Leading the way in uncertain times

More than 30 years have passed since the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies was founded in 1990. The Faculty has had the Internet as its infrastructure since its establishment, and this has been a driving force in the development and spread of Internet technology. But not even our forerunners could have imagined that, 30 years on, we would be living in an age where almost every person has a small computer (smartphone) to hand, and that information would instantly travel around the world via SNS. COVID-19, which swept the world starting at the end of 2019, has drastically changed our everyday lives. The environment around us has undergone rapid changes in recent years, making predictions difficult and raising uncertainties for the future, thus bringing about a situation which has come to be referred to as VUCA (an acronym derived from the words volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). We are currently living in the age of VUCA. While global environmental problems such as drastic global warming and a decrease in biodiversity cast a dark shadow over our future, emerging technologies may enable us to do things we had never even imagined. Show More