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The Japanese/American Tech Deficit
Why do the Japanese get all the coolest gadgets, while the U.S. is left with the second-tier, less-innovative ones? The San Francisco Chronicle delves into this age-old mystery and provides a few explanations for those of us who don't live near Akihabara.
Sidebar: Our Top Japan-Only Gizmo Picks
Let's call him Johnny Sokko. A deputy assistant office manager and aspiring rock guitarist, Johnny lives in Tokyo in a cramped three-bedroom apartment shared with his parents and his teenage sister. Upon waking up in the morning, Johnny stumbles to the bathroom to answer the call of nature using the household's amazing Matsushita-brand Smart Toilet, which automatically measures his weight, body fat, blood pressure and urine sugar and sends the results to the Sokko family physician via the Internet. Over breakfast, he checks his daily schedule on his Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 -- the first PDA to feature a 4-gigabyte internal hard drive -- and confirms he's free until noon. Great; he can spend the morning trying to beat the Puzzle Bobble Pocket high score his sister rang up on his brand-new Sony PlayStation Portable.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S. of A., John Smith rises from his bed before dawn, roused by the crowing of the family rooster. He splashes some creek water on his face, then hikes out to milk the goats. Before he returns from the barn, he checks the suspension on the family buggy and makes sure the horses are properly shod -- it's market day, and if the weather's fine, he might get the chance to ride into town with Pa ...
Not the fairest of contrasts, given that the Amish actually make up a very small percentage of the U.S. population, but the fact remains: there's a tremendous divide between the average Japanese consumer and his Stateside counterpart. Call it the gadget gap or the device deficit -- call it what you will, as long as you recognize that, where cool high-tech stuff is concerned, America is light-years behind its counterparts in the Far East.
"I've been going to Akihabara [Tokyo's renowned electronics district] for 20 years, and I'm still amazed at the vitality of the scene -- the number of incredible toys you can find there," says David J. Farber, distinguished career professor of computer science and public policy at Carnegie-Mellon University and former chief technologist of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. "You have stores that specialize in selling nothing but little robots. You have your tiny electronic devices -- cameras, music players. You have incredibly convenient kitchen gizmos. Every time I come back, I bring home something new."
Japan's trade surplus with the United States remains astronomically high, at over $6 billion; yet any regular reader of technophile Web sites such as I4U, Engadget or Gizmodo knows that the world's biggest exporter of consumer electronics regularly keeps its most innovative and exciting widgetry to itself, selling it only to the domestic market. Cell phones that do everything but make toast (although appropriate attachments are probably available from third-party accessory vendors). Gigapixel digital cameras. Laptops so tiny that "My dog ate my homework" is once again a valid excuse. And, of course, the most incredible toilets in the history of humankind.
Some of these devices eventually plod over to U.S. shores months or even years after they've become obsolete in Japan. But many never arrive here at all. Why is it that Japanese manufacturers (and, increasingly, those in Korea and China as well) have such a death grip on consumer-electronics cool? And why are Americans deprived of the choicest fruits of this technological bounty?
The answers to these questions offer an intriguing look at how culture shapes technology -- and vice versa.
May the (Market) Forces Be with You
Japan's gizmo utopia exists in part because of a happy harmonic convergence between its domestic market and its industrial sector: Japanese consumers are intensely style and status conscious, willing to pay more for better and cooler features and motivated to upgrade their core electronic devices at least annually, and sometimes even every six months.
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