Further Benefit of a Kind of Inconvienience System Labratory

We have made “Hundred Sights of BOI.”
http://fuben-eki.jp:5002/

The link is attached to the bulletin board, on the bottom of the top page of further benefit of a kind of inconvenience system laboratory.

1. “Hundred Sights of BOI” lays out around 100 cases which can be seen as representing BOI. By looking at these cases, we cannot help but think “Hmmm, this is similar to what we are thinking” or “Isn’t this a bit different?”
2. If you find a new case or an idea which you think represents BOI but is not included in the “Hundred Sights of BOI,” please feel free to comment. It would be great to share with all.
3. There are tools which can help you think of new BOI systems. If you use this for a bit, you might be able to come up with interesting ideas.

9/5 Public Announcement 1412L COLUMN: About “impatience,” which brings out cooperation amongst individuals (Toyohashi University of Technology)
COLUMN is a sphere, which x, y, and z axis extend in each direction independently, a machine yet to be seen. Three people cooperate to try rolling COLUMN by operating an axis each but “impatience” emerges as it does not work easily. How this “impatience” becomes the key to bringing out cooperation from the three individuals is the topic of this discussion. In particular (although not written in the abstract), it has been demonstrated how adding LED color to COLUMN for more convenient recognition of each axis improves performances in the short term but becomes a burden to what needs to be valued the most, cooperation. This content is bull’s eye for BOI.

9/5 Dialogue Announcement 1560P Mr. Nozaki, awarded Best Presentation Award for the presentation on BOI!!

9/6 Public Announcement 2331L Comparison between paper and tablet terminals as reading devices for discussion (Fuji Xerox)
Although the experiment has limitations, such as the content needs to be reading materials for discussions or what is shown on the iPad or laptop is a PDF, which lacks superiority in digital utility, it is quite interesting how paper, which is said to be more inconvenient, is experimentally proved to be superior in all comparisons.

This is an excerpt I have found in a book by professor Keiko Nakamura, a life scientist.

From 「科学者が人間であること」p.35 by Keiko Nakamura
To be convenient is to be quick, to have less work, to have things done exactly the way you wish.
Emerging risks have created more convenient inventions and the increasing productions of these convenient goods have brought economic development, in other words, monetary wealth. We have called these changes as “development” and these modern societies as “civilizations,” as the symbol of developed countries and decided to expand in this direction.
However, when we view this phenomenon with the perspective of “Humans are living creatures, existing within nature,” there is a massive problem with this form of expansion we must overthink. This is because there are too many factors, which do not align with the characteristics of living creatures, as I have explained earlier.
Able to be quick, to have less work, to have things done exactly the way you wish. We are grateful for these factors in daily life but unfortunately, they do not work with living creatures. To live is to create time and thus, quickly passing through time is not meaningful, it may even be a denial of living.
In the same way, “having less work” also bothers me. As the Japanese phrase 「手塩に掛ける」(to bring up under one’s personal care) suggests, properly interacting with living creatures involves watching out for and understanding the other’s thoughts. We feel joy when we are able to act as the other wishes.

Is this how those who have pursued sciences think? We can also recognize similarities with the thoughts of Osamu Katai, emeritus professor of Kyoto University, who have created the term “BOI.” Professor Katai is also an expert in soft computing and systems sciences.
I would be interested in what professor Nakamura would think of our lab’s work, which is application of professor Katai’s work of BOI to system design. Borrowing professor Nakamura’s words, our work can be rephrased as an attempt to think about systems and equipment for “humans, as living creatures existing in nature.”

In the Magazine “Japanese cultural arts” February 2014 issue, Mr Kanko Nishibori had written about BoI. They understood the concept so well, and the writing wowed us. The PDF (in Japanese) has been uploaded with permission from the author and publisher.

What can we gain from inconvenience (e.g. taking extra effort, breaking up available resources)? There are many things, but, in particular, we chose 4 and made posters of the typical situations (Hokkaido university of education Iwamizawa campus graduation exhibition 2013).
These have previously been posted on Facebook. All are image files in JPEG format.

(#1, 126KB)

(#2, 110KB)

(#3, 104KB)

(#4, 110KB)