How to Build Up a Virtual Society
from the Citizensʼ point of View

Takami Yasuda
Nagoya University1

Todayʼs Talk
0. Our Research Direction
1. Emergence of the Virtual World
2. Impact of A.I. and Cyber Space
3. Individual, Social and Cultural Effects byInteractive Electronic Media
4. Influence of Evolving Technologies to ourLife Style2

0. Our Research Direction
Be a Producer for Information Society through
Designing and Constructing Electronic Society
The rapid spread of the Internet
Fusion of telecommunications and broadcastings! New services bring some changes to our society
To design new social systems with Information,
Communication Technologies (ICT) from citizensʼ
point of view
Focusing on
Technological Development and Social Aspect! Research of Inter Discipline! Bring up Producers of Information Age3

1. Emergence of the Virtual World4

1. Emergence of the Virtual World
used to be a field for special people.
Net Games SecondLife ３D Computer Graphics
Virtual character, Personarity or Life in Cyber World

http://secondlife.com/

5Enterprise / Goverment activities
in the Second Life
Press release ( Dell Computer )Open a branch office ( Reuters )Announcement of new designed dresses (Christian Dior)
Event for new products ( IBM )Open a virtual embassy ( Swedish Government )Start up advertisement delivery ( Book Off )Open an office for recruiting ( Mixi )6http://secondlife.com/?lang=ja-JP

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Computer Simulation
could be one of the Virtual World
Scientific Visualization

Our works in 1980s and 90s
Surgical Simulation
Analysis of Egyptian Mummy
Collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levey 9with Jupiter in 1994
Classic balletVideo8

Virtual World as a Society
a general tool for many people.
Education Shopping Auction
Stock Exchange
Government Services
Politics ・・・
It connects to real life.

92. Impact of Cyber Space to Real World10

2. Impact of Cyber Space to Real World
Emergence of so-called Ubiquitous Society.
It should be a tool to realize a good society for people.
How to get knowledge of people into virtual world.
! Social system to put community knowledge
to practical use.

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To make the knowledge of residents as
community resource
Community map on the Net using WebGIS for safety of living
Traffic Accident
Crime Area
Shelter for Disasters
Transfer the community knowledge of elderly to younger
generation

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Web tools~ easy to use ~• blog, SNS（Social Networking Service/System）,WebGIS, several kinds of Web APIs
• Google maps in Katrina case13

GoogleMaps in Katrina case14

To put community knowledge to practical use.
• Wikipedia• Social Bookmark15

2. Impact of Cyber Space to Real World• We have to pay attention to agents as software running incomputers or cyber environment itself, because we cannot
see them actually.
• On the other hand,
we expect the cyber space, where agents are automaticallyrunning and gathering adequate information for their users,
can contribute to a convenient and secure real society.

162. Impact of Cyber Space to Real World• New tools : their light side and shadow ( ex. automobile )• RFID chip contributes to distribution process.
Microchip implanted pets safely returned their owner.
-> We can exchange information with society without
consciousness.

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3. Individual, Social and Cultural Effects byInteractive Electronic Media

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3. Individual, Social and Cultural Effects byInteractive Electronic Media
history of Web services
1991
WWW
1993
browser （Mosaic）
1994
streaming
1995
search engine（yahoo） JAVA1996
Net Auction (eBay)
agent
1997
ADSL
1998
IM portal
1999
mobile net connection ( iMode )P2P
2000
Electronic Money
Affiliate
2001
RFID GPS mobile phone
2002
WiFi
IP phone Grid computing
2003
blog
2004
WiMAX SNS Skype
2005
RSS2006
Ajax Web2.0↓???
（The Nikkei June 26, 2006）19

3. Individual, Social and Cultural Effects byInteractive Electronic Media• Mosaic guides people into the Internet.
• Not only to get the information, but also to send
messages into the world.
• Effective tool for communication in a disaster.
(Katrina case)• Interactive communication tool as blog or SNS.

