Research Overview

We are conducting the following research.

>>Goal

Once again, take a look at the above moving image from the top page of this MAO KG site.

The red horn represents old media (mass media? you need to read on to find out), the ring at the bottom represents the Internet, and the icy plate over the ring represents the foundation for exchanging digital information.

Our goal is to build the transparent ice part (an overlay network over the Internet).

The mechanisms of the old media are opaque when viewed from outside. Media themselves represent certain value systems, and information that match such value systems only are accepted by the mechanisms, amplified, and delivered to us. In this process, some information are never delivered to people even if they really needed the information. This has created unfortunate situations where chances are lost for people to meet certain information.

We are aiming at a world where information of any type can be shared among people freely and without constraints.

Such a world seems to have been believed to actualize naturally as more and more people accept and start using the Internet. However, we are beginning to realize that such a prediction is not necessarily true. As seen in recent movements of Web 2.0, although sources of information are getting distributed, and we are subjectively participating in information exchange, we also witness that information is getting centralized toward a handful of major services.

>>Backgrounds

An Example: Marunouchi Lunch Refugees Problem

What are the problems of the world where information of any type might not be shared among people freely and without constraints?

At least, we can say that they are not only problems of missing information.

Have you heard the word "Marunouchi Lunch Refugees"? In Marunouchi area, Tokyo, there are approximately 240 thousand daytime population, and at lunch hours, everywhere looks crowded. In such a situation, some people are not lucky enough to find foods or places to eat them; they are called "lunch refugees"1.

This problem can be mitigated through people's activities of watching their surroundings and communicating their situations among one another, which will result in communication of appropriate information at appropriate timings. On the other hand, this is a problem that can never be solved by many people moving toward same directions.

We are regarding this type of problem as a typical problem of the 21st century.

Year 2020 Problem - Population Growth and Exhaused Resources

Today, "Year 2020 Problem" has become a concern of some communities such as Europe. This is based on the prediction by a report in 1972 by Club of Rome2, stating that estimation of future "population", "resources", "foods", "industrial productions", "environmental contaminations", etc., indicates that growth of civilization will hit its ceiling around year 2020 by the exhaustion of foods and resources.

There are arguments on the exact timing, year 2020, that this prediction indicates, but the report includes many simulations with different parameters, and all of them indicates that if we continue today's ways of lives, our civilization will collapse (by population decrease and non-reversible downfall of quality of life) by the end of the 21st century.

This means that civilization will not end by a bad fortune, but the prediction says that it will end necessarily by its growth hitting the ceiling and collapsing afterword, as a consequence of continuous, accelerated growth.

Problems of Information and Media

If the above prediction turns out to be true, what can we, as researchers of information communication technology and media, can do about it?

We can say that the year 2020 problem essentially states that there are infinite desires against finite resources.

Desire is made around a value, and a value is (a difference of) information. The problem that human civilization tries to continue to grow although it necessarily means that resources will be exhausted may be a problem of information that has urged the desire for many people to move toward the same directions.

Such desire is formed by media. A medium is everything between two people, which includes every technology, rule and method of communication.

Media involved in formation of desire include, in addition to TV and radio, transportation and currency. All of them will undergo changes through digitization. But such changes are unlike the change depicted by the above moving image.

For example, money will be digitized, but (readers are warned that we may sound crazy in the following) it does not mean that we all can freely create money3. Then, being a scarce resource itself, money will remain to be an object of desire. But when foods and other resources that are subject of exchange with the money get exhausted, and get hardly obtainable, the monetary economy will collapse.

Now, are we try to solve such a problem with military forces, thus powerfully armed ones only will gain resources?

Or, are we to redesign the media, and change the ways desires are formed and resources are distributed, to try to stop the downfall of humankind as predicted by the year 2020 problem, or at least try to minimize its effects?

It seems as if we must decide soon.

>>Activities

Global Operating System

For problems of resource allocation or distribution, we may be able to utilize our knowledge of operating system research we accumulated through the history of computer science.

An operating system abstracts resources, and provides them to users.

