Abstract
The Government of Japan’s “Society 5.0” initiative aims to create a cyber-physical society in which (among other things) citizens’ daily lives will be enhanced through increasingly close collaboration with artificially intelligent systems. However, an apparent paradox lies at the heart of efforts to create a more “human-centered” society in which human beings will live alongside a proliferating array of increasingly autonomous social robots and embodied AI. This study seeks to investigate the presumed human-centeredness of Society 5.0 by comparing its makeup with that of earlier societies. By distinguishing “technological” and “non-technological” processes of posthumanization and applying a phenomenological anthropological model, this study demonstrates: (1) how the diverse types of human and non-human members expected to participate in Society 5.0 differ qualitatively from one another; (2) how the dynamics that will shape the membership of Society 5.0 can be conceptualized; and (3) how the anticipated membership of Society 5.0 differs from that of Societies 1.0 through 4.0. This study describes six categories of prospective human and non-human members of Society 5.0 and shows that all six have analogues in earlier societies, which suggests that social scientific analysis of past societies may shed unexpected light on the nature of Society 5.0.
Highlights
The Government of Japan’s Society 5.0 initiative seeks to employ emerging technologies to create a “super smart” cyber-physical society that is more “human-centered” (Harayama 2017, pp. 8, 10)than our current information society
This study describes six categories of prospective human and non-human members of Society 5.0 and shows that all six have analogues in earlier societies, which suggests that social scientific analysis of past societies may shed unexpected light on the nature of Society 5.0
As a step toward resolving this ambiguity in the Society 5.0 paradigm, this study attempts to clarify exactly who will constitute the “members” of Society 5.0. It provides a systematic classification of the diverse types of human and non-human entities that can be expected to participate in Society 5.0, as well as an analysis of the societal dynamics that are leading to the emergence of such entities
Summary
The Government of Japan’s Society 5.0 initiative seeks to employ emerging technologies to create a “super smart” cyber-physical society that is more “human-centered” (Harayama 2017, pp. 8, 10)than our current information society. The Government of Japan’s Society 5.0 initiative seeks to employ emerging technologies to create a “super smart” cyber-physical society that is more “human-centered” As a step toward resolving this ambiguity in the Society 5.0 paradigm, this study attempts to clarify exactly who will constitute the “members” of Society 5.0. It provides a systematic classification of the diverse types of human and non-human entities that can be expected to participate in Society 5.0, as well as an analysis of the societal dynamics that are leading to the emergence of such entities.
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