WIDE Project as the Foundation for a Society Premised on AI
Forty years have passed since WIDE Project was launched with the aim of building a large-scale, wide-area distributed computing environment. With this major milestone, we now stand at a new civilizational turning point: the emergence of a society in which AI is taken for granted.
The Evolution of Digital Architecture and the Advent of Societies Built on What We Take for Granted
The standardized operating system environment built on a philosophy of respect for the user that began with UNIX defined a common foundation for computing. This was followed by the Web, which, through HTML, collaboration among browser vendors, and standardization efforts such as those of the W3C, enabled the distribution and sharing of digital data, and thus it became the platform we know today, thrumming with applications that serve people and society.
Through ongoing advancements, the Internet began to function as a foundation for humanity in both name and substance, or in other words, as the basis for a society in which the Internet is taken for granted.
Allow me to share an illustrative anecdote. Many of the students entering university in 2025 were born in 2007, the year the first smartphone was released. When asked what era they would like to travel to if they had a time machine, some reportedly said that they’d like to visit a time before the Internet existed.
For a generation that has grown up with networks around them like air from the moment they were born, a world without the Internet is already an unimaginable “other world.” This is how the progress of technology and the speed of its diffusion come to shape eras in which such things are unconsciously taken as given.
New Horizons and Risks Accelerated by AI
And now, we are entering an era in which AI, like the Internet before it, is also taken for granted. As specialists in digital architecture, WIDE Project researchers have been stepping up the discussion on AI across working groups and other forums, beginning with the summer board retreat two years ago.
Recent advances in AI on the technological front have been remarkable. At its core, and indeed structurally, AI is nothing less than the culmination of the technologies we have built up over the years. The analysis of vast quantities of digital data and the inference processing performed by models generated from that data will fuel new contributions across all sorts of domains.
Yet the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. As the invasion of Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East have shown, the domain of cyberwarfare, itself predicated on the Internet, continues to expand, and cybercrime is becoming ever more diverse with ever more serious impacts.
The large-scale, wide-area distributed processing environment that WIDE Project has long been working to build is now the very architecture underpinning this society in which AI is taken for granted. Beyond simply meeting rising expectations for computing and communications resources, the scope of our activities has become broader than ever before, encompassing the establishment of new cybersecurity measures to confront the abuse and risks of AI, as well as efforts to address global challenges in areas such as weather, the environment, healthcare, and disaster prevention.
Deploying Networks with a View to the Entire Globe
As part of the academic community, our activities in policy, rulemaking, education, and diplomacy are increasingly important. Through ARENA-PAC and SOI Asia, WIDE’s position in international research and education networks (RENs) has taken on a truly global perspective, with project operations now spanning the entire Asia-Pacific as well as areas of Europe, Africa, and South America.
Forty Years of Progress and Gratitude
There is a reason we have been able to sustain our activities for as long as 40 years under the consistent theme of “building a large-scale, wide-area distributed environment.” Focusing on the fundamental question of how distributed computing resources can help shape human civilization, we have continued to provide a place where leaders of industry, like-minded researchers, and students, the torch-bearers of the next era, can always engage in earnest discussion.
As founder, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the members who have supported us in this journey and to the sponsors who continue to provide their generous support.
In a future in which we take AI for granted, what kind of abundance and richness can our digital architecture bring to society? It is my hope that this report will provide an important record of one step along that path.
March 2026