Interview Time Index (MM:SS) and Topic

1. We are now surrounded by many information equipments in home and office. In automobile, information environment comparable to home environment is not realized. First wish is to realize information environment equivalent to home in automobile.
2. The network is to be connected to a variety of information sources. Information source is provided by auto manufacturer and also by independent sources. Avoidance of malware in such open environment is an important subject to be resolved.
3. From the viewpoint of the auto manufacturer, continuous monitoring of the operation of the automobile used by the end user is near future requirement. Confirmation of operation of equipment and advising to driver on safer and energy efficient use of automobiles is the initial application of monitoring.
4. Important goal is to realize accident free automobile, by means of automobile to automobile and automobile to infrastructure communication. Variety of advices to be used by driver are possible to reduce accident. Ultimately goal is automated driving free from human intervention in freeway and finally in city road.
5. Another important objective is CO2 free mobility. Effective use of electrical automobile is difficult without use of communication support. In long future, in-city and intercity movement should be based on automated mobility system composed of new mobility and communication.

1. Information technologies are used in a variety of fields, and branching into so many specialties to realize all the aspect of technology by a small company is impossible. Most important matter is to share our needs and information specialist's interests.
2. To have common interests, sharing of vision among automobile specialists and information specialist is important. Leadership to create common interests in broad range of technical group is important. Technical talk in a variety of occasions is useful for this purpose. One of my activities including international trip is to share the vision based on presentations in a variety of meetings.
3. Communication system is originally for human to human communication. In recent tendency of global saturation of communication demand, communication specialists are now seeking for a new market for non human communication. This tendency is called in variety of ways like ubiquitous communication, machine to machine communication and other terminologies. Recently many of government lead research subjects are in this field. To have leadership in new generation network study is important to create common interests for automobile communication.
4. For members of my company, I encourage them to have leadership in a variety of interdisciplinary academic activities.
5. From the view point of time needed for development, development cycle of automobile is much longer than information industry. In many cases, it takes at least 3 years and sometimes 5 years to realize product based on new technology. The long period is needed to confirm safety and a long test period is required for this purpose. It is also needed to have common understanding among different specialties in differences of engineering consideration.

1. Drivers driving automobiles are supposed to concentrate on driving. In many network applications, how driver can be involved in information exchange is always a problem. Establishment of safe driving environment in which driver can use information is essential.
2. Automobile safety is traditionally the responsibility of driver. At the same time effort of driver is not enough to realize accident free traffic. Information technology will realize much safer environment, but will not be perfect for some initial period. How we can have understanding of society in the period is a difficult issue.
3. The understanding of social problem can be different country by country and manufacturer by manufacturer. This difference will further complicate the situation. As information technology changed our everyday life, by ubiquitous network technology, many aspects of society will be changed. Change in mobility is typical social change, and understanding of society is the key for success for change which will eventually enrich human life in the future. This social aspect will more generally appear in future society.

1. interest of information specialists
2. interest of automobile specialists
3. understanding of society on the function
4. standardization of the key components
5. market success to realize attractive products

1. We have many Tablets and PND (personal navigation device), already penetrated randomly to be carried into automobile. In some operation, these equipments have risk to cause distraction of drivers. In some countries these equipments are regulated by government, and some no regulation.
2. To avoid risk, provision of less expensive and more attractive equipment which avoid distraction is needed. This is an important challenge for all automobile related manufacturers.
3. For more long term challenge, replacement human driver by automatic driving is to be realized. Step by step introduction of partial automatic driving has already started and gradually come into real automatic.

Opportunities

1. A variety of information environment has already accepted by the market. This is the base of new functions to be used by people inside automobile.
2. An example of automatic driving which is not noticed by driver is cruise control (CC) to keep the speed of automobile without human intervention. In some automobile, CC is adaptive to adjust the speed to the speed of the automobile you are following. This is called adaptive cruise control (ACC).
3. In ACC, control is based on the measurement of distance using radar. If the operation of the automobile ahead can be noticed to following car by wireless communication, the following car can adjust the speed before distance between car changes. This is called cooperative ACC ( CACC ). This can be start of automatic driving in near future.

