In addressing the topic of biomimetics and mobile technology, I would like to broaden the scope of the discussion slightly by considering the issue from the perspective of biology and design. The image of biology in recent times has been strongly linked with genetic engineering and the manipulation of genes. For example, the good design prize for 2004 was awarded to the Suntory blue rose, the world's first blue rose, which was created using techniques that included transgenics. Similar to the selective breeding of rice plants, the challenge is to produce roses in many different colors. It seems we have now reached a stage where such things can be treated as a design.

Although I don't yet have the technology to perform genetic manipulation myself, my interest has been raised by the fact that, in recent times, the threshold for this technology has been lowered to the point where it is possible to perform transgenic experiments using the sort of items you would find in a kitchen. However, rather than this field of bioinformatics, my interests lie more towards the combination of computers and more substantial things like "natural materials" and "natural phenomenon". I am currently working on various different "hybridization" techniques that combine computers with nature.

I would like to discuss the term "bio" in a somewhat conceptual way. In 1735, Carl von Linne divided the natural world into the three categories: animal, plant, and mineral. Whereas both animals and plants are living things, the mineral category suggests things like rocks, iron, and concrete, but also includes other inorganic substances such as water. Another perspective is that, since animals, plants, and minerals can be seen as part of the cycle of the natural world, life can be thought of as a broad system that includes all three categories.

Recently, there have been attempts to reinterpret the concept of ecology based on the term "symbiosis" by, for example, Assistant Professor Osamu Sakura of Tokyo University who wrote the book "Modern Perspectives on Environmental Issues". Symbiosis with nature is not the only kind. Symbiosis also exists between people and computers. I would even go so far as to suggest there is symbiosis between nature and computers. Traditionally there have been two broad factions in the field of ecology. Whereas the hippy-like view of the Bau-biologie (German for "building biology") faction is that we should get back to nature so "people can return to their primeval state", the eco-tech faction has a forward-looking view of human-created technology and hopes to create a better environment by combining nature with technology. Although the issues relating to the environment are many-faceted, my personal desire is to aim for harmony between "technology" and "nature" as promoted by the eco-tech faction.

This project splits open roadside stones and inserts an LED and electronic circuit. If there are stones lying on the road, the tendency, particularly when we are children, is to want to play hopscotch and kick the stones along. When we do this, the LED inside the rock turns on and starts blinking. As the stone is kicked along, it learns the rhythm of that person's kicking resulting in a rhythmic blinking to the timing of the hopscotch game.

If another stone is within a 2m radius, the two stones communicate. This is a bit like the way dogs being taken out for a walk will communicate amongst themselves regardless of what their owners want. Because the stones initiate communication with each other as they are being kicked along, this encourages communication between the people as well.

In the case of mobile devices, the usual way that people currently think about using this technology is to hold it in their hands or wear it on their body. It seems to me, though, that if we treated computers a little more harshly and roughly, such as kicking them or throwing them, this too would provide a "sense of mobility". Although some people may react angrily with comments such as "what do you mean by kicking electronic circuits with your feet", the technology has certainly become more robust. I believe that the concept of mobile technology in the future will involve an approach that is different to the way we currently cradle it in our hands through concern for its fragility.

Next I would like to talk about plants.
Plants react with great sensitively to the activities of people around them such as movement, temperature, humidity, smell, or people talking nearby. This project uses changes in bioelectrical potential to detect this sort of environmental information. In other words, we are proposing to use plants as sensors.

A consequence of this is that anyone would be able to make sensor-using gadgets. You could, for example, take a plant from your garden and create a sensor just by connecting it to your computer. The way I see it working is that you could create an open development environment by connecting the plant to a USB port, LAN, or other interface. You could then, for example, say "this plant is sensitive to smell, so lets use it as an odor sensor".

In addition to sensors, I am also working on using leaves as speakers, using sunflowers.The quality of the sound they generate is quite good. Even the bass notes are reproduced well.

The interesting thing is how different plants have different sensor properties. Trees, for example, can receive radio waves. You can listen to the radio just by connecting headphones to a tree. Plants are also able to detect things such as the vibration from passing trains. If plants are brought close together they react by exchanging signals between themselves. Of course, I have no idea what it is they are saying to each other.

I have also produced a soundtrack that I can carry around by converting changes in the bioelectric potential of plants into sound and listening to it on headphones. Because plants by their nature are unable to move, if you move into an arid area where the land has dried out, the sound quickly looses its energy. It is like the way a plant's energy suddenly disappeared when I was doing a demonstration near Tokyo Station the other day, but quickly returned to normal once it got back to Shonandai.