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3. Individual, Social and Cultural Effects byInteractive Electronic Media• 8.68 million blog users ( March 2006 in Japan ),which is 2.6 times larger than that of last year.
• 7.16 million SNS users. 6.5 times larger.
• Go Pets as an International communication toolfor non English native speaking people.

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3. Individual, Social and Cultural Effects byInteractive Electronic Media• Several useful tools to exchange individual digital works
through the Internet.
• Creative Commons emphasizes the creativity of amateurcreators.

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creative commons24http://www.sitesakamoto.com/chainmusic/25

3. Individual, Social and Cultural Effects byInteractive Electronic Media• Long Tail Phenomena in Cultural field could lead so-called subculture or pop-culture into the major field.
• YouTube gathers tens of thousand new videos per day.
NBC uses YouTube as advertisement of their TV drama.
It means one of major media accepts a grass-root new media.
• last.fm Recommended Web Music Radio26

3. Individual, Social and Cultural Effects byInteractive Electronic Media• Web2.0 movement could build a new Web culture.
• from one service by a single server application tomashup type service by multiple server applications.
• customer information + WebGIS ( GoogleEarth )• GoogleEarth + VICS -> traffic information

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Internavi Premium Club on Google EarthTM

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3. Individual, Social and Cultural Effects byInteractive Electronic Media• Open policy for services and data ( Amazon, Google )API (Application Program Interface) on the Net• OS API is within PCs.
Web API is open to society via the Net.

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4.

Influence of Evolving Technologies
to our Life Style

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4.

Influence of Evolving Technologies
to our Life Style• The Internet is getting a general tool in our life style likeautomobile.
• Digital divide is a crucial problem in our time.
• Digital divide for hardware ( infrastructure ) andDigital divide for users.
• User interface design is important.
mobile phone or digital TV are good gateway to the Net.
• Text Interface -> GUI -> tangible ?

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4.

Influence of Evolving Technologies
to our Life Style
Net Shopping• 95-00 narrow band
BtoB BtoC yahoo rakuten• 00-03 broad band
BtoBtoC travel site online stock exchange• 03-06 ubiquitous network
CtoC PtoP mixi skype• 06machine to machine
recommended shopping or services by agent ( A.I. )

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4.

••••

Influence of Evolving Technologies
to our Life Style

Political Scene - Digital democracy 1992 U.S. Presidency Election First Internet election
Clinton-Gore： information super highway
1996 U.S. Presidency Election Email or Web for campaign
2004 U.S. Presidency Electionaccess number on the day before election：
Bush: 310 thousand Kerry: 300 thousand
from Web to blog
Political campaign in a virtual world ( a Mayer of the west coastin the U.S.)

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web society in the future37web society in the future
three view points
platform
individual
contents＋the next paradigm

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data as platform

サービス
サービス

データ

アプリケーション

ブラウザ

ブラウザ

OS

OS

OS

ハードウェアハードウェアハードウェア“Data as next intel inside”

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two models on the platform

サービス
APIAPIサービス
データ

・ platform supplier・ landowner・ hard to join
・ highly added value
・ Google, Amazon, Yahood etc.

データ

・ platform user・ tenancy
・ easy to join
・ low added value
・ mashup etc.

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“attention” as another platform

集約
Long Tail を提供する
プラットフォーム・サービス

再分配
Long Tail になる

The more the site gets the attention, the more it gets powerful.
attention divide41

evolving Web platform

Two next generation platform
dataattention
Two service propose strategies
landowner
tenancy

42individual and contents are in the next chance
But, one thing．．．．．
プロの執筆者
ブロガー
提供者

参加者

読者
読者

傍観者
既存メディアブログ
参加型コンテンツ

Web2.0participant is less than １％43

from virtual world to real society

data combination
traffic medicine distribution
biological activity
position sensing
evolving hardware
sensors analysis algorithm

display devices

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the next paradigm

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What’s Next ?
MashUp type Businessnot only on the Net
but also in the Real46

Thank you

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