Digitally Named World: Challenges for New Social Infrastructures

Abstract

introduced in social infrastructures, which are supporting our daily lives. Since the information technologies have progressed very rapidly, the basic structure of each social infrastructure, which was mostly designed in the 19th or the beginning of 20th centuries with few possibility of information technology, should be redesigned with an assumption of the existence of the advanced information technologies. Based on the high-performance SoCs (System-on-a-Chips) connected by wide-band networks, we can design next generation of social systems, which are directly related with quality of our society including individual rights and national security. In this talk, two social infrastructure information technologies are introduced. Personal Identifier (PID) system is an infrastructure for bidirectional mutual authentication, which will be used for electric commerce and governmental services. An RF-ID tag system is also important technology to implement efficient management of products and economic activities. Using PID and RF-ID tags, we can bridge a gap between the real world and the virtual one on computers automatically. We call the society, in which all persons and goods have their own digital names (identifiers) and are recognizable both in the real and virtual world, Digitally Named World. The systems require advanced technologies of SoC, networking, security and software. Here, technical challenges and social requirements for the new technologies are discussed. Some people are afraid of the infringement of their privacy in the digitally named world. Our discussions also include the technology to protect privacy and individual rights as well as efficiency and stability of our society.