51st Anniversary of The Demo by “The Father of IT Revolution”, Douglas Engelbart
ITday Japan 2019
“To be IT surveillance society, or to be IT civil society, that is the question”
December 9, 2019
On December 9, 2019, at 19:30 (Japan time), “ITday Japan 2019 ~ To be IT surveillance society, or to be IT civil society, that is the question ~ ” will be held in Japan.
The main venue is Surugadai Hall, Digital Hollywood University in Ochanomizu, Tokyo. Click here to apply for participation.
In addition, organizations and individuals who wish to participate in various parts of Japan or around the world will be recruited. We plan to use YouTube Live, Zoom, etc. for distribution and interconnection. Please send any inquiries here.
What is “ITday”?
“ITday” is a worldwide symposium commemorating Douglas Engelbart’s “The Mother of All Demos” / The Demo”.
On 9 December 1968, The Demo, conducted by Engelbart on the theme of “A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect” became the source of personal computers and the Internet, and it was the starting point of the IT revolution. And this is an important point, but the current IT is still full of problems, and it has not reached the level of “augmenting Human Intellect” that Engelbart was thinking.Therefore, we set December 9 every year as “ITday (IT Anniversary Day)” and hold “ITday Symposium” all over the world. We would like to discuss about “How can we develop IT that augment human intellect ?”, and create such an ideal future society “IT civil society” by using such excellent IT. If you agree with the purpose of “ITday”, please join us.
On the day, we will reconfirm the vision of The Demo, then we will propose three solutions and develop them.
①From the Flyers style WWW that can only send fragments of information to the Books style WWW that can circulate and share valuable knowledge.
② Design effective online set of the “Books, Notebooks and Conversations” to augment human intellect.
③Amplify communication by AI push distribution.
Official Site : ITday（http://itday.club/）
Official Site : IT25・50（http://it2550.com/）
Date : Monday, December 9, 2019
Time : 19:30 – 22:00（Japan Time）
19:30 – 21:00 Symposium
Toshihiro Takagi (Creation Inc.)
Katsura Hattori (Journalist)
Tom Sonoda (Utagoe Inc. / Asteria ART LLC.)
Nozomi Takahashi (Osaka: Head of Greenery Association, an IT / creator exchange organization)
Aoki eiji (Oita: Director, Research Institute for Hypernetwork Society)
Otani Kazutoshi (Tokyo: Technology writer / MOSA Kanda)
21:00 – 22:00 Exchange meeting
Place : Digital Hollywood University in Ochanomizu, Tokyo (Access)
YouTube Live, Zoom (Ask)
US-China trade war, Hong Kong protests, “School Strike for Climate”
The big topics in 2019 were the US-China trade war, Hong Kong protests, and “School Strike for Climate”.
The US-China trade war and the Hong Kong protests revealed the reality of the horror of the Chinese IT surveillance society. The government will thoroughly control the thinking and behavior of all citizens using advanced IT technologies such as AI surveillance cameras, Electronic money, and Credit Score. The Dystopia predicted by George Orwell in the novel “1984” is being further strengthened by IT and is about to become a reality.
On the other hand, in August 2018, Swedish high school student Greta Thunberg started the “School Strike for Climate” alone, and her activity spread quickly through SNS such as Twitter, Instagram. The day before the United Nations Climate Action Summit in September 2019, it developed to millions of people, especially young people, marching in 150 countries around the world.
You can never solve the problem by just doing street demonstrations
The Hong Kong protests and “School Strike for Climate” have something in common.
It is that a lot of young people participate in street demonstrations and put “NO” against adult logic. “You are absolutely wrong. You are stealing our future!”.
Why have we been forced into this situation? In the first place, IT should have been a hope of solving various problems in modern society. However, IT has now become the root cause of worst situation. It is IT like Twitter that has created Greta’s enemy President Trump.
This is because governments, platformers, and investors dominate the overwhelming power of IT and prioritize their immediate interests. “I don’t care your future! My profit first !”
In comparison, citizens benefit from IT only a little and have no means other than street demonstrations. And you can never solve the problem by just doing street demonstrations.
Augment human Intellect and work together to solve problems
Then what should we do?
The answer is that citizens power up with IT.
