Vanguard
Toward a Richly Interconnected World
We spoke with Professor Ikuyo Kaneko, whose work engages with society across a wide spectrum of concerns,including new models of volunteering,proposals for the school and education systems,and the creation of a community-based society which melds the real world and cyberspace.
KANEKO, Ikuyo
ProfessorGraduate School of Media and Governance
My Introduction to Administrative
Engineering and Operations Research
At Keio Yochisha Elementary School, I
was a quizzical child who liked to puzzle over things like “What’s
one divided by zero?” I rediscovered my interest in math at
university, where I entered the Department of Administration
Engineering. That led me to the doctoral program at Stanford to study
operations research, which is part of the “new mathematics” that
emerged in the 1970s. The old math was based on proving the existence
of a solution; the new math actually computes solutions. A milestone
in theoretical economics using operations research was reached when
Kenneth Arrow, Herbert Scarf, and others proved the existence of the
“equilibrium price” postulated by Adam Smith and his descendants,
the neoclassical market economists, by performing actual computations
using game theory and the fixed point theorem. In other words, the
advent of computers changed the way we formulate our thinking. People
like Arrow and Scarf are heroes to me, because the new math made it
possible to obtain answers that are of practical use in economics and
business management. That’s what operations research is all about.
To me the attraction of mathematics was that you were free to create
a world where you can decide everything yourself, as if you were
writing a novel, and I was excited by the prospect of that actually
resulting in something useful to society.
The Fascination of Real-World Events
An example of the kind of work I did while learning operations research at Stanford was a computational
study of the shipping system of a big U.S. cookie manufacturer. This
meant finding the fastest and cheapest routes to deliver cookies from
three factories to several dozen wholesalers and then to several
thousand retailers, and to do so in a timely way based on demand
predictions. In another example, I had to build a mathematical model
and devise a calculation method to determine a safe and efficient
route for laying an undersea cable between Sicily and the North
African coast; in another, I did structural calculations for the
cover of a jet cockpit to improve its wind pressure resistance. I was
doing operations research with applications in a wide range of
fields. I continued this work while teaching for nine years at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during this time I became aware
of a gap between the results I was obtaining mathematically and the
real world. The results of calculations are not applied in their pure
form in the real-world fields. What happens in a field is complex. I
thought, “Real-world events often are uncertain, even nonsensical,
but that’s what makes them fascinating.” That was one reason why
my interest shifted from working things out inside a computer to how
this relates to the real world and real people. Also, I received an
offer from the Faculty of Commerce and Management at Hitotsubashi
University right around that time, and so I decided to return to
Japan.
Gaining a First-Hand Understanding of Social Networks
While teaching probability theory and
other subjects in the Faculty of Commerce at Hitotsubashi, I studied
relationship formation processes at the personal and social levels,
with “networks” as the key. At Hitotsubashi, I got to know the
economist Kenichi Imai, who taught me a lot about economics, and I
became interested in the concept of the “network society,” an
area in which Prof. Imai did groundbreaking work. I traveled all over
Japan to meet people experimenting with new business ventures that
drew on personal and telecommunications networks. They were doing
what would now be called “social innovation.” Take the “Pharma”
drugstore chain, for instance: small independent pharmacies, barely a
few meters across, were able to hold their own with major stores in
terms of product lineup by sharing information on their best-selling
products over a communications network. I was also volunteering once
a week as a telephone counselor for foreign travelers and residents
getting into some kind of trouble in Japan, and this experience
showed me that social marginality can give rise to connectivity in
many unexpected ways. I sensed intuitively that the processes that
lead to the creation of new information in this way are the essence
of “networks.” Around this time I wrote the book Borantia: mō
hitotsu no jōhō shakai (Volunteers: another information society;
Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1992).
To Be Useful, Information Needs to Be Seen
In 1994, I moved from Hitotsubashi
University to the Graduate School of Media and Governance at Keio
University’s Shonan Fujisawa Campus. Then in January 1995, the
Great Hanshin Earthquake hit the Kobe area. Although there were no
media reports about volunteers immediately after the earthquake, I
was sure they must be swinging into action, and I went to the
stricken areas myself. There I found volunteers pouring in from all
over the country. But although there was a pool of well-meaning
volunteers and donated goods, neither materials nor personnel were
getting to the places where they were really needed at the right
time. As the Internet was not yet widely used then, messages about
what was needed where were being posted mainly on proprietary PC
networks, which were proprietary and therefore closed to other
networks. There were three major service providers, and so volunteers
at the emergency shelters were using three separate accounts for the
three major PC networks, hoping to get access to as many people as
possible, to post information such as “we’re short of this, we
need volunteers here,” then searching for replies on three separate
bulletin board systems—a very inefficient approach. 
