The title of the paper is [Plural Treatments of a Definition of Information]. A concept is defined usually on such a proposition that does not include this concept. In this connection, the plural treatment of a definition of a concept is proposed with its application to a way in which information is defined. Every piece of information is expressed as many kinds of states of a medium in an information process consisting of the system of output, memory, transfer and transformation. The varied systems have a common character, that is, transformation of a specific piece of information. The author calls each system in an information process "transformation-ware", connecting the short word "ware" to "transformation". He considers that information phenomena are extended to a new region, that is, the bio and social world. As a result, transformation-ware is not always difficult to grasp as the case of an instrument in communication. The following two points are shown as the new results. Firstly there exists generally an information phenomenon in which transformation-ware is changed by the information in the medium. The phenomena are called a "conditional change in transformation-ware" in this paper. Secondly, only the plural treatment of a specific piece of information succeeds in treating a conditional change in transformation-ware.

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Even though IT is the same as technology, substantial socio-cultural differences exist in the way IT is interwoven into socio-cultural practices and socio-psychological configuration. This article has two objectives. For one thing, I would like to make a critical scrutiny of the way information society is conceptualized and argued. Four problems associated with the conceptualization of information society are articulated and discussed. That is (1) its historical contextualization, (2) its "disruptiveness", (3) its uniformity hypothesis, and (4) its discursive structure of rosy expectations and gloomy apprehensions. I contend that these problems stem from the lack of in depth empirical studies among information society studies which pay sufficient attention to social and cultural diversity and people's practice. Therefore, I would like to do a comparative study of internet use in Japan, Finland and Korea, based on the so-called JFK survey study, so that I can decipher substantial differences across different societies in terms of the kind of IT equipment and service that is diffused, how it is used, socio-psychological attitudes toward cyberspace and so on, which is the other objective of this article. Putting them together, I propose that "information society" be taken not in its singular form, but in its plural form, "information societies" and that we advance cross-cultural research in information society studies and develop a conceptual framework to analyze and describe comparative differences of different information societies.

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This research has two purposes. The first purpose is to investigate the relationships between loneliness and the sizes of the personal networks in face-to-face (FtF) communication and in communication via mobile email (including email and short message services). The second purpose is to examine interaction effects on loneliness that exist between sociability and the size of FtF and mobile email personal networks. This paper discusses these points, based on the Japanese social survey by Hashimoto and his co-researchers in 2003. As seen in the results of regression analysis, the relationship between the size of mobile email personal networks and loneliness was weaker than between the size of FtF personal networks and loneliness. However, for the higher sociability group, there was a significant relationship between the size of FtF personal networks and loneliness, but not for the lower sociability group. On the other hand, for the lower sociability group, the size of mobile email personal networks showed a significant relationship to loneliness, but not for the higher sociability group. These findings indicate the interaction effects of sociability and personal networks on loneliness.

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The aims of introducing information system into business are divided largely into the two. One is to reduce unwanted cost by improving efficiency, and the other is to create new value-added. The former is the supreme proposition the business community has been always working on, and IT has greatly contributed for that purpose. However, even if unwanted cost should be reduced to zero, the business could not survive if the products or services they offer are not sold. Therefore, it is the creation of new values that is required of the business now. And its success hugely depends on how effectively the non-production division of the business can make use of information equipment. The purpose of this paper is to carry out a quantitative analysis of the impact of IT investment at the level of industry-sector. The Information Equipment Ratio is defined as an index to show the Information and Communication-related Capital-labor ratio, and its impact on the amount of value-added per person (labor productivity) is analyzed and examined for each industry-sector by making use of methods of Growth Accounting and DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis). The results show that the contribution of information equipment in 1990-2002 declined compared to that of the second half of 1980, and that, in 1990-2002, a significant slack is seen in the Information Equipment Ratio and in the workers with an educational level higher than college. These fact findings strongly suggest that the non-production division of the Japanese business did not make an effective use of information equipment in this period.

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This paper examines a relationship between the icon on the desktop and the programming language, in order to examine the iconユs significance in the Graphical User Interface. In order to explore this relationship, my paper regards the icon as a pictorial sign and the programming language as a linguistic sign. I can then consider this relationship as a special case of battle between the pictorial sign and the linguistic sign throughout cultural history. I then focus on David. C. Smith's doctoral thesis PYGMALION, which introduced the icon concept for the computer, and the programming language for PYGMALION, Smalltalk, in order to investigate what the icon brings to the computer and why the icon is even possible. Next, I analyze why the linguistic sign becomes the pictorial sign from the viewpoint of analogy and allegory. Finally, my paper shows what is concealed by the desktop icon. Through these analyses, we can say that the relationship between the icon and the programming language is one of allegory and complementariness. This means that the icon is a pictorial sign, restricted metaphorically by the linguistic signムthe computer program.

