From IT to HIT, and to HITS
For Harmonious Development of
Human (H), Information (I),
Technology (T) and Society (S)
presented by Takaya Endo, for several international talks 【Summary】
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Recent Worlds
3. Information Technology (IT)
4. Human Interface Technology (HIT)
5. Human, Information, Technology, Society (HITS)
6. Learning from Nature, Human, and Society
7. Back to the Fundamentals of Human Communication
8. Concluding Remarks
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1. Introduction
・Human Being
・Everyday Life
2. Recent Worlds
What is now happening in the world, especially in
technological, business and political world, or
informational society, electronic society.
・IT Movements
・The Future of the Information Society, Electronic Society
・Beyond Cyber Space
A View of Recent World
3. Information Technology (IT)
How to grasp these phenomena from the view points
of technological development.
The Major Trends in Computing
・The mainframe era
・The Personal Computer era
・The internet and distributed computing era
・The UC (Ubiquitous Computing) era
Our Understanding of computers
・as information processing machines
・as communications devices
・will increasingly be the medium in which companies
and individuals articulate and shift their identities
" ... an enterprise is a network of commitments.
...computer tools can be designed to support people
in the coordination of action and
in the management of their commitments.
...The Web and the Internet are only the beginnings.
...will enable the industry to support
the continuous reinvention of corporate identities."
[by Fernando Flores]
4. Human Interface Technology (HIT)
What is Human Interface/Interaction (HI) ?
・ MMI: Man-Machine Interface/Interaction
・ HCI: Human-Computer Interface/Interaction
・ CHI: Computer-Human Interface/Interaction
・ HEI: Human-Environment Interface/Interaction
・ HHI: Human-Human Interface/Interaction
・ HTI: Human-Task Interface/Interaction
・ HOI: Human-Organization Interface/Interaction
・ HCI: Human-Community Interface/Interaction
・ HSI: Human-Society Interface/Interaction
Human interface technologies are playing a crucial role
in demystifying sophisticated information technologies,
such as computer and telecommunication technologies,
and thus more effective in augmenting our abilities
to develop and share ideas.
HI technologies have been introducing
new social environments for people.
They have extended the activity fields in everyday life
of people.
And they have had the effects of introducing
new viewpoints on human interface technologies
including wider sociological understanding.
And new concepts of an evolutionary digital technology
are developing new areas.
5. Human, Information, Technology, Society (HITS)
Using and advancing the IT and HIT, new tide has been
occurring on reorganizing existing business structure and
social structure.
On the contrary, insecurity of existing social system and
several kinds of social problems are occurring.
For example,
restructuring of enterprise using IT,
downsizing of organization using downsizng IT,
unemployment, electronic cash, virtual company,
intellectual property, cultural invading,
increase of indirect human communication, etc.
On security, how to make balance between privacy and
social system's security from the viewpoints of morals?
On indirect human communication, or
artifact-mediated human communications,
how to facilitate direct face-to-face communications in
artifact-mediated, virtual world, communication environments?
On electronic cash, for example, how to prevent the appearance
of new electronic economy hegemony by special group,
or how to guarantee privacy and usefulness of users,
on the other hand by preventing illegal usage?
These issues and problems are originated by small or
tiny technologies, and human being who uses the technology itself.
Now, for example, companies are rediscovering that people,
information and technology are their most valuable resources
and that they can best improve their competitive performance
by getting humans, information and technology
working together in harmony.
These are challenges of how to harmonize human,
information, technology, and society.
If it fails to handle, for example, enterprises will loose their
gains, or collapse, or society itself will be unstable state.
6. Learning from Nature, Human, Society
So now we need new paradigm on IT and HIT to harmonize
Human, Information, Technology and Society.
My idea is to learn from nature or the living creatures, and
human nature itself, and Society,
then to introduce new HITS Engineering.
Examples are,
・HITS Ecology :
・HITS-Economics:
・HITS-Sociology:
・HITS-Ethics:
・HITS-Design:
Partially, these methodologies are proceeding with
interdisciplinary collaboration.
But, it is insufficient.
Today's movements on computers and networks are too hasty,
and companies desire to get money by IT,
but on the contrary, people are drowning in the < xml="true" ns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" prefix="st1" namespace="">sea of IT.
7. Back to the Fundamentals of Human Communication
Then what should we do?
Everything originated by small or tiny technologies
developed by human being, and
human being who uses the technology itself.
So, how about coming back to
the fundamentals of human communication.
Traditions teach us the importance of human communication
to improve or to solve the problems.
In the traditional idea, the better human communication was
most frequently grasped as "heart-to-heart"
(i-shin-den-sin in Japanese) communication.
The "heart-to-heart" communication resolved
complex historical problems.
Among people, those who know each other deeply and
respect each other are said to be on a "heart-to-heart" basis.
What sort of communication is made between individuals
which are considered to be on the "heart-to-heart" basis?
And, what sort of dialog model can be considered,
when an individual is carrying on a dialog with
another individual through computer
while they are engaged in a task?
By observing user's activities, it was suggested the necessity of
considering a socially distributed cognition (SDC) mechanism
which encompasses the present and past human communication
as well as personal cognition processes inside himself and
cognitive utilization of knowledge buried inside the task, Tool,
computer and the system.
In considering of all this, it was possible to come up with
a model, consisting of
・Self Dialogue Loop,
・Partner Dialogue Loop, and
・Task/Tool Dialogue Loop,
as a Human Interface Dialogue Model (HIDIM)
for making investigations on "heart-to-heart" communication.
8. Concluding Remarks
Technologies, or artifacts progress must be considered
as a means and not an end.
It must not go beyond its role, which is to support human being
development in ways appropriate to it.
We, contemporary people, have been eagerly devoting
our labors to this means, and applies almost all the forces
of our intelligence to it.
Now is the time to devote our effort to an end.
We must not be becoming enslaved by our own invented artifacts.
We have learned some fundamental ideas through
HITS activities, or human interface assessment and
design activities.
Firstly, it is important to develop artifacts harmoniously with
people to provide acceptable Socially Distributed Cognition
mechanisms by considering HITS-Ecology, -Economics,
-Sociology, -Ethics, -Design.
Secondly, it is better to design triple loop harmoniously to
provide "heart-to-heart" basis human communication
environments, by pondering the invisible and
evolutionary meaning of the triple loop model.
Lastly, we realized the importance of harmonious development
of ourselves as the masters of artifacts.
"Technology of Being"
edited by ©M-SAKU Networks 2008