1. My first book is "Introduction of Electronic Circuit" published in 1977. This book covers basic digital and analogue circuits for students who studied the subject first time.
2. My second book is "Programming by FORTRAN" (1980). This book is for students who studies programming first time. At that time I was the director of computer center of the University of Tokyo for student training.
3. My third book is "Good Programs of FORTRAN" (1981). This book includes examples of easy to read FORTRAN programs. And describes importance of readability of program for collaborative development of software.
4. The other books include "Digital Circuitry" (1982), "Programming by Assembly language Z80" (1983), "Programming by PASCAL" (1984), "Computer Architecture" (1985), and "Digital Communication Network" (1989).

In addition to these books I have more than 20 books co-authored by several people including me. Some of these books were translated into Korean but majority are Japanese only.

1. First effect is sharp drop price of traditional long distance telephone services. Charge of Tokyo-Osaka telephone connection dropped by 80% in 15 years.
2. New digital services became common and a variety application services started.
3. New communication network represented by Metro-Ether service appeared around 2000, and sharp drop of ISP cost became reality.
4. In cell phone services, because of competition, price is also reduced sharply, and a variety of computer communication became reality around 2000.
5. After 2000, competition of ADSL and optical fiber made price competition effective, and cost of broadband access is lowest in Japan in global comparison now.

1. In real system, simple principle is selected even though the system is more expensive. Considering training cost to operate a theoretically beautiful system, simple system can be more economical. Although I wrote a many papers using beautiful control theory, these resulted in theory for theory.
2. Communication engineers have beautiful network theory and noise theory. But it is difficult to educate them on another theory, i.e. control theory.
3. Still, in cases autonomic management is important, simplified system based on a strange theory can be used.

Additional area 2. Multi-Star Ether switch

Around 1975, I am interested in ALOHA system proposed for satellite access. At that time a lot of improvement was possible to improve performance of ALOHA, and I wrote several papers to improve ALOHA. Almost at same time Ethernet was invented and 10 years later, started to be broadly used as a simple method for network access. In Ethernet only one terminal can access the network at a time. It started by coaxial line for transmission and some proposal was found to use optical fiber in star type configuration. Even in star configuration, in Ethernet principle, only one terminal can access the network at one time. I proposed a Ether switch called Multi Star and wrote several papers for the Multi Star, but I did not applied patents of Multi Star. My papers are at around 1987, and I found many of similar products in the market after 2000. Current Ether switch seems to be depending on my initial study, but no one remembers of my early study. Now by further improvement to technology, high capacity buffer storage is possible, my idea of bufferless star network lost interests.

Lessons:

1. In the process of technical development, many ideas can appear independently in many studies. If some priority is needed, just to write a paper is not enough.
2. Basic use of an idea may be to write a paper for university professors. I may satisfied by writing a paper.
3. In a case new system started to be used, we may have many possibility of invention. It is also important to put many ideas to the new system. The life of the idea is not very long, and it will be more important to create another possibility based on the experience.

Additional area 3: University computer network

Around 1973, I worked for a computer center of the University of Tokyo. At that time computer is a very expensive resource and sharing of the resource was requested. With the collaboration of manufacturers, I developed a computer network connecting universities. But in Japanese law at that time we cannot construct our own network but must depend on carriers network, and because of the delay of inauguration of carrier packet data network we must wait 5 years after development of the successful computer network. During that time cost of computer dropped sharply and effects of sharing was not appreciated. Similar result can be observed in the US DARPA network, but DARPA network created internet as the independent communication network which resulted in replacement of traditional carrier network. But because of legal regulation we failed to create a new network.

Lessons:

1. The experience caused my activity as the telecommunication regulator. As my activity I took maximum lessons from the experience.
2. Cost of computer constantly drops. Study to reduce the cost must be done in short time.
3. In infrastructure related activity, depending on cases close collaboration with carriers can be requested. But even in the case, inauguration of the infrastructure service is not easy. We must be very careful on the decision of a big organization like a traditional carrier.