The student movement 50 years ago proved that there is no help for intensifying street demonstrations. Helmets, square bars and stones could not change the society. At that time, many young people participated in the student movement, defeated and turned back to the society.
Instead, use IT to increase the ability of each citizen to think, act and cooperate to solve problems. And actually solve problems.
Augment human Intellect and work together to solve problems. It was the Demo which first explained its importance and showed how to do it.
Big Brother vs. Personal Computer Revolution
First, The Demo was the starting point of the “Personal Computer Revolution”. The symbol was Mouse (Computer Mouse) invented by Engelbart. At that time, the Computer meant Large Computers, which were dominated by governments and large companies. They were very expensive, difficult to operate, and could only be operated by specialists who acquired programming languages.
However, with a mouse, anyone can easily operate a computer !!
The results of The Demo was carried over to “Father of personal computer” Alan Kay’s “Dynabook Concept” and lead to inventions of Macintosh, Windows 95 (PC), iPhone (smartphone) and iPad (tablet). And the “personal computer revolution” still continues now.
Of particular note is the fact that in 1984, the world’s first commercial personal computer, Macintosh, appeared with CM “1984”. “Macintosh will release people from the rule of the Big Brother. So 1984 won’t be like “1984”.”
IT-armed Big Brother vs. Personal Internet Revolution
But what happened? We now have personal computers, smartphones and tablets. Nevertheless, it is under threat from an “IT surveillance society” that is dominated by the big brother who has been powered up by IT.
What should we do? The answer is clear.
If the Big Brother is powered up by IT, citizen must be more powered up by IT. What we need after the “Personal Computer Revolution” is the “Personal Internet Revolution”. Because we definitely owned devices, but the Internet beyond these devices are not yet our own. And the Internet is becoming the territory of the IT-armed Big Brother.
The ideal future of the Internet is “Online multi-user collaboration system”
So how can we proceed the “Personal Internet Revolution” ?
As of 1968, The Demo showed the answer.
Engelbart had a theme of “A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect” and demonstrated an online multi-user collaboration system called NLS (oN-Line System) for 90 minutes. We should design a system that could augment people’s intellect and collaborate online to solve various problems we faced. This was exactly the ideal future of the Internet.
Our future depends on wether we can augment individual intellect
How about the current Internet compared to ideal future of the Internet ?
You can see that it is far from ideal. Hate and fake are widespread, encouraging hostility and fragmentation rather than cooperating. Instead of augmenting human intellect, we are moving towards lowering human intellect. And the biggest problem is that the forces that deliberately spread hate and fake around the world are taking political power and are using IT to control the people. Not only in China. This trend is seen in countries around the world including Japan.
We are now at the turning point of “IT surveillance society” or “IT civil society”. And our future depends on wether we can augment individual intellect.
We will propose three solutions at “ITday Japan 2019”
At “ITday Japan 2019”, we will propose the following three solutions to solve the problems we face, and develop them.
①From the Flyers style WWW that can only send fragments of information to the Books style WWW that can circulate and share valuable knowledge.
② Design effective online set of the “Books, Notebooks and Conversations” to augment human intellect.
③Amplify communication by AI push distribution.
The biggest problem with the current Internet is that there is a huge amount of fragmented information flying without any context. What’s more, users have to make all their own decisions about what to choose, what information is correct, valuable, and safe. This situation is obviously too much for the user. Dramatic innovation is needed to further reduce the burden on users and to use the Internet safely and securely.
The first thing to improve is to be able to access a well-organized and value-added stock of knowledge as well as a fragmented flow of information. What should we do? The hint is in “Books”. The component of a book, “cover”, “table of contents”, “text”, “footnote”, “index”, and “colophon” are all IT that enables efficient random access to arbitrary information. “Libraries” are also IT that systematically organize books and enable efficient random access to arbitrary information.
On the other hand, the current WWW is a hypertext link of a large number of files unorganized. In other words, it ’s like a huge collection of flyers. If it is a collection of flyers, you can handle fragmentary information, but you cannot handle systematic knowledge. Therefore, in order for us to share systematic knowledge, the WWW needs to evolve from a flyer type to a book type.
Second, how can we augment human intellect? The answer is clear when we consider how we have acquired intellect. The key is the best combination of “books”, “notes” and “conversations” online.
