It seems that the spread of ICT in Japanese society is behind that of Europe, the United States and China. What is the cause?

 Ken Ozawa

, Graduated from University of Otago

Answer Date: Friday

I work overseas, and I think the common denominator is that not only Japan, but also teams and companies that are behind in ICT are satisfied with the way they are doing things.

In my opinion, as someone who has worked in the ICT industry, ICT is not very upwardly compatible. (This means that you can do the same thing efficiently without learning something new.) (This means that you can do the same thing efficiently without learning something new.) Certain ICTs require a paradigm shift (a radical change in thinking), and it takes time and money to test and train them. It takes time and money to test and train them. Unless the managers who make the decisions allow it, it will be slow to spread everywhere.

If we go back further, we can probably trace this to culture and education. As a person who received compulsory education in Japan to some extent, looking back and working for the Japanese branch, I think that Japanese education is strong in manualized areas, but weak in areas where people can put their own ideas into practice.

Also, there are differences in morality and thinking. In Japan, there is a culture of emulating the wisdom of our ancestors and learning from our elders. That's great, but the wisdom of our ancestors is good for teaching what we know, but when it comes to new things, there is no such thing as wisdom. And the culture of not saying it so as not to embarrass our predecessors.

No matter what people say, the world and our lives are changing.

For example, 20 to 30 years ago, televisions were CRTs. It was in the living room... (Read more)

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Endo Kazuaki

, Consultant (2008-present)

Answered on Sep 27, 2020

There are many reasons for this.

I'm sure there are many reasons for this.

Tokyo Concentration and Lack of Globalization

In the case of Japan, more than 50% of the headquarters of major corporations are concentrated in Tokyo. In contrast, in the case of the U.S., less than 10% should be concentrated in New York. The same is true for China, and the EU is also dispersed if you look at the EU as a whole.　FACE2FACE, the cost and time cost of traveling by high speed rail/airplane is too great, so the need to use ICT is greater than in Japan.

If you hold a seminar for experts in Tokyo, you can gather 70% of the demand, but even if you use ICT to deliver the seminar over the Internet, the demand from rural areas and distant areas is only 30%, so there is not much point. I think it's a good idea.

Increase in non-regular labor and rusting

This is an example of a container port. In the morning, there is a huge waiting list for trucks. In other countries, they try to reduce the waiting time by using ICT to exchange information.

In Japan, waiting time is treated as a break, so it doesn't matter if you make the driver wait 30 minutes or an hour, it doesn't cost you anything, so you don't care.

Even if it is inefficient, the burden is put on the non-regular workers, so I don't feel like introducing ICT to improve efficiency. In the first place, financially speaking, the introduction of ICT will only increase the cost of ICT, and the effect of cost reduction will be weak.

Rather than using my brain to reduce costs by introducing ICT, I would rather use labor... (more)

1 Comment from Takahiro Motoki

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Tomo Tsuchide

, Embedded Systems Scheduler (2008-present)

Answered on Sep 23, 2020

I've been thinking about this for a while now, and I've been thinking about it for a while now.

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I'm not sure what to do.

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Maruoka Takenori

, Formerly working for Anonymous

Answered on Dec 29, 2020

The private sector is making progress.

I've been working for a few years now.

I think it's a good idea to have a good idea of what you're talking about. The reason is that the "eJapan" (remember it?) was only a shout and did not last.

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I'd like to know more about this.

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Torii Satoshi

, Engaged in building interior design

Answered on Dec 28, 2020

I think it's different from being behind the times.

For better or worse, it's like Galapagos, or if you make a sudden development at the beginning that hasn't even taken shape yet, it's a development that is unique to Japan and has a different flow from the rest of the world.

For example, in the case of cell phones, there was a style of "makunouchi" bento with additional side dishes (galakei + i-αppli), and while people were carefully selecting side dishes, the buffet style (smart phones) came from overseas.

I have the impression that they were originally running in different vectors and are now rushing to correct their course due to the wave of globalization.

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I'd like to know what you think.

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1 comment from Matsubayashi Masaki

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Katsuichi Watanabe

, former philosopher

Answered on Sep 23, 2020

Rather than Japan lagging behind other countries, my feeling is that Japan, which has been leading, is now being overtaken. The reason is quite clear: the fraying of the so-called "Moore's Law" that has supported the development of ICT technology. Not only in Japan, but also in China and the U.S., it is becoming increasingly difficult to make significant progress with little or no effort. I believe that if we want to improve society, we need to make efforts in other areas than ICT technology.

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