Translator: Yuko Masubuchi Reviewer: Chie Kosuga
Hello.
I'm Susumu "Sam" Furukawa.
I had a stroke in August last year.
I was almost dead, and came back from the verge of death.
I said to young people,
"Doesn't this look like Star of the Giants?"
"What is that?" they said.
Some people get it and others don't. It depends on your generation.
This is the last session in TEDxSapporo 2015.
It is a great honor to be here with you all today.
Do you know a theater play titled “The Revolution That We Loved?"
It is Shoji Kokami’s work and published by Kadokawa.
When I was a high school student, I went to Azabu High School.
I was not involved in a campus dispute,
but I had been fomented it.
I used to be quite active.
We actually won something from a power authority
who behaved as if he owned our campus
for moneymaking.
We expelled him,
and got back our liberty in the campus.
And we also did away with uniforms.
"We should have a choice whether or not to wear the uniform.
Let us make plans for our curriculum."
Our generations claimed those opinions.
It happened that,
when the current headmaster welcomed the new freshmen, he said,
"Azabu has a history of 120 years.
The first anniversary is the day of original establishment by Soroku Ebara.
The second anniversary is on the day
when your seniors won back liberty and independence
in this campus."
I'm the one of the "seniors," you know?
When I visit the school festival,
the students are handing down the story
how their seniors won back their liberty,
from generation to generation.
So, I studied about it.
Japanese high school students protested against the security treaty,
expressed their opinions about Okinawa,
opposed the Vietnam War.
They never used violence.
We called it "France demo" back then.
They held hands side by side, and spread out
that they blocked a street.
Never hit anyone.
Without violence,
those high school students stood up and raised their voice.
And the leader was me.
(Laughter)
Actually...
(Applause)
Only two high schools succeeded in the student movements in Japan.
One was Sapporo Minami High School.
Probably, there are graduates of the school here, I guess.
Alumni or alumnae is here?
Definitely there are.
Back then, Sapporo Minami High School must have been very troubled.
They did away with uniforms and won the right to plan their curriculum.
Azabu and Sapporo Minami High School had been working together from then.
There is such a background between us.
Here's my first point:
There are many high school students
and adults who are working in companies here.
Many of you are enduring the tyranny and depressed.
Of course, you can run away and get rid of it.
But also, you can fight with the problems.
What I want to tell you most is: never hesitate.
And here is the second point:
When I was young, I looked like this.
(Laughter)
I hate getting older.
Anyway,
when I joined ASCII Corporation,
I was editing magazines and talking about the future of computers.
At that time,
I wrote the "vision statement" in my columns.
"Future computers will be smaller and smaller.
We will put them on our desk tops or keep them in our pockets.
Computers should vanish away at the end," I wrote.
"The more important thing people should be free
to communicate with each other.
The importance of 'media' will increase in the computer network society."
I mean what I said media is,
I wrote this in the column.
"New interactive media will be created between personal media and mass media."
That was in 1979, I was 25 years old then.
The Internet was not spread to the world yet.
My office was located 200 meters away from Aoyama-dori Avenue.
It costed five million yen a month to connect the Internet at 512Kbps.
(Laughter)
A 16KB memory card was 280,000 yen at that time.
A 1200 baud modem was 500,000 yen.
In those days, we imagined the future.
We connect computers, and make people's communication smoother.
Then we don't need to hookup computers.
People surely will be able to tell their feelings straight to others.
We must be able to create such a world.
This is what I wrote in the vision statement.
I'm not talking about the history.
I've been doing my best for 30 years to make them all come true.
But serving as the president of Microsoft KK was, in a sense,
a roundabout way.
Currently, I'm a professor at a graduate school.
They look great, don't they?
You can find Dr. Asada in them.
I told them, "I'm here to fulfill not only my dream,
but also your dream.
I'll support you.
I'll cheer you up."
And we are almost there.
I have faced many challenges until now.
I realized that
we needed a lot of energy to go beyond the border.
I have experienced a lot of failures in my life.
I have been depressed and heartbroken, more than anybody else.
I will let you know how you can turn things around.
The first thing is, how you go beyond a border.
National boundaries are definitely thick.
You have to cross over the sea.
You have to take a flight and go far away.
What's going to happen after that?
A travel history of 480 trips have been recorded in my passport.
My shortest trip was when I landed in the US at 10:30 am,
had a meeting, then left on a 1 pm flight.
(Laughter)
That sounds like a one day business trip to Sapporo.
I've been doing my best.
And then, I realized some things.
First, I faced the barriers of a non-academic background.
Actually, I'm a graduate school professor right now.
But I never graduated from a university, because I dropped out of university.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are the same as me.
I'm proud to be in the same category as them.
(Laughter) (Applause)
If you know what you want to do, you can throw up other things
or change the direction.
When I went to the university, I majored in the study called
"Gender differences in psychology."
How people develop the different characters between men and women.
But when I thought about what I studied,
I realized that my major made it difficult to find a job.
And what was worse,
since Azabu High School was a prestigious college-bound high school,
every year, 80 students went to Tokyo University
and 150 went to Waseda or Keio Univ.
About 30 students were out of line.
Some of them were acting in theaters, or were gay bar proprietors.
or doing business in some odd industry, like I did.
I spent three years studying for the university exam.
"You can spend two years preparing for the university exam,
but it's abnormal to spend three years," people said.