Third, in order to reduce the burden on users and to be able to use the Internet safely and securely, we need AI assistants that support individual knowledge activities and collaboration. In the future, we should develop something like excellent agents of the “Knowledge Navigator” announced by Apple in 1988.
Symposium Panelists
Toshihiro Takagi
President & CEO of Creation Inc. Born in 1955. Graduated from Waseda University School of Political Science and Economics. 1985, launched NTT Captain System Information magazine “CaptainPedia”. In 1986, launched Japan’s first Macintosh magazine “Macworld Japan Version”. In 1987, launched “MACLIFE”. In 1999, developed “Knowledge Circulation System with AI” Kacis Writer / Kacis Publisher. Awarded “Software Product of the Year 2001” (SOFTIC). In 2017, held “Holos 2050 Future Conference” based on “The Inevitable” by Kevin Kelly, Editor-in-Chief of US “WIRED”. In 2018, released ColleCard “IT25 · 50”, an intelligent adventure card game aimed at building the next generation education platform. On December 10, 2018, held “IT25・50” symposium commemorate the 25th anniversary of Internet commercialization and the 50th anniversary of The DEMO of Douglas Engelbart. Main books include “Mac OS X Server Perfect Guide”, “ Efficient Document Creation with Kacis”, “The History of Jobs & Apple”, “Jobs Legend”, and “Smart TV and Video Business”.
Katsura Hattori
Born in 1951. After obtaining a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, joined the Asahi Newspaper in 1978. Visiting researcher at MIT Media Lab for two years from 1987. After Science Bureau, deputy editor of “ASAHI PC”, executive editor of “DOORS”, and chief editor of “PASO” at the Publishing Bureau. Serialized the first Internet articles in Asahi newspaper in 1994. Senior researcher at Asahi Newspaper Journalist School since 2011. Main books include “The World of Virtual Reality”, “The World of Artificial Life”, and “McLuhan is a Message”. Translations include: “Cyberpunk”and “What the dormouse said” by John Markoff, “Artificial life” by Steven Levy, “The Victorian Internet” by Tom Standage, “ The Inevitable” by Kevin Kelly, etc. One of the founders of the IT25・50 Symposium.
Tom Sonoda
President of Utagoe Inc. / Asteria ART LLC. Born in 1975. Graduated from Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University in 1998. Obtained patents at home and abroad for “Song Search System by Singing Voice” applying voice recognition technology while attending school. Established Utagoe Inc. in 2001 while studying for the doctoral program at Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Waseda University. Reorganized as a stock company in August 2003. In 2007, the US office was established in Silicon Valley. Currently, the main business is the smartphone app “Momentary Diary”, which has exceeded 30 million downloads in more than 200 countries around the world. In addition to the “Hitokoro Diary” by voice for smart speakers, it provides machine learning services such as speech recognition, speech synthesis, stock price prediction, image processing, and game thinking engine using deep learning and hostile network (GANs). In February 2018, we will jointly develop an automotive image processing AI library with User Local Co., Ltd. In 2018, we jointly developed “ColleCard,” a state-of-the-art object recognition application using AI with Creation Inc. If you hold it over the learning card game “ColleCard”, you will jump to a related website. (http://www.utagoe.com/jp/)
Nozomi Takahashi
Osaka: Head of Greenery Association, an IT / creator exchange organization
Eiji Aoki
Oita: Director, Research Institute for Hypernetwork Society
Kazutoshi Otani
Tokyo: Technology writer / MOSA Kanda
MC (Master of Ceremony)
Yurie Suzuki
Majored in sports neuroscience at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Graduated from the College of Liberal Arts. Miss World Japan 2018 Executive Committee Award Miss Yoga Award. Prime Minister Miss Contest 2017 Grand Prix. Cosplayers dispatched overseas as part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Cool Japan policy. Manipulate 5 languages. Acquired Japanese, Chinese and Korean martial arts. Appearance history TBS “SASUKE2015” Fuji TV “Sanma no Tokyo University Equation” etc. Twitter, Instagram → @ yuriehiyoko
“ITday Japan 2019” Symposium Executive Committee
Creation Inc.
Toshihiro Takagi