Japan is frozen at a critical crossroads, unable to decide upon its new direction. The institutions that served Japan admirably during the Meiji Restoration and its post-war reconstruction are now failing to provide necessary leadership. The old systems of education, economy and government are suddenly irrelevant; Japan has become, in the context of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, simply the world's richest and most directionless third world country. In an era in which Globalization has replaced the Cold War as a more efficient market mechanism, Japan's inability to change is not only putting its economy at risk, but the rich cultural history of Japan and its exquisite natural environment are also being raped and pillaged. These observations are echoed in books such as The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence and Dogs and Demons. Far from "Japan bashing," these authors and the speaker plead with passion for Japan's leadership to awaken and reinvent itself, establish a new direction and vision, channel creative energy and capital into leadership focused on a complex web of economic, environmental, educational and other societal problems. 

Carl Sundberg briefly reviews his earlier US Embassy-sponsored presentation, "The Role of the Internet in Rebuilding the Japanese Economy: An IT Revolution." He then provides updates to this 2000 presentation, focusing in particular on changes in direction inspired by Aizu University's emerging leadership role in "Digital and Academic Liberty of Information." Specific on-going projects are examined and constraints identified. Finally, a potential model for the future is presented which, in great irony, capitalizes on Japan's "follow-the-leader" mentality in order to introduce creative innovation at the highest levels of government, academia and business. The critical need for GPL, GGPL and Open Source models and the potential contribution by Aizu University are clearly highlighted. 

Carl Sundberg has spent over twenty years in Japan. From the age of ten, he relocated from Minneapolis to Tokyo and graduated from the American School in Japan. While in Japan as a teenager, Carl traveled the country by bicycle and motorcycle and started a small wholesale operation in Akihabara, Japan's electronics hub. After graduating with a degree in East Asian Studies from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, he returned to Japan as a "Special National Bureaucrat" with the Ministry of Education and was posted to Fukushima Prefecture in rural Japan. During four educational years, Carl visited 100 local communities in Fukushima and over 400 elementary and secondary schools supporting Ministry initiatives to refocus English language education on communicative skills. After a traditional style Japanese marriage and the starting of a family, Carl joined Morgan Stanley in Tokyo as a technologist to participate in the opening of Japan's financial markets to foreign competition. He has continued to focus volunteer efforts to assist in the development of more transparent financial markets in Japan as well as to develop digital education innovation. His specialization is in risk mitigation. Carl recently moved from Credit Suisse First Boston to Citifinancial where he is the Chief Operations and Technology Officer managing the technology needs of 7,200 employees across 800 branches throughout Japan. The opinions expressed by Carl at the DALI conference are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Citifinancial and Citigroup.