“Successful Aging” means the world that people can be deeply gratified by their longevity and believe reliable and sustainable future. In other words, “Successful Aging” is based on the two conditions that the independence of each person's mind and body is guaranteed, and a credible social system of healthy longevity is established. The two conditions must work together without victims and fallacy of composition. The Japanese poet Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) wrote in 1926 that there can be no individual happiness unless our world is happy as a whole.
The decade of aging come into our societies. Super aging society such as Japan shows the development of mobility markets and finally lead lack of labors and increase of single-person households. Fundamental unit of society is drastically changing like as values of gender equality. The relationship among humans is changing like a structure of family. Besides, the relationship between humans and machines is also bound to change.
Extending “healthy life expectancy” will be necessary to establish the independence of each person’s mind and body and increased opportunities of social participations across all generations make a greater diversity of values and exchange, to create a more affluent society. In order to form an optimal and healthy society, it will be necessary to create test fields, where engineers can boldly take on challenges on, and an environment that socially accepts new technologies that do not depend on human labor. Nowadays, the social responsibility of engineers is getting larger. As advanced knowledge and higher technology become more popular, the number of black boxes increases all around us. Engineers must provide reliable black boxes that work for daily and emergency use.
The establishment of “Successful Aging” is directly linked to human activities leading to outer space. If it possible to establish a base port on the moon surface, the 1/6-gravity environment saves the energy for launching rockets in comparison with the Earth and cumulated hydrogen on lunar pole is expected as the fuel for space shuttle among Lunar and Earth. Astronauts love to look at our blue planet and release their bodies from the gravity. However, their behavior and performance are dull in outer space and their functions of immunity and reproduction decline similarly to those of older people. They said that their body conditions and their living environment in outer space were so bad and, therefore, spaceflight and aging are quite similar. If we establish “Successful Aging”, we can contribute to developing human activities in outer space. The ambit of humanity can expand into outer space by means of fruitful “Successful Aging”.
With developing frontier science and new technology more, AI and multi-sensing machines evolve and threaten the labor market. A combination of AI and multi-sensing machines can perform like functions of consciousness; recognition (detection), inference (estimation), and retrospect (simulation) with using the five senses. AI is already serving as an advisor to judges in the US. Probably we are entering an era in which AI should be socially defined and given moral rights as a copilot, just like a corporation as a legal entity. The appears when people doubt the presence of their ego and consciousness against mindless AI. The degree of our social tolerance to see how much moral rights can be given to “Mindless AI” is being tested.
Regenerative medicine with using stem cells is entering familiar medical settings. The regulations related to regenerative therapies have been relaxed in Japan since 2019. From the perspective of medical economics in pharmaceutical fields, the number of regenerative therapies will increase abundantly if the use of allogeneic stem cells is ethically and legally permitted in each regenerative therapy. Developing genome editing technology derived CRISPR/Cas9 is limited for use in somatic cells not in germ line and regulated by ethics and law. However, what treatments for congenital diseases should be allowed to take advantage of this technology? In these days, large biomedical companies will draw the grand strategy; 1) the target disease and patients’ condition will be selected including cautiously designed orphan diseases, 2) a lot of small success in silico, in vitro, and in vivo was piled up to prepare for the future, 3) they will get the opportunity to have clinical trials, and 4) finally establish the therapy with using genome editing technology like the case of mRNA vaccine such as COVID-19 mRNA vaccine (nucleoside-modified) as you know.
We must not forget the fact that dementia places the greatest burden on aging society. The time has come when preventive medicine, which targets are lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, eye disease, sarcopenia, frailty, mental health and dementia, is quite important. To grasp the symptoms of these diseases, there is a demand for wearable or contactless sensors that read biological information correctly. Especially such a sensing signs of diseases should be implicated in SaMD for preventive medicine (SaMDfPM). SaMDfPM provides health promotion and navigates to promote behavior change and institutional improvement nonchalantly; not choosing harmful diets, not taking drugs, not giving restless rest, and not forcing exercise. In the perspective of the developing state of the remote communication of human senses, commercialized vision-based tactile sensor is entering the manufacturing site instead of manual tactile inspection. Sharing tactile information requires a high sense of ethics. The concept of data integrity cultivated by the pharmaceutical industry must be implemented to keep safety, stability, and effectiveness in our society. The data has to be attributable, legible, contemporaneous, original, accurate, complete, consistent, enduring and available for everyone including emotionless AI and machines. The precious data-driven infrastructure will support human activities more efficiently and more healthily like a future forecast map (1968) drawn by Japanese illustrator Satoshi Kako, Ph. D. (Eng.) (1926-2018), that will not fade even after 55 years.
