Entries Selected by the First Round of Judging
From amongst the many entries, the judging held in late September selected five entries to proceed to the next round. Unfortunately, one of the selected contestants has resigned, so only the following four contestants will carry on to prepare second round entries. |
Sho Matsuo
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Yaoyorozu System ~Interacting with Objects~ |
Kazunori Gumizawa
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The Form of Mobile Communications in 2029 |
Tetsuya Yamamoto
|
Mobile Future |
| Keisuke Fukushima |
SNS.plug-in |
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 Student
members introduce themselves
The work session started with each of the four students who passed the first round
of judging introducing themselves.
|
 Mr.
Matsuo My reason for entering this competition was because the topic is
quite close to my own area of research which is in a related field. I am doing
research into wearable devices, particularly in the area of human interfaces.
I foresee the world in 2029 as being one of ubiquitous technology which means
that we will be able to interact with information wherever we go. In relation
to this, my particular interest is in the area of wearable technology. The idea
I have proposed for the competition is called the Yaoyorozu System which allows
people and objects to interact. Although there are already many systems that involve
interaction between people and objects, the difference with my idea is that the
information system is worn on the body of the user which means that it is available
for interacting with objects at any time, and this enables a new type of interface
involving a consensus-building between the person and object. |
Mr. Gumizawa The idea
for my entry came about when I wondered how it would be if a person's "pretend
world" could be used as a tool for communication. For example, I wondered
if a new form of communication could be brought about by reproducing the sort
of rules we used to come up with in pretend play as children (such as drawing
a line on the ground that you aren't allowed to cross over) and realizing these
around the city in virtual form. For my entry in the second round of the competition,
I hope to produce a visual representation of how this new type of communication
would be built.
Mr. Yamamoto Although I am currently engaged in
engineering research into wearable technology, my focus in thinking about my entry
was on communication. For example, a mobile phone is not just a "tool for
receiving information", it can also be used as a "tool that continuously
broadcasts your information". If broadcasting your own information becomes
part of your fashion sense (how you present yourself to the world), I believe
that this represents a new form of communication.
Mr. Fukushima My specialty is urban analysis.
For my entry, I thought about mobile phones as devices with the potential to transform
urban areas. My starting point was to think about how to combine successfully
the city environment with means of linking people together such as network-based
communities. I wondered whether it would be possible to link the mobile phone,
currently the most personal of internet devices, with the urban environment. |
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Mr. Tanaka's Comments
As Mr. Tanaka participated in the work session on-line from his laboratory at
the Shonan Fujisawa Campus of Keio University, he gave his comments on the student
entries via a pre-recorded video. |
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Comments to Mr. Matsuo
I think your entry is very well put together. However, I believe getting people
to perceive manmade objects as animate and having the characteristics of living
things ultimately requires you to deal with problems such as the representation
and interface, or in other words, designing the objects from the perspective of
what sort of psychological impression they make.
- Comments to Mr. Gumizawa
While I found your entry to be very fascinating, I felt that the feasibility of
your ideas reduced with each page. For example, I felt there was inadequate explanation
of what actually happens in the part of your entry where you talk about "places
linking together". Also, a number of things need further investigation such
as how projection-based interfaces would work in sunlight.
- Comments to Mr. Yamamoto
I felt there was some separation between what you wrote about and what you showed
visually. That is, you presented various different ideas in your text but your
visual presentation was limited to the visual parts. I would like to see this
fleshed out some more.
- Comments to Mr. Fukushima
While I can fully understand your entry, I don't understand the need for it. I
would like to see you add more detail to show what needs gave rise to these ideas
and what problems they solve. In doing this, I would also like to see you not
relying on past material but instead representing things that show the nature
of this new space.
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Overall comments
I felt that all of these entries lacked in something, whether it was that the
ideas were expressed in the text but had limited visual representation, or alternately
that the visuals were good but the text was inadequate, and that there was insufficient
consideration given to the realizability and other details of the ideas.
I would like to see you work on these areas for the second round entries.
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Discussion
After viewing Mr. Tanaka's comments, the discussion continued with the other members
giving their comments to the students. |
 Professor
Nakajima Although I know that trying to think about the world in 2029 is
difficult, I would like to see some more done to fill out that area. For example,
back in 1979, PCs did not yet exist and telephones were the main form of communications.
Based on my own impressions, we thought that the wristwatch phone in Dick Tracey
was cool but we did not think it would be technologically possible for numerous
technical reasons. Nowadays, however, devices like this are no longer a dream.
