It will take some time to get used to “Wearable Tech”

This picture is about 10 years old. It was taken when I was at the MIT Media Lab. It’s not the Google Glass that is currently making headlines. At the time, some researchers were experimenting with 24-hr wearable computers. Now that attention is being paid to “wearable” tech, my reaction is, “Eh? We’re still not there yet?” The following is an excerpt from a magazine article that I wrote in April, 1999. Here at MIT, wearable tech has been...

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Unification of Intellectual Property Policy

 The cabinet decided upon a basic direction for the creation of intellectual property policy for the first time. I’m glad to see that they have recognized the importance of an intellectual property policy. The important point regarding this policy is that it must involve “cooperation and integration.”  First, there’s “Big Data.”  This time, I’ll take a close look at big data in terms of the vision for intellectual property. How should we use publicly shared data? This is an important element of IP policy. On the other hand, this...

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A Vision for Three Directions in Intellectual Property

 The government intellectual property agency has proposed an “IP Vision.” It summarizes the past 10 years of strategy and sets the strategy for the next 10 years. As chairman, I was responsible for coordinating this project. In the beginning I wanted to talk about the importance of intellectual property to Japan and to outline the priorities contained in the proposal. The message would be called, “The importance of taking a global leadership role in intellectual property.” For Japan to take a favorable position in this era of globalization...

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Conversion of the Use Policy of IT

 According to the WEF (World Economic Forum), Japan leads the world in terms of consumer sophistication. That is Japan’s strength. According to a report by Cisco, Japan is number 1 in terms of the amount of data per mobile user, at five times the global average. The country produces information largely targeted at the younger generation. In Japan we should concentrate on policies that help with user literacy.  There are three issues to address: Low public use of IT, ignorance of IT at the management level, and IT ignorance at the societal...

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The Advancement of Open Data

 In the policy room, my work involving big data was comprised of increasing the amount of data and raising awareness of big data in society. This brings us to Open Data. Starting at the federal and local government level, public data must be released for use by citizens such that it might lead to the creation of new services. I took part in the “Consortium on the Promotion and Distribution of Open Data” as Director and chairman of utilization and dissemination. The event was attended by relevant government ministries and agencies, local government...

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