A Flower is not a Flower — Technology and Social Implementation
There is a song, “A Flower is not a Flower”.
This music was composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, a wonderful musician. Sadly, he passed away this March. If you know of him, you might know, he made a lot of great music, and his legacy of accomplishments is countless. Today, I would like to talk about technology using the perspective of the song “A Flower is Not a Flower.”
First, I would like you to listen to this music from Ryuichi Sakamoto’s official channel on YouTube.
This title is meaningful. You might think that it means the ‘thing’ (subject you think it is that way) is not the ‘thing’ indeed.
Yes, it’s true. The ‘thing’ is not created naturally. There is a process to creating that ‘thing’. Also, until the time people acknowledge the ‘thing’ as something natural, there is a lot of trial and error and reflection of right and wrong.
Next, let’s apply this concept to technology. In this day and age, there is a lot of great technology. These days, artificial intelligence like Chat-GPT is rapidly growing all over the world. Many people predict that this kind of technology will improve our skills and social life.
But now, you can imagine that “A Flower is not a Flower”. Reflecting on this title, we could say, “Technology is not technology”. We should not think that technology will take us to a wonderful world automatically. Technology is material. The most important thing is “We have to navigate technology for correct socialized form”.
If you have read the novel, ‘1984’ by George Orwell, you must be aware that technology does not always take us to a bright future. In this era, we are required to think about our future seriously and use technology in the correct way.
At HENNGE, we have the ‘HENNGE WAY’ a guideline with our values and culture. In this guideline, one of the HENNGE ways is “Love & Adopt Technology to Our Work”.
Yes, we, all the HENNGE members, love technology. In addition to that, we believe in the bright future of technology. Therefore, we try to seriously catch up to new technology and adapt it to our own work. During those times, we stop and think, “How would this technology improve our life?”, “Is there a great way to use this technology for something?”
Sometimes we also hear about how some technologies will deprive us of our jobs, leading to social problems.
However, that is only true if we think of technology as just a way of living comfortably or a machine for gaining wealth. But, “A Flower is not a Flower”. We can think about how to use technology for our world and how to improve our world in the right way. (Of course, there is a discussion of correctness or social justice)
HENNGE, our company name, means change and challenge in Japanese. During the time you read this short article, the world is changing, and technology is updating. In such a rapidly changing world, we try to extend the possibility of technology and find a new way of applying technology to the world.
That reminds me, when I was in graduate school, my respectable academic advisor sometimes used the word “Soboku(素朴)”. It means the thing is still rough cutting or too pure.
Now, I understand what he wanted to tell me.
Since “A Flower is not a Flower”, we have to think to connect something to the flower. At one moment, it might bloom. Other times, it might wither. By thinking about technology thoughtfully and carefully, we must figure out the right technology for people finally.
Ryuichi Sakamoto became famous as a member of the group “Yellow Magic Orchestra,” which adopted the latest musical instrument and technology.
Just like he did, we want to continue to find the correct way to incorporate technology and make things a little bit better.