If there is this much of a gap between 1979 and now, then the gap between now
and 2029 is likely to be just as large. I would like you to revise your entries
in this spirit.
Another point is that I think you largely thought up your various worlds on your
own, isn't that right? If possible, I would like you to discuss your ideas with
people around you to flesh out your ideas by providing more details, explaining
what makes them necessary, and so on. |
 Mr.
Watanabe Our day-to-day lives have not changed that much over the last
25 years, nor are they likely to over the next 25 years. What has changed. I believe,
is the quality of those experiences.
For example, although the act of communicating has not itself changed, the way
we made appointments before we had mobile phones is something we can't even imagine
doing now. This is an example of how technology has changed the quality of the
experience. I would like to see you thinking about how you can incorporate these
changes in the quality of our experiences into your entries.
One more point. Technology in the past has progressed incrementally. A typical
example is how pictures were added to radio, these then became color and later
high-definition. However, there may be things that people need that are not incremental
in this way. I would like you to think in terms of what will be picked up and
what will be added, and also what will be lost from this totality, if technology
progresses incrementally. |
 Mr.
Takahashi Although some of what I have to say repeats the previous comments,
I believe it is important to summarize the preconditions for the entries. That
is, I believe it is necessary that the preconditions of the entries themselves
are summarized to show what it is you are focusing on and how you have fleshed
this out. Unfortunately, the entries seemed incomplete in this respect which made
them weaker with respect to aspects such as detail and overall necessity. |
 Mr.
Maeda I would like to see an explanation of what services are needed in
what environments. I don't just mean speculative ideas about in the future that
just add more and more and more, this could also include ideas about how existing
problems could be solved.
The future is about more than just things that do not exist in the present. |
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| Mr. Watanabe I would like
to hear how each of the entrants interpreted the competition's topic of "mobiles
in 2029". |
|  Mr.
Matsuo My first though was about the ubiquitous society. I started by thinking,
if we live in a society where we can interact with information at anytime, what
would this mean. This would involve attaching RFIDs to objects and communicating
using wearable computers and, based on this technological platform, I imagined
a "convenient way of life" that would support our day-to-day tasks in
various different ways.
Mr. Gumizawa I felt that I could not really
imagine the year 2029. However, one thing I though would not change is that there
would be tools available for communication. Whereas mobile phones are limited
to communication based on voice and text, I imagined that advancing technology
would support more physical communication.
Mr. Yamamoto My first impression was that it was
too far into the future. In any case, I imagined an optimistic future. Given the
theme of ubiquitous technology, I thought in terms of communication tools as I
thought many other different things would emerge.
Mr. Fukushima I did not think of 2029 as
something out of science fiction that I couldn't imagine. I thought that, although
many different devices would have been integrated, our way of life would not have
changed that much. |
Mr. Takahashi Of the current
entries, how many of you asked for the opinions of a number of other people?
The concept behind this competition is not to envisage an image of the future
made up of form and color in the way that a designer might view things, but rather
to get some fresh ideas from students. Despite this, I felt that many of the entries
were "tainted by worldliness". Somewhat like a business model.
Speaking from my own expectations, I would have liked to see things that doubled
or squared, rather than being just incremental, but instead of finding any entries
that went as far as this I was left with an impression of style over substance. |
Mr. Watanabe Rather than
attempting to predict the reality of "how things will be in 2029", I
would have liked to see entries that had a clear world view such as dealing with
particular problems and showing logical consistency. In science fiction, stories
tend to be not so much about saying "this is what the future will be like"
as about the problems that need to be solved in that world of the future.
Rather than thinking about what the world will really be like in 2029, this means
thinking about how people will face up to problems, how you want them to deal
with these problems, and what form technology will take. |
Professor Nakajima It may
seem to you that, despite being told that you got past the first round of judging,
all we are doing is growling at you, but I believe that these points will be helpful
to you in your future research.
Also, I have the impression that technology itself is slowly being rendered down.
Of course, I had hoped that this impression would have been dispelled by the students'
ideas. |
Mr. Takahashi Realistically,
unless some breakthrough occurs in basic research, it is difficult to make advances
in technology.
In the work I have been involved with to date, there have been times when I have
kept thinking and thinking, trying out different combinations. However, I think
this sort of experience is an essential part of being a student. In this situation,
it is important that you talk to many different people instead of trying to work
it out single-handedly. |
| Mr. Maeda That's right, we
want you to succeed in making it to the next level. Because we can see the potential,
we want you to incorporate something that I would call "alluring" into
your entries. In general, many of the submitted entries assumed a high level of
morality, but don't forget to ask the question "what if this is misused?".