For me, it was a good lesson to know that to be useful, information needs to be
shared. I quickly put together a group, and with the cooperation of
the three commercial network service providers we launched a network
platform, “InterVnet,” which used the functions of the Internet
“news” to make the information from all three systems accessible
on a single bulletin board, as well as on the three separate BBSs.
Through InterVnet a user of any of the three major proprietary
networks would be able to post a message to, or to read a message
from any of the three BBS. When this proved effective in supporting
the earthquake victims, it brought home to me the power of networks.
Expanding the Potential of Networks
My experiences after the earthquake led
to a major refocusing of my research. Starting while I was at
Hitotsubashi University, I had been gradually moving away from
mathematics as such to work more on society and organizations, and
having created a tool that was of practical use in the field
encouraged me to focus on “social networks” rather than
technology networks. The InterVnet utilized the latest technology,
but rather than a technical breakthrough, it represented a new form
of social organization. At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, the
InterVnet was a “social innovation” of the kind that I now teach
at SFC to freshmen students. The most socially influential example of
social innovation I have worked on since then is the “community
school,” which is now one of the central issues of the government’s
education policy. I proposed this idea at the National Commission on
Educational Reform in 2000. It is a system that involves local
residents and parents in the running of a school, replacing the old
model of public schools imposed from above with a partnership between
school and community working together to create the school they
consider best. Because authority is decentralized, these community
schools can be run in a way that reflects a broad spectrum of local
needs and opinions, and all parties can have a strong sense of
involvement. I should mention that in conceptualizing the community
school and eventually getting it passed into law, I worked with Kan
Suzuki, who was then on the SFC faculty and is now Senior Vice
Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. There
are currently more than 600 community schools all over Japan.
Connecting with Society
As far as my university research goes,
at present I am mainly engaged in a project called “Green Society
ICT Life Infrastructure.” In order to create a society that can
cope with the impact of climate change, this project works at the
local community level to realize an energy-efficient and secure
living environment by means of interconnected energy management
systems (= ICT Life Infrastructure) that gather, analyze, and respond
to information directly relevant to our daily lives. The
infrastructure consists of a comprehensive energy management system
that includes natural energy from solar power, biomass among others,
together with systems in such areas as health and medical care,
agriculture, and disaster preparedness. For example, we have
introduced systems that allow elderly people living alone to have
their health status monitored around the clock by wearing
state-of-the-art micro sensors and to enjoy the convenience of
telemedicine consultations. We are working with Keio University
researchers in specialties that range across the Faculty of Policy
Management, the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, the
Graduate School of Media and Governance, the Faculty of Science and
Technology, the School of Medicine, and the Faculty of Business and
Commerce, among others, and with two local governments and five
business corporations. Undergraduate and graduate students will also
be involved. I intend to continue collaborating with students and
fellow researchers to pursue a variety of challenges in the future.
A Brief Background of Professor
KANEKO, Ikuyo
Professor Kaneko received his bachelor’s degree in 1971 from the Department of Administration Engineering, Faculty of Engineering (today’s Faculty of Science and Technology), Keio University. In 1972 he went to the United States, where he earned a master’s degree in 1973 and a doctorate in operations research in 1975 from Stanford University. After serving as assistant professor and associate professor in the Departments of Industrial Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he was appointed associate professor and then professor in the Faculty of Commerce and Management, Hitotsubashi University. In 1994, he joined Keio University’s Graduate School of Media and Governance (GSMG) as professor, later concurrently serving as head of the Keio Yochisha Elementary School and then as Dean of GSMG; he is currently Executive Director of the Keio Research Institute at SFC. He specializes in network theory, community theory, and social innovation. His major publications include Borantia (Volunteers), Komyuniti soryūshon (Community solutions), and Nihon de “ichiban ii” gakkō (The “best” school in Japan), all published by Iwanami Shoten, and, as co-author, Borantarī keizai no tanjō (The birth of the Voluntary Economy) published by Jitsugyō no Nihon Sha.
(11 October 2010)
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