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.

Comments

Re:j-factor

[blueZhift]

Any industrial designer will explain to you: it's the J-factor. A mysterious power that comes from Japanese design. If you need to ask, you'll never understand.

Well actually, there isn't anything too mysterious at all. More than the government/industry partnerships and subsidies mentioned in the article, we are seeing what you get in a society with its roots in Buddahism, Shinto, and Confuscianism mixed with various spices from other cultures. This is a crude way of putting it, but the result is a society that is much more at home with technology (mecha) in everyday life than that of a society whose roots are in conservative Puritanistic Christianity. Americans (with apologies to Canadians, Mexicans, etc...) are a conservative lot when it comes to trying new gadgets, except when the technology is going to be used to enforce those conservative values like the V-chip and similar freedom sapping devices!

Thank God we aren't all the same! I can't wait to see what the Koreans, Indians, and Chinese come up with! I was in Hong Kong for a month about 11 years ago. Everyone there was walking around talking into cell phones. Now I can see that on the streets of Chicago. So by that measure, we're about 11 years behind...geez!

Re:duh

[HungWeiLo]

Why is this modded funny?

Last I checked, the annual per capita spending for this current military excursion was in the ballpark of about $1,300 per person in the US. Every man, woman, and child - $1,300.

And this figure was from half a year ago.

Imagine how many more bright shiny objects we can buy if everyone had an annual $1,300 tax rebate (temporarily disregarding the benefits of paying down the national debt with this money instead).