Expectations for Academia towards the Data-driven Society

Abstract

With the arrivals of smartphones and broadband network, the world has changed dramatically in most fields, including communication, information search, logistics, and so on. The basic formula for fortune generations has also changed. Information communication technology sector (ICT) now plays the key role in economic growth, reflecting not simply profit, but also its critical influence for the future. Now three changes, emergence of the big data, explosive growth of computing capacity, and rapid evolution of data science, drive the advent of “Information Industrial Revolution (the 2nd Industrial Revolution)”, by which humans will be liberated from tedious number crunching and labor-intensive information handling. There are three key factors for an advanced economy to survive in this discontinuous change: (1) multi-big data availability across device and applications, (2) huge computational capacity, and (3) global-level ICT talents in both quality and quantity. However, Japan is hardly having leadership in any of these three, especially in talent supply. Only higher education system can develop those highly skilled talents on a large scale. Expectations for the academia cannot be any higher.