Having worked for the Japanese in a senior management position, learned a bit of the language, and made quite a study of them, this comment has some validity but is off in other ways. It is incredibly difficult and stressful for Japanese to interact with each other. Their language requires that you make a decision about power and relataive status to say anything. It is far more complicated than "polite" versus "not as polite". It is also a shame based culture, not a guilt culture. How you appear to others is more important, generally speaking, than any standard of morality. That's why Japanese kill themselves when they are in the middle of a scandal. Being held in low esteem is far far more wreching for them than for us. But as the writer pointed out, they do hold grudges and can be incredibly, unimaginably nasty and petty if you offend them.
So that is why robots would be easier. They are obedient, they can be programmed to give pleasant responses, they don't care what form of address you use with them.
Some people like animals better than their fellow humans. The Japanese have not been as big on pets as Americans, due to their generally cramped housing, so for them, a robot could well be "man's best friend".
With all due respect, as a corporate finance/M&A professional, there IS a big difference between spreadsheets, and Excel is an abortion. Improv (a Lotus product) was a great spreadsheet, a pleasure to use (and I am no fan of spreadsheeting) but it was introduced way too late to make any headway against Excel. I still keep an old NeXT Computer around for the sole purpose of running Improv.
My sources tell me quite a few people nevertheless approached IBM after it acquired Lotus to buy Improv, even years after Lotus 1-2-3 was dead as a product, and IBM was not willing to sell it. A freeware attempt to recreate it, Flexisheet, got only about 2/3 of the way to being completed.
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Having worked for the Japanese in a senior management position, learned a bit of the language, and made quite a study of them, this comment has some validity but is off in other ways. It is incredibly difficult and stressful for Japanese to interact with each other. Their language requires that you make a decision about power and relataive status to say anything. It is far more complicated than "polite" versus "not as polite". It is also a shame based culture, not a guilt culture. How you appear to others is more important, generally speaking, than any standard of morality. That's why Japanese kill themselves when they are in the middle of a scandal. Being held in low esteem is far far more wreching for them than for us. But as the writer pointed out, they do hold grudges and can be incredibly, unimaginably nasty and petty if you offend them. So that is why robots would be easier. They are obedient, they can be programmed to give pleasant responses, they don't care what form of address you use with them. Some people like animals better than their fellow humans. The Japanese have not been as big on pets as Americans, due to their generally cramped housing, so for them, a robot could well be "man's best friend".
With all due respect, as a corporate finance/M&A professional, there IS a big difference between spreadsheets, and Excel is an abortion. Improv (a Lotus product) was a great spreadsheet, a pleasure to use (and I am no fan of spreadsheeting) but it was introduced way too late to make any headway against Excel. I still keep an old NeXT Computer around for the sole purpose of running Improv. My sources tell me quite a few people nevertheless approached IBM after it acquired Lotus to buy Improv, even years after Lotus 1-2-3 was dead as a product, and IBM was not willing to sell it. A freeware attempt to recreate it, Flexisheet, got only about 2/3 of the way to being completed.