Additional area 4: Conformance test of network standard

Before 1985 deregulation of Japanese telecom network, all telecomm equipment must be purchased from the monopoly carrier. The carrier guaranteed the performance and connectivity of the equipment. As a part of my contribution to government, I proposed to organize a group of equipment manufactures called HATS (Harmonization of Advanced Telecommunication System) and started a series of conformance tests for the new equipments. The activity was successful, and in 15 years HATS tested more than 1000 types of communication equipments. I am still the chairman of HATS. Recently, connectivity test of ITU standard based equipment is requested by many developing countries, and ITU secretariat want to have similar test internationally and HATS have some activity to help ITU. It is also noticed that this kind of guarantee is only possible when interests of all related members are common.

Lessons

1. The background of success of HATS is that the majority of manufacturers joined to test were former suppliers to NTT. They understood the common standard, and importance of connectivity.
2. If manufacturer want to be a monopoly supplier of the country and want to exclude each other, they tend to use different subset of the standard and easy to produce non-connectable equipments. If ITU want to have connectable set of equipment the way to prepare ITU recommendation must be changed.
3. In this sense, the Japanese government has enough wisdom to understand the difficulty. HATS member want to transfer the experience to ITU; however, it is not successful for the time being.

1. By WCF I was very much impressed by rapid advances of Chinese computer technology, I enjoyed very much to know the advances. As the trial to impress visitors on improvement of Chinese technology, WCF was successful.
2. It seems that IFIP wanted to make WCF as another academic meeting of IFIP which is comparable to WCC or WITFOR. Viewing WCF from that interest, CIO forum has different nature.
3. In academic meetings university professors and students are willing to write papers and attend to talk in the meeting free of charge. This is because speakers are evaluated by the quality of presentation. In the case of CIO, they are top managers of organization, and evaluated by the profit of the organization created by the computer system. They are never evaluated by the presentation. How IFIP can promote that kind of incentive to potential speakers is the key to success of WCF.
4. In the meeting, we found many young practitioners attending WCF. They must learn much.
5. To attract real CIO, high level talk of newer technology which is the key for success of future system can be useful. Considering the situation that CIO is always facing -- visits from many vendors to sell equipment -- these talks must be higher level talk which usual vendor cannot provide. Talk on future technology in early stage of use can be attractive for CIOs.

1. Amazing: The most beautiful natural view I experienced is Canadian Rockies. I first visited the area in 1975, and revisited twice there and drove through Banff to Edmonton in 1990 and 1999. Each time I took all my family of 5 members: myself my wife and three daughters. The beauty is combination of lakes, mountains and ice. I am very much afraid that area of ice is shrinking constantly.
2. Unexpected: City traffic situation is different country by country, and changes rapidly. When I visited China first time in 1980, the city was fully occupied by bicycles. When I visited in 1990, bicycles are partly replaced by motorcycles. I visited Ho Chi Minh in 2006; the city was occupied by motorcycles. From the airport to the hotel I went by a taxi, the taxi was surrounded by motorcycles in distance of a foot on both sides, ahead and rear. Driving seems be very difficult and dangerous. In the visit to Shenzhen this time, I found that there is no motorcycle in the city, and bicycle is rare. I heard that in major cities in China, motorcycle is prohibited. Then in the next week I was in Amsterdam for 3 days and I walked to watch the city. I found so many bicycles there. Manner of riding of bicycle in the city looked to be so bad and pedestrian must be careful not to be hit by bicycles. Traffic situation of many cities so different and prediction of mobility in future seems to be difficult. Understanding of cities is very much depends on such situation of mobility. Design of city is such a complex issue, and careful understanding of life of people of the city is important.
3. Surprising: My biggest surprise in my life is on unbelievable intelligence of babies just born. I have two grandsons living in Bordeaux, France. The elder boy was born in December. In next April the family of my daughter visited my home in Yokohama. It was a beautiful day with cherry blossoms in full bloom, and I took the baby of 4 months and my son-in-law to a garden where we enjoyed the flowers. 2 years later, my daughter and the boy visited us in April again. At that time I took the boy to the same garden with cherry blossoms. Suddenly my grandson recalled the day when he visited the garden with his father and said he have visited there with his father and talked on the situation of that time saying he was on a stroller. I realized that young baby remembers on variety of situations he experienced. We do not understand such intelligence of a young baby, because he cannot talk. When baby started to talk we can confirm the memory. I heard that that kind of memory is erased in age of 3 years. My grandson does not remember any more. But at that time I was so much surprised on intelligence of young baby.