To celebrate their 45th anniversary, the Information Processing Society of Japan put out a call for papers on the topic "Looking Forward to Information Science & Technology in 50 Years Time". The title of the winning paper was "Restoring Spirits and Ghosts" which argued in a logical way using a statistical approach similar to population demographics that the materialistic richness of 20th century science and technology was shifting towards a spiritual richness. Along with proposals such the WHO "changing its definition of health" from "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." to "Health is a dynamic state of complete physical, mental, spiritual and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.", this is a very interesting topic and I believe it is intimately related to my fields of study such as user interface research. In other words, you could say that applications to this spiritual care aspect are possible.

There are many different ways of thinking about the future and one approach is to consider linking together very distant and unrelated things. Computers and plants, for example. Although these are quite different things, it is this that brings about the novelty. It seems to me that bringing together unusual things may give us a glimpse of the future.

Watanabe Now that we have heard Mr. Tanaka's presentation, I would like to open the floor to general discussion.

Mr. Matsuo You talked about being able to listen to the radio using a tree, but what sort of equipment is needed to do this? 

For example, you also talked about putting a circuit inside a stone, but how large is the circuit?

Takahashi Regarding the use of LEDs to grow plants. I think this is about accelerated growth, that is, it works by using particular components only of sunlight, but surely there are also some negatives to go with what this achieves?

Mr. Tanaka Although it is abnormal in the broad sense of the term, when plants are grown for commercial purposes they may, for example, have a bad shape or grow in an unwanted direction, and LEDs can be used to correct this. In this case, the LEDs are used to correct the abnormality, so overall I think there is a balance.

It is similar to how spending too much time at a sun bed salon is also bad for you.
Still, it is not as intrusive as interfering with genes.

Mr. Tanaka Yes. A feature of the plant sensors is that they register the combined effect of many different environmental factors and the problem is how to interpret this.

Rather than providing precise measurements such as degrees of temperature or humidity, plant sensors are likely to use new measurement scales that represent a combination of these factors, using parameters such as plant growth rate and plant bioactivity or sensitivity.

Mr. Tanaka I think you are using the word spirituality in its religious meaning, to do with the soul. The concept being talking about was somewhat different, I think.

The paper makes the point that Yaoyorozu (the idea that nature is filled with multitudinous spirits), ghosts, and so on are not unique to Japan and that Yaoyorozu-like ideas appear in fables and stories from around the world such as Aesop's Fables and the Brothers Grim. The issue is how can these things be expressed using computers. Maybe it means design that incorporates this feeling of slight psychological distance, the way that, although they exist alongside people, they don't get too close.

Mr. Matsuo Although I like the ideas we have heard about today, I suspect that with the emphasis our society places on things like practicality and convenience, they are not likely to be accepted soon.

I have thought a lot about at what point in the future people will start to need these sorts of interfaces and I am particularly interested in what sort of triggers lead to new interfaces being introduced into our daily lives.

Mr. Matsuo Put that way, the spread of computers up to the present day has followed a somewhat different path to the interesting interfaces we have been talking about today. It's a different sort of consumer behavior to the way people choose to use something because it is convenient. It is this difference that interests me.

Computers combine many elements such as convenience, cost, and design, but these interesting interfaces won't be widely adopted unless they have something different that computers don't have.

Mr. Takahashi Perhaps it is similar to the way Mr. Tanaka challenged conventional thinking earlier when he suggested "its OK to kick a computer".

Using music players as an example, a technical feature of Walkmans back in the days of cassette tapes was that Sony had technology that drastically reduced the amount of tape wow and flutter. This lead to the perception of reliability you get from Swiss manufacturers or, alternatively, from Sony. The end result of this drive mechanism was the Walkman, and this changed the way people thought about listening to music, from being something you do sitting down in a room to something you can do as you walk around.

The arrival of the iPod lead to another change in perception because it eliminated the influence that the moving parts had on sound quality. This means it can be used when jogging.

Mr. Takahashi We talked previously about the definition of words, and designers are not just responsible for the external appearance of a product. The conceptual work that takes place beforehand is also particularly important. It is not just about drawing up a design plan.

A design like the iPod could just as easily be produced by a South Korean manufacturer, but it depends on what sort of lifestyles or concepts can be designed around the device. If these conditions aren't present, the product may achieve a certain level of sales, but it would be unlikely spread any further.

Mr. Tanaka That's right. However, communication is an extremely subtle thing.

In the case of communication between dogs being taken out for a walk, for example, their owners may exchange greetings without going so far as to engage in conversation, but this is still a type of communication. Even if the communication is not particularly deep, communication can take place with many different levels of engagement and connection. I don't see it as the case that simply coming together is enough.

Mr. Watanabe In terms of communication, is it about designing the extent of engagement?

If we are to talk about communication, I think there is a "fellowship of man"-type obsession that there needs to be some sharing of opinions and mutual understanding. However, some communication can just leave you feeling that "this person's not like me, I can't understand them", and perhaps it is about designing for this sort of engagement.

Mr. Maeda Considering practicality and convenience, if we discuss the issue from the viewpoint of how extensively an idea will be accepted by the wider world, I don't see that as being innovation.

