In line with drastic changes to the nation’s industrial structure, the traditional industrial society has been transformed into a knowledge-based one. The Japanese government carried out rapid intellectual property-related reforms in 2002. Enterprises, local governments, universities and research institutions also have aimed at increasing people’s awareness of intellectual property and have achieved solid results. The next step in this field will be the promotion of innovations by individuals and enterprises.

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The future image of daily life with highly advanced information technology is always depicted as happy life. However, such image will never arouse the reality of life filled with spiritual happiness, because the functions and services promised in future life are not based on actual needs of real life, but are merely based on the concern of technology-centrism itself. We have to change our conception from technology-centered system to life-centered system. Recognizing the problem of life will be a starting point for informatization of daily life to improve the quality of life. This paper reviews brief history of life informatization from mid 20th century, and discusses what the ideal informatization should be.

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The author wished to clarify the four important reflections on the urgent ethical problems in the information-society, which is, according to the author’s opinion, the technological conjuncture. 1) What is the traditional conceptual knowledge of information in the Japanese feudalistic society and its historical influence on the modern society in Japan. 2) The post-modern drastic change of the concept of information in the technological conjuncture as Japanese recent society. 3) Ethical problems from the side of informative authority as government or sponsors and from the side of the receivers as citizens. 4) The essential relations between information-ethics and the aretology (theory of arete, namely virtues) of eco-ethica. There are many important suggestions concerning the ethical attitude in the moral relation in the so-called virtual reality, namely on the moral dimension entirely different from the relation “in face to face”.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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