The Paraconsistent World

■ The Paraconsistent World

The Paraconsistent World is a book by Jun Sawada, President of NTT.

I underestimated this amazing book.

Amazingly profound ideology and management philosophy underlaid IOWN, the grand technology concept that followed INS, VIP, and NGN.

Appearing amid the DX boom, this digital book connects the opposing sides of digital and analog, global and local, and centralization and decentralization. It accommodates contradictions and conflicts between the pairs as it addresses the shift from trade-offs to paraconsistency (i.e., simultaneous realization).

Posing questions about homogeneous thinking and the data supremacy toward which a logic-centered world has headed since the times of classical Greek philosophy, the book seeks ideas and technologies that fuse East and West.

I would not have imagined that such thinking was the current beneath IOWN.

In a story from 1992, the book relates how Shumpei Kumon and other GLOCOM members gave NTT executives their first introduction to the Internet, only to receive an unfavorable response. This was no surprise, as the technology represented a full-on negation of the existing telecommunications business. Jun 

The book's author, Jun Sawada, reports that he served as the secretariat for the NTT side. A GLOCOM member introduced him to the discussions as "a person destined for importance."

Three decades later, Mr. Sawada had become the president who orchestrated the company's transition to IP and the end to its telephony era.

Shumpei Kumon has recently become disenchanted with Internet society. To address the challenges of surveillance capitalism, social disparities, and information panic, he reportedly issued a call for three reforms: technology, social responsibility, and trust in information.

President Sawada states his intent to address those. This is a dialogue between giants.

NTT is also undertaking surprising management reforms, including the reorganization of its group, the strengthening of telework, and the discontinuation of staff relocation assignments.

President Sawada exerts a steady hand over this, wielding both technology and ideas.

I intend to keep a close eye on how he navigates the post-pandemic turbulence.