All of my ex-girlfriends left me.
I was depressed about my life.
I have an elder brother.
He graduated from Tokyo University and became a lawyer.
People always compared me with him.
I didn't like being compared with him.
Fortunately, my mother didn't do that.
My education was completely different to his,
and I chose a different way of life.
She never compared me with him.
Since she never controlled my education, I was free to do whatever I liked.
That's how I figured out my lifestyle.
I was able to overcome the barriers of a non-academic background
because of the power of computer network.
When I was studying in the U.S. for eight months,
I happened to meet the Cybernet
that provided network services for all universities in Southern California.
I just said to a librarian, "I love computers,"
then she gave me a superuser's ID and the password.
With the superuser account,
I was able to access any university without taking an entrance exam.
When I made contact with people, they admired my belief
and we had a good conversation.
It was something like opening a cabinet and picking up anything I wanted.
I thought, "Wow, I don't have to go to a university anymore!"
and I recognized the power of a computer network.
I thought, "In the near future,
people will be spending time interacting with computers.
Computers will be used, not for calculation or writing,
not for such convenience, but as a medium of communication.
It will be amazing."
After that,
I faced the barriers from industries.
I think you know what I mean.
Actually I'm a Mac user, so everyone asks me,
"Don't you think it makes Bill Gates mad?"
(Laughter)
Probably they have stereotype images.
They have solidified each image of Mac and Windows.
And they are also particular about smartphones.
They have a set idea for what and how it should be.
Think about it.
You have a computer or Mac, and also a smartphone.
What is the most valuable thing in it?
OS? I don't think so.
Application? Nope.
I think your most valuable things are your contents or messages in it.
And sharing those things is more valuable.
If you take good photos,
and you want to create a photo book for someone,
or want to share them with your friends,
or want to impress someone with a photo,
or want to share your favorite music,
technologies work for you.
PC, Mac, and smartphones still have barriers between them.
If the barriers between TV and smartphones are broken down,
it will be something greater than now.
Digital cameras and home electronics haven't been connected yet.
If those things are connected to the networks,
you will be able to create a comfortable environment.
I imagine it.
What should we do to break down the barriers?
So far, we have focused on enhancing the existing functions.
But now, user experience, - we call it "UX" for short -
enhancing UX will be more and more important.
Oh, I have to finish the rest of the slides in two minutes.
(Laughter)
I realized that ten years ago,
I went to "Cupid Fair" in Iwamizawa.
Disabled people and elderly people
were living together and helping each other.
I saw them creating many things.
At first, I thought I had to give something to them as charity,
but I realized it was rude to them.
Because they were doing their best.
It was a condescending thought and it would offend them.
I met people with muscular dystrophy.
Their average life span is about 32 years.
They told me,
"Mr. Furukawa,
when you are 80, surely you will crave this.
Our lives are short and we are living in a swift passage of time.
We can see what you will want when you become 80,"
they said.
"We will create it for you,
so you have to wait for it for when you turn 80 years old,"
they said.
And I thought it was cool.
Then they created a text entry program,
a software that you enter text through eye tracking.
From the time they become disabled,
they created the communication tool for themselves.
I was so amazed.
They were proud to tell me,
"In a hospital in Sapporo, a patient who was in a car crash
wanted to leave his last words for his family,
but his condition was unable to use a computer keyboard.
Then, they came to borrow our tool.
We're proud of that!" they said.
They still have zest for life
and their capabilities.
For example, they create tools to help careworkers
who support elderly people, washing their bodies and going to the toilet
For example, people don't simply use a wheelchair as it is,
but they seek for the best fabric for the cushion,
and the easiest size to control.
They notice those things and create the network environment
for themselves to make innovations, and I learned a lot from them.
I used to be a magazine editor,
a programmer, a business manager, a general manager, and a president.
And currently a professor.
I'm learning so many things from young people.
I'm not only teaching, but also learning.
I still want to get involved.
That's why I came back alive from the Styx.
"End of Life Planning"
After giving the stroke a try.
(Laughter)
I studied a lot about it.
A patient loses about two million synapses in a minute.
You gradually lose the ability to move your body.
I felt the weakness and the numbness on my left side,
and I thought "I'm going to die."
When I lay in bed in fear of death,
I was sweating and felt itchy.
But I was not able to scratch with my hand.
Rehabilitation from a stroke was harsh, as I described it on my Facebook page.
A therapist said,
"We need a kind of sadistic mind to be a therapist."
"Not a kind of, but extremely," I replied.
(Laughter)
The rehabilitation was extremely hard.
It took one month before I could open my palm again,
and three months to make "scissors" with my fingers.
I finally regained walking ability.
I learned that we need the butt muscles to lift our legs.
Sometimes I stumbled over paving stones and almost fell over.
It was quite a hard experience.
I tell you who gave me the power for living.
Actually I told this on my Twitter.
I was tweeting something like, "You are extremely sadistic."
Just by sharing my messages everyday,
sometimes someone advised me of an alternative therapy,
and after three months, you know,
how much my condition recovered. I got energy from everyone.
It's not only sending out my messages but SNS also gave me knowledge,
and energy to live for myself.
I really appreciate it.
Now, this is a chance to give something back to society.
The people who you live with,
or the people at your school,
if they are feeling down or depressed,
I'll empower them, that's why, I came back.
(Applause)