We are not being entirely serious, being brought up with the somewhat self-indulgent idea that "this is what I think, lets try it out".

Mr. Takahashi Showing quantitative specifications such as highlighting that the device can store tens of thousands of songs is certainly easy to understand, but I think the fact that you can use it while jogging, as we talked about earlier, is the more attractive idea. Even if it can store tens of thousands of songs listening to all of them would probably take a couple of years. Rather, I am more interested in how you identify the songs that you like.

Returning to the subject of design, with the iPod you could say that you are not paying for the design but for the world that is carried along with the iPod. This is like the way that buying a Ferrari motor car is not just about buying something for the pleasure of owning the thing itself, but also about buying all the associations it brings, about the sort of world you can be part of and the interactions with people that come from owning a Ferrari.

Mr. Maeda Speaking as someone who has had a lot of experience in this field, my observation is that, unless you create a capability for mutual understanding amongst difference, they will tend to become closed systems.

One of the fascinations of Tokyo is not that it was created by a special group of people but rather that it has always functioned with its own metabolism. For example, students attend universities like Waseda, Tokyo University, and Keio for a mere four years but each university still somehow maintains a particular atmosphere, university character, and personality. This is similar to what you were talking about earlier where buying a Ferrari also buys a particular world along with it. For example, each university has its own idiosyncrasies and someone may admire that atmosphere before they enter it or have the desire to become part of that domain even though they still don't know what it is like on the inside. Then, once they enter the university they become part of what creates this personality, and they keep a certain sense of solidarity even after they graduate. These sorts of relationships which are common in the wider world have yet to establish themselves on the internet, I believe.

We feel this in a fragmented way and people who were involved in the internet around 1996 have this sense of being alumni. While this certainly exists, the communities that exist on the net only have not yet achieved this sort of depth in relationships.

These things that words can't express, perhaps what was referred to as soul or spirit in the paper we were discussing earlier, are becoming more and more important on the internet, I believe. Amongst Americans there seems to be a strong desire for this sort of thing.

Mr. Tanaka This prompts the question of how to define environment issues. The term covers many different areas such as political issues, social issues, issues relating to living things, and issues relating to city dwellers.

In terms of issues relating to living things, I feel that the question of whether to protect these or to intervene, and so on, also depends on the particular circumstances.

Mr. Tanaka Yes. The interesting thing about the paper was to do with the history of ghosts and I believe I have taken that point on board. However, perhaps I have not been so diligent in reading the works of this author. That is, I am thinking of something different.

There is a point at which our ideas diverge. This research involves building pet robots and using techniques like voice recognition to consider all sorts of different interactions, so while I can relate to the concept and how it fits in with current times, it is different to the things that I want to build.

Mr. Maeda 
Mr. Maeda Although these people are treating it quite seriously, I think that the way young people who don't know about this go about things may well be quite close to this approach.

Even if they aren't doing it in an orthodox way, there are moments when they come close to this.

Mr. Takahashi Talking about reading an atmosphere, did any of you do long-distance swimming as a child? Sometimes you would notice sudden changes in the sea water temperature and that really made you feel afraid.

This fear of the unknown does not arise from rational thinking but from wondering "why?". I believe that ghosts are a manifestation of the way that the functioning of our psychology reacts to this "why".

To generate this atmosphere, I would create a situation in which the air temperature in a room suddenly changes at a particular place, or a sound is generated that can only be heard by a person standing a very specific location. Unfortunately, these do not lend themselves to easily understand visualizations like those in this paper.

Mr. Tanaka People tend to anthropomorphize all sorts of different things and I have doubts about anthropomorphizing this in that way, about trying to give shape to this atmosphere.

Mothers tell their children about water spirits in order to warn them about playing close to rivers and waterways and in this context the spiritual entity serves as a communication tool. If we were to anthropomorphize this in the form of a robot, the question is whether we could call it a communication tool.

Mr. Takahashi Since the things around us didn't tell us anything, there was the ability to make the analogy with our own sensors. But nowadays, it seems that expressions such as "look at my eyes and don't say anything" don't work anymore and there are many examples of communication that amount to "I didn't know, nobody told me anything".

Because I think that not doing anything until we have some sort of contact from the devices and other things around us would perhaps lead to such extreme examples as someone saying "I didn't water the plants because they never asked me", saying I emphasized this aspect, even if it is ubiquitous, is not quite correct, although this is just repeating what I said earlier.

Mr. Matsuo Yes. What occurs to me is to think that things like memory and experience also play a part as well as our five senses. Up until now, verbal communication with devices had a central role in my proposal, but I have now started to think about non-verbal expressions and outputs and how it would be if the technology could support awareness.

Mr. Takahashi Memory and also imagination. This is communication.

Imagination has a large role to play in non-verbal communication.

Mr. Takahashi  Some pop stars exhibit manic behavior and you have to wonder how their husbands cope.

They suddenly come up with things from out of left field. How do you go about raising children in such an environment?