Why is Japan so far behind in terms of the Internet?

The Japanese are very careful with their possessions and lots of old technologies are used for a lifetime. A lot of Japanese businesses use the Fax more than they use the PC.

Also, because of the tense relationship between the Japanese language and computers, a lot of computer-related advancements, especially in terms of communication and entertainment, are a few years behind. It was very troublesome for the average user to communicate in his or her own language with technology that had allowed Romaji for ten years already.

This also accelerated the usage of mobile phones as equivalent devices to many tasks that western audiences would solve with their computers.

Combine these factors, and you get a country that's ten years ahead in Internet speed, but five years behind in Internet-based expression.

This being said, isn't the overall vibe of cities like Tokyo a combination of the early 1980s and the future?

Walking in Tokyo, many times, felt like walking in a combination of the 1980s and the 2040s. I'm thinking their Internet should feel like that also.

 

What's "normal" though? Alternatively, would you say this forum is "flashy"? I wouldn't.

You can have functional, conservative site designs that simultaneously don't look garish, do re-flow properly on mobile devices, and do support things like screen readers for the blind, without them being "flashy".

There are even tools like Wordpress and Tumblr that make this easy for people without much computer knowledge, too.

I just finished booking my accommodation in Tokyo for my upcoming holiday. We compared about a dozen hotels, and I experienced a wide variety of quality in the hotels' online presences. Most were actually up to date, with consistent navigation elements, asynchronous JS for photo galleries, coherent layout, and so forth. Suitably polished for the service they were offering. A handful were like the sites the OP was describing, white background with various coloured text, every page laid out slightly different, broken links galore, non-Truetype fixed-width font, tables with fixed widths in pixels, etc. It gives me the impression that the business does not take pride in itself, and how it is represented. These weren't cheap motels either, they were hotels in or near Shinjuku or Chiyoda, purporting to be 3 or 4 star.

I'm willing to look over minor things, like having a bit of funny "Engrish" grammar or whatever. But I can't overlook the kind of lack of effort I encountered over the past few days. This isn't some third world backwater, this is Japan, and these operators are trying to sell $300+ per night rooms!

Hahahaha, well, that got a bit ranty!!! You get the idea though, being of a high standard of workmanship doesn't mean it has to be "flashy".....is all I was trying to say. ^_^;;

 

Doubt I'd ever be able to go to Japan. Tokyo seems so nice, and simple

 

The typical Japanese PC is lower spec, they always have been. Also not everyone shares your sense of fashion. I prefer an uncluttered page with high content to style ratio. I also believe that just because most people have the computational resources and bandwidth to spare (theoretically) doesn't mean the resources should be spent on another cookie-cutter framework site. It's also a pain in the ass and counter-intelligent to many people with foresight to adopt technologies du jour.

 

Not sure if this is directed at me?

It's not a question of "fashion". You can have a basic hand-carved HTML site that is still consistent and functional, and follows basic usability guidelines. Especially if you're running a business, and even more specifically in such a competitive industry.

I couldn't give less of a crap about people's personal blogs or project sites or whatever.

 

It's to ave since the argument is that Japanese sites look old, which to me gives a negative Luddite connotation, opposed to utilitarian, which can be perceived as a good design strategy.

 

I have a pet theory about Japan and new technology. If it was invented in Japan, they're all for it! But if it was invented outside of Japan, it takes them many many MANY years before they finally warm up to it and accept it.

 

It's called proprietary tech. When Japan developed it, they understood it. When the PC market expanded outside of their homegrown PCs to Wintel machines, very few companies went along with them which is why in the current climate that the Japanese devs struggle so much as they're ramping up on much more material than their Western counterparts and also have to deal with much higher headcount costs as they have not mastered offshoring (aka rightshoring) to low cost locations like UBI, etc have done.

From a web design perspective, a lot of this ties back to 2 things in Japan: usability issues and the lack of engineers among the youth. Have you ever tried using a Japanese dumb phone? The sheer lack of intuitive controls and unified apps/infra are mind boggling. You get a 300 page manual stating functionality 1-200 telling you to press certain # combos to access them, etc. Now for the latter subject, you don't have many tech savvy young people about. A very small percentage have even used an IM app or MS Office before to write a document or make a presentation. Engineers/programmers are extremely low in # and don't have a skill set that would match the same type of person in say the States, which is why there are so many gaijin in IT jobs here. A friend of mine who graduated from one of the top 4 schools here couldn't even really program anything beyond Hello World, even though he has an MS in CS. For the gaijin who are here, they generally have a weaker tech skill set than their Western counterparts or most of them wouldn't be here in the first place (yes, yes besides the Japanophiles or expats on a limited time assignment). Can you see the domino effect here? Limited local talent, limited foreign talent, non-tech savvy population....BBS style forums, lax internet security, shit tech service....

