Expanded human with HSI -Universality and individuality-

Since the industrial revolution, technology was searching for convenience. Convenience can be measured by the efficient use of time, space or energy. Faster, bigger or smaller were the goals. At first, on a material-energy aspect, and more recently on a communication-information aspect, convenience has become real. Technology has made it possible for non-winged mankind to fly the sky. It has shown the ultimate limits of space and the world in its very details. It saves sick people that would not have ordinarily survived in the past. It has made us possible to run faster than 300 kilometers per hour. It is now possible to talk with people walking on the street from the other side of the globe. In other words, technology has made true the dream of mankind that was to surpass temporal or intellectual limits. We are becoming supermen. Our dreams are steadily becoming part of reality, while we are now feeling a kind of discomfort. The challenge of a new technology to eradicate this feeling is starting. It is a technology that recognizes the limits of human life, and that is focused on human beings who answer their existentialist impulses. It is a technology that measures values by "comfort" but not by "efficiency". Comfort is not an especially new notion as it has been traditionally used as an evaluation criterion for ot her products than technological ones. Works of art and handier aft are typical examples of things that are not measured by their efficiency. The progress of technology has reached a standard that is only enough to set comfort as a criterion. That is to say, if we think about it thoroughly, the objective is to make systems that can do what human beings can do, ot her than systems that can do things that human beings cannot do. Such a system should have not only logical intelligence but also some insights into human nature. In this presentation I would like to talk about human-system interaction to extend hum an ability in some cases including power assist- - ance, intelligence boosting and life-support systems. The evaluation issues of human centric systems will be also another main topic of my talk regarding universality and individuality of human.