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Toward realization of an information society friendly to humans and the earth

The Shaping of C&C and new challenges

Since its founding in 1899, NEC has been striving for technology innovation in ICT (Information and Communications Technology).
At INTELCOM77, held in 1977 at Atlanta, Georgia, NEC led the world in announcing C&C, which envisioned the integration in Computers and Communications, and asserting the creation of new values through this technology trend.

C&C ChartC&C Chart

After thirty years since this concept was first articulated, C&C has become a reality. A ubiquitous society that connects any time, any place, to anyone, is a society brought about by C&C. Personal computers and mobile phones as communications tools are the fruits of C&C integration, and ICT have become indispensable in the social infrastructure supporting our daily lives.

On the one hand, there are still problems that current technologies have not resolved. Conversely, progress in ICT has led to new challenges. As examples of the former problems, we can cite the shortage of labor from an ageing society, the social problems of food and poverty arising from the world population explosion, and environmental problems related to global warming and the depletion of natural resources. As examples of the latter, we can cite information explosion from the overwhelming amount of information in circulation by the technology progress, information disparity known as the ‘digital divide’, security problems, privacy protection issues, and others too numerous to mention.

The future direction of C&C technology

At NEC, we have stated our long-term vision for the year 2017 for the company and society as follows:
“To be a leading global company leveraging the power of innovation to realize an information society friendly to humans and the earth.”
The term 'innovation' here means not only technical innovation, but it also indicates that NEC through creative technical innovation aims to bring about an information society that is friendly to humans and the earth.

So, what kind of society is an information society that is friendly to humans and the earth? Even with the information explosion, if one can easily get access to the right information at the right time without the need for IT knowledge, everyone can enhance their creativity and increase the chances of having more vitality in their lives. We envision a richer and more secure society for people around the world by using IT with ease, and deepening mutual understanding and taking advantage of the knowledge available globally.
In addition, if ‘a sustainable society that minimizes burden on the environment and allowing people to live healthy, safe, and secure lives’ can be realized, we may be able to contain global warming problems and depletion of its resources.

We have expressed these social trends in a graph with a vertical axis of 'Increase in human creativity and vitality' and a horizontal axis of ‘Development of a sustainable society.’ Above these axes, we have mapped the social functions required to bring about ‘a society that is friendly to humans and the earth’ and, to realize these functions, the directions of future technology that we believe we should pursue in NEC's research and development.

A society that is friendly to fumans and the earth

We foresee three technology directions to realize ‘an information society friendly to humans and the earth.’

Symbiosis technology to support the use of global knowledge

Even in a ubiquitous society in which we can access information anytime and any place, it is difficult to access just the information we need from the overwhelming amount of information available. For the average person, just connecting to this one-sided flow of information is a difficult task, and usually this person, even if he or she succeeds in accessing this information, does not reach an understanding of it.
However, by matching up and arranging the great amount of information that people in the world have, we will be able to handle serious issues that remain unresolved in our current situation, such as global, technical, and social problems. The possibility that we will see the spread of a more secure, spiritually rich society will then become much stronger. ‘Symbiosis’ technology will take us in the direction of realizing this kind of society.
Symbiosis means ‘harmonious coexistence.’ We aim at the mutual development of people and an information society, with people living in harmony with other people, with society, and with the natural environment. In other words, we believe that we cannot allow the expansion of the ‘digital divide’ that will occur if we only develop information technology. With harmonious coexistence as our goal, we hope to develop technology that will help people to gather information, understand complex problems, and express themselves creatively, and we intend to advance technology that will support shared creativity as a means of fully using and integrating all kinds of knowledge, with people working together for mutual understanding.

‘Ecology’ technology capable of controlling eco-systems on a global scale

We need a social infrastructure that will halt the advance of global problems such as the warming of the earth's atmosphere and the depletion of its natural resources. For this infrastructure we need not only technology that will reduce the consumption of energy and electric power, but we also need technology that will allow us to used energy efficiently such as technology that creates new energy, stores it, and can make it available for re-use and redistribution.
In other words, what is required is development of technologies that can manage energy and natural resources on a global scale and achieve a balance with changes in the natural environment. If even after one month, a half-year, or several years, we first realize the real situation regarding the use of energy and natural resources, it will still be too late.
Thus, we will focus on the application of information technology to energy, so that we will be able to grasp to manage and control energy by grasping immediately in real time the status of its use. At the same time, we would like to establish autonomous energy distribution technology that can distribute the right amounts of energy to the right places automatically, depending on use conditions, while maintaining a balance with the earth's environment and controlling the eco-system on a global scale.

‘Dependable’ technology that will make possible basic social systems that do not shut down

Currently, we combine, operate, and manage all basic systems for society, such as energy, traffic, sanitation, and distribution networks on an information network and IT system. With a stoppage of the IT system, it is possible that all social system would shut down, so one of the urgent tasks we face is to realize a dependable IT system that will never shut down.
To establish this kind of system, we must rely on damage prediction and avoidance technology, that is, technology that will predict damage ahead of time and make it possible to avoid occurrence of this damage. In addition, even if various applied systems are up and running, the various systems are unable to share information, since each is operating independently. This means that the systems are wasting energy. We need a technology for sharing and exchanging information, in which we can connect various systems virtually and still maintain a specific, desired level of quality. We must move toward an autonomous system so that in an extreme case, such as when damage to the system occurs, the system will not stop functioning, but instead will be able to recover by itself from the damage.
Because ‘dependable’ IT systems can also be used for control of damage recovery systems and control of damage prediction and recovery policies for other basic systems of society, we believe they will be a key link in realizing integrated basic systems for society that will never be susceptible to shutdowns.

Toward realization of a society that is friendly to humans and the earth

‘Symbiosis,’ ‘ecology,’ and ‘dependable’ are the directions of technology that will form the basis of our long-term research and development NEC. We do not intend to refine and pursue these directions independently, but just as we did in taking C&C as our guiding principle, we intend to keep these three directions constantly in mind as we create technologies that will bring about a society that is friendly to humans and the earth.

From now on in our research and development, we will proceed step by step to realize these three technologies and bring about our long-term, grand design for the future.

* In constructing the above vision, we referred to knowledge obtained from the NEC Technology Forum, held for three years from 2007. We would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to the professors who supported the NEC Technology Forum, to the professors who gave lectures at it, and to all the participants.