This decade of change may be the most important time for our one world. Ryuichi Sakamoto (1952-2023) defined that the 20th century was a century of destruction with war and slaughter. We should establish a new century of reconstruction with “Successful Aging”. Our working generation has an advantage because we have little resistance to androids by watching familiar animations like the cat-shaped robot fostering human minds, which theme song “Create my mind!” the Japanese artist Ken Hirai sang (2017). When Mozart learned of the existence of the metronome, he was very happy that he could perform the piece perfectly with it. When he actually played piece in an orchestra with using the metronome instead of a conductor, it turned out to be a tragic performance. Machines shouldn't become main pilots and may only be copilots that can cooperate with imperfect humans. If only people can have hearts, then human beings should choose the activities of heart-to-heart contact because these activities can only be done between humans, as their own activity within limited human resources. Such activities should be valued in the world that coexists with AI and machines. Genuine “robust inclusive design”, that harmonize activities of lifeform and an artificially created at any time containing daily and emergency periods, is solicited for “Successful aging”. I hope our world becomes better with your ideas and consideration for others including mindless AI and machines.
References
1. Kazumasa Yamada (2019) An Acquaintance with an aging society. Social Sciences 2019, Vol. 8, 110. doi:10.3390/socsci8040110
2. Kenji Miyazawa (1926) Noumin geijutu gairon kouyou. https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000081/card2386.html
3. Miller, R. S., Nerurkar, G. and Lawrence, D. J. (2012) Enhancement hydrogen at the Lunar poles: New insights from the detection of epithermal and fast neutron signature. J. of Geophysical Research Vol. 117, E11007, doi:10.1029/2012JE0041
4. NASA (2019) Artemis program. https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/
5. JAXA (2020) Space Life Story Book. https://iss.jaxa.jp/med/images/71532_story.pdf
6. Ryuichi Sakamoto (1999) SAMPLED LIFE-RAW LIFE OSAKA&TOKYO. Wea Japan, Tokyo(Audio CD).
7. Ryuichi Sakamoto (2001) Zero Landmine. https://www.sitesakamoto.com/update/zerolandmine.html
8. Hiroshi Ishiguro (2012) Cover page of SCIENCE, 10 Oct 2014, Vol 346. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMRv3jtwICs
9. David Cyranoski (2019) Japan's approval of stem-cell treatment for spinal-cord injury concerns scientists. Nature 2019, Vol. 565(7741): 544-545. doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-00178-x
10. Ito, Y., Kim, Y., Nagai, C., and Obinata, G. (2011) Contact estimation by vision-based tactile sensors for dexterous manipulation with robot hands based on shape-sensing. Int. J. of Advanced Robotic Systems Vol. 8: 225-234.
11. Yamada, K., Nozawa, S., Hayashi, H., and Murotani, K. (2021) Self-efficacy of public health nurses in disaster health activities: An Exploratory study. J. of Japan Soc. of Disaster Nursing, Vol. 22, 3, 111-121.
12. Kenji Miyazawa (1932) Gusuko Budori no Denki. https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000081/files/1924_14254.html
13. Satoshi Kako (1968) Daruma-chan to Kaminari-chan. Fukuinkan Shoten, Tokyo. ISBN978-4-8340-0159-4
14. Ken Hirai (2002) Ookina Furu-Dokei. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3hvxbM_ubw
15. Ken Hirai (2017) Boku no Kokoro wo Tsukutte yo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKRk4IKauY or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjWB4Z5yT48
(All URLs are accessed on May 10th 2023.)