 

America has also been very clever at claiming inventions, the first PC was programma 101 a Italian invention the first mobile phone using radio frequencys was Canadian and I'm fairly certain that Australians invented WIFI.

American company's tend to hear someone's idea then stick a patent on it and claim it...kinda sad really.

 

Wasn't Japan one of the reasons for a longer support of the Windows 2000?

I really like the idea of using old stuff like them.

The worst part of the internet today is the fu*¨%%$ facebook, twitter, and any other stupid social network site that one is obligated to see.

I really like blocking this shit. Why in heaven one want to know how many stupid idiots clicked the "like" shit of some of these sites? I thought that the Orkut days was the darkest, but the thing is getting even worse.

 

Heh, I guess I'm actually pretty bad at giving misinformation at times, it seems. In my defense, I was educated by US public schools. :moody:

 

No problem, in your defense America is very very good at claiming EVERYTHING like winning world war 2 and other common lies lol.

 

United States of AWESOME!!!!!!! :congratulatory: LOL!

 

Just like the incremental wiper blade, instead an American invented that but American company stole the idea.

 

The USA was on the Allied side, do you think it's not accurate for them, as a member of the winning team to say "we won"? You just sound bitter, Mr "Grumpy Old Man"

The CSIRO holds some patents relating to WiFi, but they didn't "invent" it. CSIRO worked out some bits of it, but AT&T and NCR were there in the beginning as well.

The Programma 101 was referred to as a "computer" in its day (when a "computer" was still also a job title for a person), but in the scheme of things it was just a smaller, cheaper programmable calculator. And programmable calculators certainly existed before the Programma. Its invention had little to no bearing on the microcomputer revolution. I don't say that to diminish the achievement, mind you, just put it in perspective. http://www.silab.it/frox/p101/role.html

Motorola built and delivered a service to the first portable phone that made calls on the public switched network, in 1973. AT&T delivered the first telephone calls wirelessly to people in cars in 1947.

It's silly to make broad "Technology X was invented by Y" statements. There's always some caveat, some qualification, some confusion, some collaboration, and a healthy dose of opinion.

 

CSIRO had nothing to do with WiFi.

"Why is the history of such an invention in dispute? The premier world engineering institution, the IEEE, created a working group for the evolving 802.11 wireless standard in 1990, a full three years before CSIRO filed for its key wireless patent. The group voted repeatedly on which way to go forward and produced heaps of records, but CSIRO didn't even participate in the 802.11 committee. The group published the first 802.11 standard in 1997 and CSIRO came forward years after the fact."

CSIRO also didn't invent the idea of a wireless network. There were already two major proprietary wireless network technologies around before Wifi. The IEEE group was setup to produce a standardised one that all manufacturers would be happy with.

IEEE were working on solving some problems that they had identfied and had ideas on how to solve, CSIRO picked up the IEEE research and filed a patent on how they would solve the problem. I'm not sure they even built it to verify that it would work. As IEEE independently came up with a similar idea to solve the problem would suggest that it's an obvious solution and probably shouldn't be patentable.

I don't have a huge problem with CSIRO collecting royalties, they are only doing what all the companies that they are seeking license fees from would do. However to claim to have actually invented WiFi is disrespectful to the people who actually did, I guess they have to do it though to keep up the pretense of having a valid claim to the patent.

Marconi didn't invent the radio either, he filed a patent that covered other peoples work.

 

Well if you watch most American war based movies,videogames or tv shows you would believe America single handedly won the war when in fact more than half of the d-day landing soldiers were British OVER HALF!! For a country our size!! And when you figure out that the rest were mostly Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians what percentage of Americans were actually involved?.

Lets be clear I'm not trying to diminish the American involvement in the war just how the media are trying to rewrite history and spread false information to the masses.

 

John O'Sullivan's published work on fourier transforms is used in 802.11a/g/n.

So they actually have a little more than "nothing to do with WiFi".

They didn't invent WiFi, but I didn't claim that. They did solve part of the problem (well, "they" is John and his team, but they were working at CSIRO).

802.11-1997 doesn't use OFDM (nor does 802.11b, actually), which is what the patents relate to, so it's irrelevant. The patents were filed in 1996, which 6 years after 1990, a bit more than "a full three years". Where does this quote come from? It hasn't been fact checked too well.

Not I, nor the CSIRO claims to have "invented WiFi". I have no idea what you're talking about. Relax.

I wouldn't believe a single thing I saw/heard/read in fiction.