Universal Village (UV) is a new concept proposed by MIT’s Universal Village Program. The concept models a desired future society that protects the environment/eco-system and addresses human needs in order to provide sustainable happiness to residents of the society. It is an expanded and advanced version of Smart Cities which pursues harmony between humans and nature through wise use of technologies. The concept comes from the belief that we should follow the laws of the universe and understand human needs in depth while pursuing intelligent technologies to improve comfort, convenience, and efficiency. Otherwise, nature suffers and we humans suffer eventually.
While there have been previous efforts to address challenges to humanity, most are still in the phase of element-based technologies. The overall living environment lacks a coordinated and systematic design and runs into new challenges including new security/safety/privacy concerns as well as environmental and sustainability problems. The worldwide trend of urbanization tends to follow the path of US development and the standard of US lifestyles. This so-called “modern lifestyle” revolves around vehicles and consumption of natural resources faster than the rest of the world. Instead of passively responding to different emerging problems with temporary solutions, people in different fields should work together to find systematic long-term solutions for the future.
We are calling for a collective effort from multidisciplinary fields and new innovative technologies that will change our lives and improve harmony between humans and nature in the long run. UV will have multiple special sessions covering different aspects of new technologies for future life. The sessions will cover the following themes:
— Environmentally friendly new energy: solar power/bio-energy/supergrid/wireless charging
— Environmentally friendly new materials: pesticides/fertilizers/etc. without chemical contamination and recyclable/biodegradable/edible utensils/tools which do not add to the burden of garbage disposal
— New lifestyles in terms of transportation, healthcare, city management, etc.
— Integrated solutions for urgent and long-tern challenges in safety, security, privacy, climate change, etc.
Past UV conferences in China (Beijing, UV2013), the United States (Boston, UV2014), Japan (Nagoya, UV2016), United States (Boston, UV2018), United States (Boston, UV2020) and the Sixth International Conference on Universal Village (UV2022) in Boston, United States were great successes. The International Conference on Universal Village models a desired future society that pursues harmony between humans and nature through wise application of advanced technologies. The concept is an expanded/advanced version of Smart Cities, and signifies that we follow the laws of the universe to protect the environment and eco-systems while advocating innovative new lifestyles to provide sustainable happiness for humanity’s future.
IEEE International Conference on Universal Village (UV)
IEEE International Conference on Universal Village (UV) explores systematic methodologies for improving the quality of life by advancing the technology of the Universal Village and its major subsystems, including intelligent health care, intelligent transportation, intelligent environment, intelligent energy management, and protection of the environment. It is technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society.
