Chair of the Todai International Science Network steering committee
(University of Tokyo, Dept. of Physics,
Faculty of Science Tsuneyoshi Kamae)

Reading the history that, in the early year of the Meiji era, we imported the science technology from Europe, we notice that the history of the Internet for the last ten years is similar to it. Since there were no precedents and no seniors who where familiar with new technology, they had spread into universities, laboratories and enterprises without ideas of administration and management. Also similar is that, though these pioneers had known the technology would glow remarkably in the future, they expanded the visions without running to making money.

During the latter half of the Meiji era, science technology were proved to be useful for the nation and advertised noisily. "The light-hearted spirits" of youth had taken the place of "the Committee" of nation ,university and big enterprise. There might be many science technologies which should be grappled uniformly on a national scale but there are also other science technology as much as that. It seems that the Japanese history after the latter half of the Meiji era made some kind of study and development of technology difficult.

The great universities in America and Europe have an atmosphere which encourages the "light-hearted spirits" of youth to try at ease. Professors also accept the new ideas with youth and try to promote the creation and development of new technologies. Playing the leadership role of "the Committee", presidents and dean of universities are delighted to be the source of science technology. The nominal budget comes to surpass that of these universities. I think that by having "the light-hearted spirits" and always willing to try universities will become the base of science technology, an area which has not been Japanese organization's favorite subject.

The old studies and science technology try to make themselves reborn by connecting to the network. There are no big hard-ware, but distributed in these technologies and the technologies are type of which Japan has been not good at. Now, we should give our name to be the center of these new technologies. All department and sources of study have some kind of connection to Information Network and there will formulate various projects. Why don't old and young people give new ideas each other, which will be ahead of the network.