| Panel Discussion |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
[Slide 1 (Okamoto)]
[Slide 2 (Okamoto)]
[Slide 3 (Okamoto)]
[Slide 4 (Okamoto)]
|
Nishimura:
Fugono-san, please give your talk.
Fugono:
I have lived with one foot in each of two communities: telecommunications and world environment. Concerning the standpoint of "selection by the people," or selection by consumers, I think that, recently, something has begun rapidly changing in the telecommunications world. In former days researchers and engineers foresaw future needs, decided upon a target and researched it. If successful, their results were almost inevitably adopted into the infrastructure of society. Nowadays the selection of some types of product is decided by the user's sense of value, by ease of use, by the look of the product, and the like. I don't say that this is true of all cases, but there are many such examples. The result of this is a situation where good technology is not guaranteed success. This can be said to be an feature of a maturing technology field, and does not apply to all fields, but in the field of telecommunications researchers find themselves in a closer relationship with people/consumers and this is leading to a loss of self-confidence in their ability to decide their own research goals.
On the other hand, I think researchers in world environment field can still make their own value judgments, anticipate future developments, and decide their own targets with confidence. I don't think you can use a single definition such as "the people," but in any case I think that how "people" think or "people's" selection method does not really matter - distinctions are still made in terms of what is good, what is useful, what has to be done, what is needed, etc. From this overall point of view, I think the issue is not one of maturity but one of differences in the essential characteristics or dimensions of the two communities.
Regarding our rainfall measurement from space, we had confidence that, generally speaking, it is useful if we can measure global rainfall. In other words, we didn't think about a specific application target. I agree with Elachi-san's opinion on this point. I feel that in our case we were obstinately trying to realize things that had not been done yet. Obviously it is very satisfying when the results of our work prove to be useful. In the case of TRMM development, I feel that afterwards the significance of the technology became rapidly apparent. The same thing will happen in the case of any really good technology - so in the case of telecommunications, where I said good technology has trouble succeeding, is this really the case? Or is it that those technologies fail because they are not, in actual fact, very good? There is no single definition in such a case. It involves broader concepts and is more dynamic - more like a living creature. I think researchers should not go after their targets in a crudely obsessive way, but rather that if they apply their effort to something they feel to be good, results will follow.
Nishimura:
Thank you very much Fugono san. Okamoto san, please give your talk.
Okamoto:
My name is Okamoto from Osaka Prefecture University. I have received a Takeda Award in the World Environment section, for the development of space-borne radar and rainfall measurement radar. I do not have a good understanding of "Techno-entrepreneurship," however I do think that research should not end with the satisfaction of curiosity, but should involve consideration of the end user and the potential utility for people. I think there is a connection between this idea and the Takeda Awards that have been presented today. And also a connection to the idea of "selection by the people." In preparing this talk, in addition to talking about "Techno-entrepreeurship, I was also asked to include something on how I think young people can achieve their goals for the future. I prepared both, but I think the latter will dominate.
I think the aim of the Takeda Award is to create value for people through the acquisition of intellectual "knowledge" as slide 1. My field is the World Environment application field, so it is difficult to relate this to selection by consumers. In the case of the light emitting diode, the consumer will naturally select a product that can deliver higher output power. Such selection is difficult to understand in the context of the environment - in deciding my original research theme I could only start from a vague belief that it would be of use to people. I started from such an ambiguous belief, but I feel that the selection of a theme is important even in such a case. This selection may very well depend on luck but, even if it is only very rough, there is a need when selecting a theme to think about whether it will make contribution for people or not.
When I started my research, because the measurement of rainfall that accompanies typhoons could be used to detect natural disasters, I thought that if I could measure rainfall from space and then publicize the data, it would be useful for disaster prevention, for weather forecasts, and so on. With this simple feeling I started development of the radar. Then as written in second line of my slide, "Communication with Other Community" - dialogue with other industries/sectors - is imperative. I studied physics in university, and some Radio Engineering after joining a Communications Research Laboratory, and so saw radar development from that standpoint. After I had communication with a totally different community - meteorology - I experienced for real, through the TRMM development, how this can expand the objective of a research theme. Disaster prevention itself was a very important objective, but the meteorology community showed me the importance of rain's role in influencing the global climate. Fugono san has already explained that in his morning session, but rainfall's roll in climate changec rainfall has big affect on global climate change as in slide 2. Rain absorbs latent heat when it evaporates, and it releases latent heat into the air when it condenses. This energy drives global atmospheric circulation. Well it is interesting. Discussion with different community creates such interesting findings. As a result specification of radar needs to be changed to meet not only disaster prevention needs, but also for measurement of changes of the global environment. It gives me incentive and motivation that my research can make so large a contribution. So I realized that in order to select research theme that will contribute to society, discussion with other communities outside your own field is very important.
The next thought I have for the next generation of young people is that it is, paradoxically, important to be ignorant of difficulty of the problem to some extent. For example, I talked on this in the morning, but slide 3 is the world leading Doppler shift radar at the Communications Research Laboratory in Okinawa. A 4.5-meter antenna rotates in the dome. The diameter of the radome is 8 meters. When we want to put such large and power-consuming equipment on a satellite, whilst it is probably possible using a Saturn rocket, a clever person may stop making effort, uncertain of whether it is possible or not. I said ignorant to some extent - complete ignorance would be a worry. For instance trying to contradict the second law of thermodynamics results only ends as tragedy. If you are ignorant of difficulty of the problem to some extent, you will have a try. You lower power consumption, make everything smaller using shorter wave length- but then attenuation by rainfall inevitably increases. So you try to manage this affect, or you try to compensate for ground clutter - you try to manage, to do something. I think this challenging sprit to manage difficult problems is very important.
I have written "By-products" on the slide, but these can be very important in some cases. I tried very hard to eliminate clutter and reflection from the ground surface, and the affect of attenuation by the raindrops, but then I thought again and found that I could improvement an algorism called Surface Interference using both ground clutter and raindrop attenuation. You should not overlook such by-products, and by continuing your research with attention to such things you can make a contribution to people.
This is not particularly for young people, but rather for myself, but I want to say "Always be active. Start work quickly." I myself am lazy, so I always think this. It is good practice to start quickly job even when the job is difficult. Goethe also said "You will be in a light hearted mood, you will be delighted after you started." It is very important to make a start.
Lastly I would like to introduce some phrases from NASA's Announcement of Opportunity using slide 4. Only "Better, cheaper, faster" came to my mind when I thought of NASA but recently, maybe because the head of NASA has changed, it says a good thing. NASA's vision is to "To improve life here." I think "life" here means world environment. Our world environment is pretty much in a crisis situation - their mission is to improve it. Furthermore they extend life to, for instance, the moon in the future. What will we find beyond it? They will find it. I think NASA has such vision. The NASA mission is "To understand and protect our home planet. To explore the universe and search for life. To inspire the next generation of explorers"
I think having such high vision is important to realize Techno-entrepreneurship.
|
|
|
