Yasuo Kuniyoshi
Professor
Graduate School of Information Science and Techology, The University of Tokyo

This year marks the sixth call for proposals on “Co-Creating New Society with Advanced Technologies,” a Special Subject launched in 2018. Over this period, digital technologies have increasingly penetrated our lives. Needless to say, this penetration accelerated rapidly through the COVID-19 pandemic, and it seems awareness of the issues surrounding the question of what advanced technologies and society ought to be like has advanced into another realm.

Given this remarkable social change, the program called for individual research project proposals as a new initiative starting from this year. While in the past we have awarded to grants to joint research proposals led by young researchers, we have added support for individual research projects because we considered there may also be a need to support budding research based on even greater free thinking in order to address the use of rapidly diversifying advanced technologies and the new issues that accompany these technologies. Partly because it is the first year, there were a total of 12 individual research applications, which is not very high. However, the proposals came from diverse fields, and also included some ambitious proposals which went beyond the researcher’s own field of expertise to tackle ideological issues around the use of advanced technologies.

The Special Subject received 19 joint research project applications, and selected five projects. Five projects were also selected from among the 12 individual research project applications. The number of applications tended to be somewhat lower than in previous years. However, the research projects that were selected were all characterized by an awareness of the problems arising from the current situation.

Below, I will introduce two joint research and two individual research projects from among the selected projects.

<Joint Research>
D22-ST-0013 Fumiya Akasaka
(Researcher, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology)
Project Title: Infrastructuring Living Labs: Building Infrastructure to Support Living Lab Practices
The “living lab” approach in which diverse stakeholders try to solve issues facing local communities through “co-creation” is gradually increasing in Japan. As an approach that does not focus solely on corporate and technical perspectives, it is expected to be particularly effective in the provision of social services using digital technology. However, the process of discussion by small numbers of people, which forms the core of the Living Lab, is not a familiar approach in Japanese society. This research project will focus on this point and is a pioneering attempt to clarify the Living Lab practices that suit Japanese society and to build Living Lab infrastructure with the aim of using digital technologies. The project will refer to democratic processes in Northern Europe, which is considered the birthplace of the Living Lab approach.

D22-ST-0019 Kenji Nakamura
(Associate Professor, Center for Mathematics and Data Science, Gunma University)
Project Title: Basic Research on a Medication Assistance System Using Metaverse Space and NFC to Establish a Relationship of Mutual Assistance
This project aims to use advanced technologies to create a mechanism for medication management based on mutual assistance among the elderly. The combination of the elderly with the metaverse and NFC is very surprising. However, a demonstration involving 100 people is already underway, making it a unique and effective initiative. The advantage of metaverse space is that it is possible for people to interact without revealing their identities. In the future, this project is expected to contribute to important discussions, such as the fields in which this advantage can be applied.

<Individual Research>
D22-ST-0006 Keita Kusunose
(Visiting Researcher, Research Organization for Regional Alliances, Kochi University of Technology)
Project Title: Construction of a Local Cultural Resource Inheritance Support Model Using a Digital Platform: Through Practical Activities Using Public Participatory GIS
This is an ambitious project which aims to construct a support model for cultural resource inheritance in a local area using an open-sourced GIS. It is a unique project that will try to address an important challenge faced in the study of history in the past, namely citizen collaboration in cultural resource inheritance, by utilizing low- budget data that can be easily accessed by anyone.

D22-ST-0007 Masanori Kobayashi
(Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, Yamagata University)
Project Title: Cost and Benefit of Technology Use on Human Cognition
It is no longer unusual for technology to replace human cognitive functions, such as saving a photograph instead of making a memo or automated driving. Therefore, this project will attempt to identify the impact that the use of digital technologies has on human cognitive functions, both in terms of merits and demerits. The project is unique in examining how cognitive functions change depending on the amount of trust placed in assistive technologies such as computers and in studying more comprehensive cognitive functions such as memory, attention, and thought. It is hoped this study will develop into a larger research project aimed at the creative utilization of technology based on the knowledge obtained.

This year, as in previous years, there tended to be many projects involved in specific utilization of advanced technologies. On the other hand, there were also several projects questioning the relationship between advanced technologies and society and the new changes. With regards to the latter type of project, ideally, I would have preferred more persuasive explanations about how the involvement of advanced technology is inevitable in the issues set out. As the relationship between advanced technologies and human beings deepens, I hope there will be more and more ambitious projects that rock the very framework of the existing social system in the future.