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In this paper, we discuss how self-reflective individuals change organizations by using information technology in a conservative booksellers association. Individuals who are information conscious try to change their environments with the transformation of self-identities and the legitimation of selves. We use three key concepts within this study; (1) alt.elites who counter authority with new technologies or skills, (2) identification, which is identity as a process, and (3) legitimatization, which is the dynamic mechanism distinguishing the self from others and authorizing it. Alt.elites in the association introduced information technology despite meeting with stiff resistance from other members. Through the process of the introduction, the alt.elites have been changing the relationship between the self and others in the internal and external environment of the organization, leading to the legitimatizing the selves in the cultural, economical and management spheres. Finally the alt.elite changed the organization.

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Statistics about the young in Japan, Finland, and Korea show that only a small percentage of people have a personal web homepage. What are the differences between homepage holders and others? We attempt to answer this question by examining empirical data and focusing on information-network environmental factors and individual factors. Results show that in the three countries, people who have higher Internet skills and motivation to communicate with others are more likely to have homepages. However, in terms of Japan alone, statistics show that those who have a homepage tend to use it at home and tend to use the Internet to reduce psychological stress (for "healing"). The Japanese characteristics may reflect the fact that those who have homepages are often engaged in anonymous communication on websites (e.g., personal diaries) alone at home, which is hardly observed in other societies.

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Our future society cannot be clarified or characterized without considering various factors related to IT. IT continues its fundamental development in the open innovation environment, where genius or outstanding talent does not necessarily play a central role to drive transformation. Rather, individual consumers, suppliers, workers, or any one who has the ability to engage in creative and collaborative activities brings transformation that leads to innovation. The Architecture of Participation is very crucial. In other words, the dissemination of IT depends on social architecture, or the agent that activates open innovation. Social development, in turn, depends on how we can facilitate social utilization of IT. Therefore, we must design a new social paradigm for active and open innovation. This paper will discuss e-Government and Local e-government as a core infrastructure of innovation, upon which regional digital revolution is achieved. Also, the importance of the administrative CIO's role and responsibilities is explored in other part of this paper. Currently, administrative CIOs are occupied with duties regarding IT security and system acquisitions. In period of emerging IT-based organization, CIOs must engage in technological management of IT, and cannot handle strategic knowledge management such as organizational reform. However, in order to fully utilize the potential capacity of IT for organizational and social transformation, the roles and responsibilities of CIOs must be greatly refined. e-Government can be the infrastructure that facilitates the co-creation of new information and knowledge and the systemic chain reaction of innovation in partnership of industry, government, university, and the private sector. To promote innovation, CIOs must play a critical role, and their roles and responsibilities must be refined. It is necessary for us to envision a new paradigm for open innovation, which will be utilized to achieve sustainable social development. In the new paradigm, e-Government and Local e-government should be emphasized as a core function. The infrastructure must be developed into a platform so that it can be applied to the entire society. For innovative capabilities to be strengthened, we are required to obtain a wide range of knowledge both in the humanities and sciences. It is also necessary to find relationships among the knowledge, and create new knowledge and capabilities. Such a relation-building effort must become the foundation of creativity. As social applications of information technology and networks are increased and refined further, the CIO, as chief officer of an organization, needs to improve innovative capacity; in other words, to develop the ability to form relationships.

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People have been trying various methods for solving the environmental issues and promoting a the sustainable society. Although the number of such people hashave increased thanks to environmental education programs to protect the environment, it is insufficient for developing an effective program that promotes environmentally responsible behavior. Our final objective is to develop an effective education program to make people environmentally responsible behavior. We refer to several existing environmental education curricula and psychological processes and presentdesign a questionnaire technique we designed to solve questions encouraging how people perceive the environment and how their behaviors relate to their perceptions. We illustrateBased on the research, we develop a path model we developed, based on research and taking into account peopleユs interests, motivations, and behaviors, for creatingdeveloping a program to promote environmentally responsible behavior. By analyzing the model, we arguedetermine that awareness of cost has the greatest effect on peopleユs environmentally responsible behavior.

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The "Keep It Simple, Stupid" (KISS) principle stated by Robert Axelrod is a good guideline to model agent-based social simulation. However, to cope with real phenomena, we must go beyond the KISS principle. This paper re-examines the principle and discusses the underlining requirements for agent-based modeling using our recently developed agent-based models as examples.

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