Whenever leading-edge technology is introduced to society, I think there will
be a danger that new ways of misusing it will be found. Although you may have
decided to play down that aspect of your ideas because this is a competition,
I think you should include it in the entries for the second round of judging. |
| Mr. Tanaka In your thinking,
you may need to get away from constraints such as the laboratories where you work.
If you take yourself away from your university research you may find your thinking
opens up in new areas. |
Mr. Takahashi That's right.
At this stage you are still not in a position to polish your ideas into shape,
but instead you need to flesh them out further.
Also, while we may be able to make comments when it comes to the stage of polishing
your ideas, I don't think we can say anything in regards to "what should
I add to my ideas". When you add things, the question of "who thought
of that idea" always arises and for us to add our own ideas would defeat
the purpose of the competition. |
| Mr. MatsuoI certainly felt
that "convenient technology" has already reached a limit. Instead, I
considered ideas that are "somewhat inconvenient but still useful".
By inserting a process of interaction into communications with something that
works simply at the flick of a switch, it may be a little "troublesome"
or "inconvenient" but I thought that the true nature of the thing or
a different awareness might be present. |
Mr. Maeda If a benefit or
pleasant feeling compensates for the inconvenience, that may be right. However,
if this only involves inconvenience when you just want to go from the third floor
to the first floor, it is doubtful whether you can call it technology. It seems
to me that the intention is important.
When I talked before about things being "alluring" or "dangerous",
I meant the danger that exists in those benefits themselves. |
| Professor Nakajima An extreme
example is the relationship between atomic energy and atomic bombs. |
| Mr. Maeda That's right. About
ten years ago I made a system similar to an SNS but if this had spread into the
wider world, I worried that it would have brought with it a risk of seeing something
that I didn't want to see because it went beyond the existing forms of trust and
other personal interactions. For example, as a result of making interaction between
people easier to understand and more convenient, I might have been exposed to
something unpleasant that I didn't want to see such as the ungratefulness of my
girlfriend. These are the sorts of possibilities I would like you to think about. |
| Professor Nakajima This
keyword concept of "inconvenience" that we have been talking about may
have all sorts of different meanings for Mr. Matsuo, but we are not aware of this
background. I hope you can make progress by fleshing this out so that we can slap
our knees and say"ah, now I see". |
| Mr. Maeda In this respect,
we may have an insufficient hunger for convenience. For example, although all
we want to do is to convey something to someone, we use all sorts of cumbersome
methods such as e-mail, mobile phones, blogs, and SNSs that seem very inconvenient
to me. I certainly don't want to add any additional inconveniences to these. |
Mr. Takahashi Professor Nakajima
used the term "keyword" but in using highly abstract keywords we shouldn't
forget that there is a certain fuzziness in how people interpret these. When we
look at a ball and assign it the keyword "round", there may be no fuzziness
in what this means to different people. But when we use keywords like "convenient"
or "inconvenient" these can leave quite different impressions. While
this fuzziness is not a bad thing in itself, if there is only fuzziness in the
scope of our imaginings, we need think about more progressive things.
In terms of philosophy, we can think of many different possibilities for keywords
such as "humanistic", "convenience", and "communication",
and I would like you to go through the experience of fleshing these out by thinking
them through thoroughly yourselves and discussing them with other people so that
you can decide which of the possible keyword definitions you wish to choose.
For example, an engineer's perspective of a Walkman is "quality sound in
smaller form". However, the general view of the Walkman once it had become
widespread was that the fashion for "using the Walkman to listen to music
away from home" was cultural. This is a much more ambiguous idea than the
engineer's original thought.
This fashion and culture may possibly be thought of as something "alluring"
or as something dangerous. It is important that you carry an awareness of this
potential ambiguity when you look into these keywords. |
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| Preparation of the second-round
entries |
Mr. Watanabe summarized the above discussion by identifying
the following necessary perspectives for the second-round entries:
- Scenarios and stories about experience
- Explain how you and other people will use the idea
- Brush-up inter-disciplinary ideas
- Member keywords including "alluring", "danger", and "ideas
that make you slap your knee" |
| Mr. Matsuo I would like
to think some more about how I can derive a story.
Mr. Gumizawa As I had few specific images, I would
like to aim for ideas that normal people can enjoy.
Mr. Yamamoto It is a very difficult topic but
I would like to take the opportunity to be involved.
Mr. Fukushima As I ignored some of the situations
in which my ideas would be used, I would like to make up for that. |
