A trip to Akihabara, Tokyo's "Electronics City", is an experience of a lifetime. Imagine, if you will, many Circuit Cities, Fry's and Radio Shacks in a Las Vegas-like atmosphere, all packed into a city only a small fraction of the size of Las Vegas. That's Akihabara for you. More than the glitz, the bright lights and the street sides filled with vendors hawking their electronic wares, it is the excitement in the air that is contagious. Buyers are enthusiastically examining the very latest "gizmos" produced by whiz kids in the giant Japanese electronic companies. Their enthusiasm is often not misplaced, for the products being sold are technologically, at least six months ahead of those being sold elsewhere in the world. The range of goods is amazing: The smallest color LCD TV, the handiest Handicam, the latest in digital signal processing tagged on to CD and DAT players, the most accurate palm-sized global navigation systems, and the most neurotic fuzzy controllers [This term is explained further on - Ian] driving every possible gadget in the store.
No single industry, other than the automobile industry (Womack Jones and Roos, 1990), has changed the face of Japan as much as its electronic and computer industry has. The magnitude of this transformation from an impoverished pre- and post-war nation [Saga 1987] of farmers to an economic giant is well documented. Our attempt, instead, is to explore some ramifications of the "Akihabara phenomenon." Before that, a hypothesis on the possible reasons. It is our belief that the innate Japanese love of gadgets -- the smaller the better -- coupled with careful attention to detailed engineering and quality control has fueled the growth of the electronics industry. And the transformation of an entire nation --and the planet that it enthusiastically supplies.
When asked to identify a primary Japanese national attribute, most people would most likely respond: "efficiency." While this sweeping statement is erroneous, several technological examples do justify that notion. Not surprisingly, a large number of them depend on modern computer technology. A trip to the Nissan Tochigi plant, about 60 km north of Tokyo is a case in point. A large part (~40%) of the plant is automated. Five models come off a single production line! Based on market demands and specific orders booked, a production schedule is set. A central computer determines which parts have to be supplied to the different workstations on the line at the right time so that a fully customized car rolls off the production line. Each station is computer controlled. While the technology itself is not amazing, it is the system integration that is breathtaking. And the reliability that results from the fanatic maintenance schedules is amazing.
If robots are "high tech," how about rice cookers and washing machines that are to be found in most homes in the developed world? The name of the game these days is "fuzzy controllers." These microprocessor based devices receive imprecise/incomplete information and synthesize control action. For example, take the case of a fuzzily controlled washing machine. A sensor monitors the dirty water for its murkiness. Based on this information, guesses are made at the "dirt index" of the clothes in the machine. The wash cycle is then varied to suit. So, how does this affect the average housewife? She has merely to turn on the machine and let it go! No messing around with the numerous controls on these machines!
The high literacy level in Japan supports a large publishing industry. Anyone who has ever looked at a Japanese document, or for that matter, at a Chinese one, would have encountered the "Kanji" pictorial script. A large fraction of the documentation in Japan is in Japanese (formed from a combination of the three scripts -- "Kanji," "Hiragana," and "Katakana"). Writing is a tedious exercise, requiring several years of practice to memorize the many thousands of characters. The advent of modern personal computers ("pasocon," in Nihongo) and word processing programs ("wapros," to use the local parlance) has dramatically changed the ease with which books and personal documents are written. Based on phonetic keyboard inputs in the two kanas, the program is able to provide choices of Kanji characters that match. This means that one only needs to be able to read the thousands of Kanji characters -- not write them! These wapros running on pascons bridge the world of difference that separates reading and writing.
If all these examples sound high brow, looking around oneself in a crowded Tokyo subway car provides many examples of high tech in daily life. A great example is that of little kids engrossed with their portable Nintendo "Gameboy" video games. While not as realistic as their bigger RGB monitor based siblings, these hand held devices have definitely captivated the hearts of millions of kids around the world. They even appear to have changed the recreational habits of Japanese kids. It is rare to find children joining in impromptu street games. The reason is not clear. We are undecided whether its the "jukus" (Japanese after school "cram schools" [See May '93 issue on education - Ian]) or the Nintendo Gameboys that keep them off the streets! This is a pressing question that some eager sociologist might want to address.
Communicating with computer controlled equipment has undergone a sea change in the last 40 years - from having to think in hexadecimal, the days when one just speaks to ones trusted pet computer are not far away [The Macintosh AV line has built-in voice recognition - Ian]. Apple's Newton (a hand held personal assistant) is a case in point. One just points (play on words, quite unintended!) at icons with a magic wand to launch programs. Better still, once it is trained to understand your handwriting, you can just write commands on its screen. C, Pascal and Fortran, step aside. Grandma Masako wants to get cracking in Japanese!
All our examples barely skim the surface of the use of computers in our lives. On reflecting, it is fairly obvious that these computer controlled devices touch every one, young and old, in obvious as well as not so obvious ways every day of our lives, independent of where we live. It is absolutely clear that they are here to stay! If you love them, revel! However, if you do not like them, think again. For you might not have a choice very soon!
- Prasad Akella, Tsukuba, Japan
Sources:
J. P. Womack, D. T. Jones and D. Roos, The machine that changed the world -- The
story of lean production, Harper Perennial, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 1990.
J. Saga, Memories of Silk and Straw -- A Self portrait of small town Japan, Kodansha Intl, Tokyo and New York, 1987.