Today, personal computers have ample resources, everyone carries portable computing/communicating devices, and RFID/micro computers are to embed intelligence everywhere in our living environment. If we think about an operating system which scales to the global level, it would be a super WIDE, super widely integrated distributed environment that self-organizes in autonomous, distributed and cooperative ways, which would overthrow conventional operating system designs.

CPU, memory, disk storage, network bandwidth, keyboards, displays, sensors, actuators, software, image, sound, documents, know-hows, automobiles and their seats, clothing, food, human beings and their talents, abilities and efforts are all resources which will be provided to users in need at the right time and in the right place to be used efficiently. A new information environment will arise.

This kind of information environment will enrich our lives, reduce energy consumption and form local-production-local-consumption4 economy as a new foundation for our lives, which is robust and helps us live in accordance with the natural environment of the 21st century.

Structure of Global Operating System

A modern operating system has a structure consisting of kernel, which abstracts resources, and shell, which is the interface between the resources and the users. The kernel can be further separated into inner-kernel, which abstracts computing resources such as CPU or memory, and outer-kernel, which abstracts at higher levels.

Global Operating System by its nature is distributed, and is more easily captured if we draw a picture by turning the structure inside out as follows.

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The picture tells that the human is centered, surrounded by information environment, and there are numerous computers in the environment. The information environment is seen as the shell from the viewpoint of the human. The shell decides what Global Operating System is for people.

For this reason, we have taken the approach that we start realization of Global Operating System by creating its shell first.

Local-Production-Local-Consumption P2P Overlay Networks

The following picture of layers of the shell and the outer-kernel is obtained through our design of Global OS Shell.

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This is a design based on the following two policies:

  1. It must be a network based on human relations.
    • On today's Earth, resources are typically owned by someone.
    • We need coordinations among the owners when we try to utilize resources in an efficient manner, which is necessarily done along the lines of human relations.
  2. It must be a network based on local-production-local-consumption.
    • We try to find the resource in our vicinity first, and gradually search further.
    • This may sound as if we are constraining circulation of information, but otherwise, we cannot achieve free and creative circulation of information by subjective participation of all.
    • We all must solve problems locally if we try to solve global problems.

What We Have Done So Far

There are huge research themes in every layer, to which we have been approaching as follows.

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We have used an extensible communication protocol XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), which we will later replace with more P2P protocols, and have developed a communication platform called wija that is integrated with GnuPG, a free implementation of OpenPGP5. We have been developing i-WAT, a barter currency system, and other software as plug-ins to the platform.

What We Are Doing in FY 2007

This fiscal year, we have been approaching the themes as follows.

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Our focus this year is the following two development items, which will help us realizing a pseudo-Global OS Shell environment when they are combined with past items and compassionate search being developed at neco KG.

  1. Overlay GHC programming language
    • A distributed programming language based on concurrent logic language GHC (Guarded Horn Clauses).
    • Intended to become a shell language to write applications of Global OS easily.
  2. Storage standard currency
    • A currency based on reservation of storage space, using i-WAT.
    • Intended to become a common medium of exchanging values in Global OS.

Why "Media Art Online"?

Media Art Online started as an organization of media artists (artists whose works are distributed through some media). The goal desribed at the top of this page was originally intended to help media artists.

Today, the major activity of Media Art Online is development of software, but it can also be viewed as an activity to create art.

An art wrecks a medium, and shows the public what it really is.

Our media art is to wreck media that cause centralization, and to clarify what they have brought to our lives.

>>Environment and Organization

As the core research environment, we construct and operate an online community called Media Art Online. We will use this community, where barriers among engineers, artists and audience are removed, as a testbed for various technologies we develop.

We are tackling technological problems toward realization of Global Operating System through IDEON Working Group of the WIDE Project.

We are also working together with researchers around the world through such activities as DAS-P2P (Dependable and Sustainable P2P) International Workshop Series.

1

[lunch refugees] We will be conducting an experiment to solve this problem in Marunouchi area using Global OS Shell programming in FY 2007.

2

[Club of Rome] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome

3

[we all can freely create money] we are conducting research to make it possible; see i-WAT.

4

[LPLC] a philosophy that tells you to choose the nearest resource among the equivalent ones. Originally an agricultural concept for sustaining local industries by consumption of local products.

5

[PGP] Pretty Good Privacy; a personal encryption and digital signature system.