, in order to discuss
on qualitative changes, more complex semantic analyses must
be necessary For example, more detailed analyses of complex
words and compound words like Figure 4 may be useful.
Furthermore, relations between subjects and predicates andjudgment of affirmation and negation must also be noteworthy
as research subjects to find such quality changes.
In addition to them, this research was done under anassumption that the description in the foresight reports onscience and technology has included experts’ consciousness
onward future society according to the survey design. However,the verification of this assumption is not possible in the present
methodologies. We also hope developments of some new
semantic tools which make such verifications possible.

As “service” is just an example word in this analysis, it may
be insufficient for a discussion of national R&D system.
However, the severe inclination among fields, as shown in
Figure 5, lets us recognize some fears of essential seeds-needs
incongruency in the innovation ecosystem in Japan.

5.

Conclusion

The text-mining approach for the opened reports of thecontinuous foresight surveys in Japan revealed chronologicalchanges of experts’ consciousness during a 40-year time span.
The direction of their consciousness largely changed after 2000
onward having a stronger relationship with society, after a
subdivided and relatively incremental period before 2000.
Their consciousness to society has been found to spread theirwideness of ideas.
The decreased trend of “computer” was observed as a resultof societal embedding of computer technologies. Recent
upsurges in attentions for "information", "energy", and"environment", and the strength in their relationships withsocietal issues, suggest that they are emerging fields wheremore innovative concepts are needed. It is a most symbolic
finding that “society” was one of the characteristic words in the
topics in 2010 after 40 years of continuous surveying.
On the other hand, a more detailed observation on “service”
as a representative word toward embedding to society suggeststhat there has still been a large inclination among the fields,
which further indicates an insufficiency in experts’consciousness to societal implications. This led us to havesome concerns regarding essential seeds-needs incongruency ininnovation eco-system in Japan.
We can state that the perspective on the direction of scientificand technological development has been causing the biggest
qualitative change in the past 40 years. It has accorded with thenecessity for an introduction of concepts of back-casting fromproblem-solving goals on societal issues in policy-making
processes on science, technology and innovation. We can also
state that the political transformation from the 3rd Science andTechnology Basic Plan to the 4th one in 201111) in Japan, which
was forward more issue-oriented, was inevitable andreasonable. We imagine that any resemblance of a generaltrend is likely to have been present in other advanced countries.
However, it is impossible to enact more global discussions,because comparable data in continuity has not existed in othercountries. We expect that other kinds of approach using big
data may reveal global trends in the near future.
In this research, we could reveal quantitative chronological

References
1)

UNESCO (1999), Declaration on Science and the Use of
Scientific Knowledge, (World Conference on Science(1999)
Science for the Twenty-first Century - A New Commitment,
World Conference on Science, Budapest Hungary ).

2)

NISTEP (2010), The 9th Science and Technology Foresight:
The 9th Delphi Survey, NISTEP Report No. 140 (in Japanese).

3)

NISTEP (2010), Contribution of Science and Technology to
Future Society - Summary on the 9th Science and Technology
Foresight -, NISTEP Report, No. 145 (in Japanese).

4)

Schich,M., Song,C., Ahn,Y., Mirsky,A., Martino,M., Barabási,A.,and Helbing,D. (2014), A network framework of cultural history,
Science, 345(6196), pp.558-562.

5)

Reardon, S. (2014), Text-mining offers clues to success, Nature,509, p.410.

6)

Yokoo,Y., and Okuwada,K. (2013), Identifying expected areasof future innovation by combining foresight outputs, Foresight,
15(1), pp.6-18.

7)e.g. IARPA (2011), Foresight and Understanding from Scientific
Exposition(FUSE), IARPA-BAA-10-06.

8)

e.g. Arino,K., Furukawa,T., Shirakawa,N., and Okuwada,K.
(2012), Temporal network analysis of emerging technologies:
Topic transition in World Wide Web (WWW) conferences, Proc.
of International Conference on Industrial Engineering andEngineering Management, pp.1108-1112.

9)

Council on Competitiveness (2004), Innovate America: Thriving
in a World of Challenge and Change (National Innovation
Initiative Summit and Report).

10)

Yokoo,Y., and Okuwada,K. (2012), Validity of foresight derived
from the evaluation of past activities in Japan, International

10社会技術研究論文集

Acknowledgement

Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy, 8(4), pp. 296-310.
11)

e.g. Government of Japan (2011), The 4th Science andAuthors appreciate all the participants in the past foresightsurveys for their efforts of having left the valuable data whichenabled this analysis. It is an extremely rare intellectual asset
with long-term continuity under open data policy.

Technology Basic Plan (FY2011-FY2015).
12)

Vol.12, 1-11, April 2015

e.g. Ifm and IBM (2008), Succeeding through service
innovation: A service perspective for education, research,business and government. Cambridge, United Kingdom:
University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing.

13)

NISTEP (2012), Tracing the direction of research anddevelopment shown in past Delphi surveys, DISCUSSIONPAPER, No. 86 (in Japanese).

14)

i)

Some figures and tables in this paper were already reported by
the authors in a discussion paper (2012)13) in Japanese.

Okuwada,K., Yokoo,Y., Tsutsui,N., and Iwasaki,T. (2013),
Chronological changes in consciousness on science andii)

Some parts of discussion in this paper overlap with an oraltechnology observed in the Delphi surveys during 40 years,

presentation of the authors in 2013 IEEE ITMC & 19th ICE

2013 IEEE ITMC & 19th ICE Conference (Hague).

Conference (2013)14).

11