The researchers working on the project are well aware of the urgency and imminence of the tasks and decided to collaborate. In the first year, the organizational and administrative decisions are given due attention, thus the pricipal investigators discussing the method of data collection and organization and the methods of creating a milieu for mutual understanding. Monthly meetings are to be held at each site to work on the theoretical and actual sides of the problems the project is tackling. The minutes and presentation materials go in the public domain soon after the meetings. One or two college level introductory anthologies suitable for textbooks in classrooms are to be published, in Japanese, to descibe the the state of the art in this newly rising ethical field.
Bimonthly newsletters is to start to provide materials for public discussion.
Monthly workshops at each site will continue. The database will be maintained up to date, binonthly newsletters circulated, and monthly meetings held, with a specific intention of presenting, in December 2000, a set of theoretical and practical proposals as an outcome of the research done on the project in the three years. An international workshop will be held to discuss and review the proposals in March 2001. Publication of textbooks will be enhanced at college and other levels, have a national conference in cooperation with learned societies of ethics and information technology. Revisions and editions will be made to the final proposal, which includes theoretical demarcations of the field, definitions of the basic categories and terms, and an analytic framework for the contemporary and future cases.