Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
University, where I spent 4 years as director of the Japan Center and finally joined
Keio University 6 years ago.
While I was at the MIT, I also worked with SEGA on developing the TV game
console “Dreamcast” and the robot pet “Pooch”. Dreamcast was the first game ma-
chine that embedded internet connectivity. Pooch could communicate with users
with its small intelligence. They both aimed at digital connection and the ubiquitous
computing society. Both are still under construction.
What our team aimed at was to change computers into friends. Computers were
always either my teachers or my children. Computers taught me a lot of things like
a teacher. However, when I let my computer work, I had to command it one by one,
accurately, like I did to my child. So, we wanted to chat with him, laugh with him,
and play with him.
Today he is becoming my friend. He introduces many friends to me through social
network services (SNS), and he also responds to my obscure voice with applications
for smart phones like Siri. After Nintendo launched the “Family Computer” in 1983,
which enabled people everywhere on earth to play with visual images, a lot of media
other than TVs and telephones were developed. In Japan, these were called “new-
media”, and they were basically developments of analog hardware dreaming of an
“advanced information society”.
Ten years later, in the early 1990s, the “multi-media” boom happened. A move-
ment where various media were converted into digital devices represented by PCs,
mobile phones and the digital information highway called “the internet”.
Then, various kinds of “information products”—entertainment products, copy-
right Materials—were also unified into a unique notion termed “content”, and became
highlighted to be a hot issue.
But now, we are entering a new stage. Over the last few years, new media trends
have been spreading over in three dimensions, (1) multi-screen, (2) cloud network,
and (3) social service.
1. Device: Multi screen has come. The fourth media after TV, PC, and cell phone—
including smart phone, tablet PC, eBook reader, digital signage, smart TV, etc.—is
in our hands.
2. Network: Nationwide digital TV network is being established and broadband
networks are spreading. Both have been already achieved in Japan in 2011.
3. Service: SNS is drastically growing. Once it's said, “content is king”, but in Japan
content business has stagnated and SNS gets traffic and money instead.
Content is now used as a catalyst for communication on SNS, and SNS is becoming
the main stage for information business.
Three elements that form up media—device, network and service—are shifting
to the next stage.
