envisioning human society 50 years ahead

The Toyota Foundation celebrates its 50-year anniversary this year since it was founded in 1974. Over the years, as laid out in its prospectus, the Foundation has been aiming to achieve the mission of "contributing to the realization of greater human happiness,” and has focused on issues that serve the needs of the times in wide-ranging fields such as people’s life, the natural environment, social welfare, education and culture, and has so far made grants to research activities and projects dealing with these issues.

Over the past 50 years, human society has seen tectonic shifts in every aspect from politics to economy, people’s life to culture. As the pace of change is expected to increase from now, the Toyota Foundation would like to conduct its grant-making activities going forward, with a view toward what human society will look like 50 years from today.

As its 50-year anniversary grant program, the Foundation will accept research project proposals on the theme of “Envisioning Human Society 50 Years Ahead.”

Human society is going through major upheavals and changes due to a variety of factors including technological innovation, demographic shift, global environmental change, and a changing international situation. Given stunning scientific and technological progress in domains such as artificial intelligence (AI) and genetic engineering, it may be worth considering whether we can assume human society as we know it will remain in existence in 50 years’ time.

Then, the question we need to ask ourselves is what human society should look like 50 years from now. Not only do we need to focus our attention on those issues that seem hard to resolve half a century later if things are left as they are, but we will also take notice of issues that are not yet surfaced today and explore what human society should be like from an innovative perspective.

As such, the Toyota Foundation looks forward to receiving project proposals that are ambitious, innovative, and unconventional in approach.