Research for the future of humanity and our planet

Message from the Director
To do research is to open up the future, and that future exists in the imagination of each researcher. And that future exists in the imagination of each researcher. Sony Computer Science Laboratories (Sony CSL) contributes to the creation of a future beyond imagination by supporting researchers with extraordinary imagination. We human beings have amazing potential and great diversity, and we believe that maximizing our creativity, intellectual capacity, and physical capabilities and expanding them through the use of technology will change the nature of civilization and challenge the possibilities of humanity. Humanity, which has extended technology as an extension of itself, has the potential to make a qualitatively different leap forward from what we have seen up to now, if we consider this as the next step in evolution.

Despite this potential, the reality of our society is that we face extremely difficult problems in each of these areas: poverty, aging, food, resources, and medicine/health. Furthermore, human civilization is also responsible for major changes in the natural environment, such as irreversible climate transitions and loss of biological diversity. These problems are complex, diverse, and interconnected, and they pose us with an extremely harsh reality. To solve these issues, we will need to think outside the box, have the will to transform our civilization, and have the ability to execute with excellence.

Sony CSL was founded on the principle of “research for the future of humankind,” and today we have taken that principle even further and have come to believe that our mission is to conduct “research for the future of humankind and this planet.

In 2008, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of our institute, we proposed “open systems science” as an approach to science for open systems, instead of the conventional approach for closed systems. The global environment and global social systems, for example, are made up of complex interactions, and open systems are typical examples of systems whose boundaries are virtually undefinable. When we get creative ideas, we are not confined to a limited network of knowledge. Furthermore, when humanity externalizes technology to itself, it becomes an open system, connected not only to nature but also to social systems. Open systems research, because of its complexity, openness, and uniqueness, can be said to be research that challenges the understanding and design of unrepeatable and extremely important phenomena. In such research, science as empirical science and art, or ars, in its original sense, must work together.

In order to solve problems arising from the nature of such systems, we believe that it is necessary to integrate knowledge from a wide range of fields and, at the same time, to go beyond academic research and actually take action, dive into the field, and in some cases, even conduct research while continuing to be involved in the transformation of the systems themselves.

With this in mind, we have adopted the action principle of “Act Beyond Borders. We believe that we should transcend the boundaries between countries, research fields, and even between research and business, and take action to solve problems, create new possibilities, and contribute to the world. The basis for this is the imagination and obsession of each researcher who engages in research. In a sense, this means that each researcher must challenge the limits of his or her own imagination. The question is how much we can embody our vision of the future. The ability to imagine in as much detail and concretely as possible the extremes of what will happen in the future and what needs to be realized, and then to actually realize them, is being tested. This vision of the future determines the direction of what needs to be done now.

At Sony CSL, we support the process of turning this source of imagination into a precisely envisioned future. While the results of our research are sometimes returned to the world in the form of the creation of so-called academic disciplines or major academic contributions, there are also many things that need to be developed into concrete actions in order to be returned to the world in a solid way. Some of our research results are returned to the world through Sony Group businesses, others are realized through like-minded domestic and international companies, public utilities, and government agencies, and still others are directly commercialized by us, depending on the will of each researcher and the nature of the theme.

Sony CSL is and will remain a small organization. We believe that for this organization to cross borders, take action, and change the world, we must unleash the power of the individual to the fullest extent, and continue to project our influence to the world to the greatest extent possible, creating like-minded people and accomplishing great transformations. This can be called the Global Influence Projection. The Sony CSL organization itself will continue to change in order to realize this philosophy.

Sony CSL is a platform for the future of humanity and the planet.

Hiroaki Kitano
Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc.
President & CEO
February 2022

View All Worldviews→