Welcome to GII Laboratory:: On the trail of the industrial revolution, we are now witnessing the emergence of a new knowledge based society. Information communication technology (ICT) enables every member of the society to contribute to the creation of knowledge and the wealth of the society. But it is still a promise, and is not always fully realized in our real world. We are witnessing various kinds of imbalances or divides in the usage and development of ICT.
Although physical network connectivity constitutes the basic infrastructure of the society, the invisible infractructure, technical and non-technical, constitutes another layer of infrastructure of the knowledge based society. Let me give a few examples. Knowledge should be codified in digital form, but many languages in the world are still facing serious trouble because of lacking appropriate encoding standards for their reprsentation in the Internet. Citizens should be given enhanced and non-stop service delivery by their government, but technologies should be coupled with institutional framework to secure information access, participation and privacy. Technical standards, cyber laws and various type of institutional arrangements are indispensable components of the "Global Information Infrastructure (GII)" and are the focus of GII laboratory's research interest. We are participating in many challenging research
projects with our
partners.
Members:: Currently more than twenty members, including graduate and undergraduate students, research students and researchers are studying at GII laboratory. Almost one third of the members are foreign students. [see
member list]. As of April 2005, we have eight students coming from seven countries: China, Korea, Hungary, Malaysia, Myanmar, the United States, and Viet Nam. We also receive researchers from our partners on a short term basis. Our global network and intensive interaction with them creates a cosmopolitan atomosphere. Members are expected to actively participate the management of our laboratory. Please see
"management staff list" and
"Five Do's and Five Don't's in GII Laboratory".
Seminars:: Members meet regularly at seminars. Currently three seminars are organized.
1. GII/LOP Seminar:: focusing on ICT-enabled global business development, language digital divide issues ("LOP" stands for the Language Observatory Project), country indicator development for ICT policy planning & review, etc.
2. e-Government Seminar:: focusing on e-government related issues such as benchmarking of e-government performance, ICT and democracy, privacy, public key infrastructure (PKI), etc.
3. Undergraduate Seminar:: Various topics are chosen depending on interests of the members.
The medium of communication in the laboratory is basically bilingual. In principle, presentations and discussion at the GII/LOP Seminar are in English, and the other two seminars are in Japanese. Please check
"Weekly Schedule of Seminars" and join any of these. Members are also expected to participate in research
projects depending on their interests.
We are waiting for you to join us!
Yoshiki MIKAMI
