4 ms·

Is this globally true, or somehow worse in Japan (where the author teaches)?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
blacktriangle 5y ago
I have a theory about the Japanese and their relationship to the PC, having lived there for a bit in the mid 90s. This comes down to three things: First, Japan had a mindblowing consumer electronics industry way before we did. There were special purpose devices for everything you could want. They were all user friendly and did not require understanding how the underlying system worked. They didn't need a PC since all their electronic needs were already met and met better. Second, Japan is basically 99% urban living, as space is at an insane premium, and even when you are in the country the houses are built small due to culture and lack of open space, since if you're not in the city you're probably in the mountains. This means there was no physical place to even put a PC in most Japanese houses the way American houses might have a desk in a corner or even an office. Third, and probably the most important, phone calls in Japan were always pay by minute, even for local calls. This meant that if you were online with a modem, you were paying the phone bill just sitting there. This meant that if a person even had a modem, the would rarely use the internet. Since America had monthly-billed phones, there was no problem staying up all night on AOL chatrooms, and AOL really was the killer app that pushed PCs into American houses. IMO this is why the PC revolution that really took off in American homes, and by association a bunch of us who cut our teeth mucking about with bat files so we could play our DOS games and ended up learning useful skills out of necessity never happened in Japan.
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  Fascinating. I wonder if the lack of early internet usage led to their companies falling behind on providing competitive internet services. I'm thinking of otherwise innovative companies like Nintendo and Sony that were very late to the game compared to their Western competitors.
- fomine3 5y ago
  I don't think phone calls makes huge difference for current situation. Flat rate calling plan only for night was available in 90s (but yeah it's for nerds so your point is vaild). ADSL were widely available in about 2001-2006. FTTH is now virtually available everywhere (except some condos with fragile "free" internet).
  - blacktriangle 5y ago
    The timing is huge. There was a period time from the late 80s to I'd say Win98 when computers became affordable, they were useable by laypeople, but they still weren't easy yet. You still had to learn about some of the underlying ideas to do anything useful. By 2001 user-focused OSes had gotten figured out to the point where they mostly worked and people needed to know less and less about the underlying technology. The key really was that brief time period where hardware had finally become widely available but software was still catching up with the new mass market.
- nikau 5y ago
  They also skipped PCs and went straight to doing web tasks on cell phones. I remember going there in 2001 and imode websites were already in heavy use with the people I met, whereas at home they were trying to push WAP but it was too expensive to get traction.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
It’s the same in Germany and the US from what I can tell. Seems technology has reached the point of “good enough for daily use” the same way cars have reached that point and people don’t need to understand how cars work.
Barrin92 5y ago
I used to teach computer science first semesters a few years ago and I got tons of emails from people who couldn't manage to boot and/or install the linux distro we gave them on an introductory usb drive. These were intelligent kids with plenty of education and many of them couldn't figure out how to do basic networking or formatting stuff either. My working class dad who had like 8 years of formal education in his entire life taught himself visual basic in the 90s through magazines and books. Getting emails from students who could theoretically just type stuff into google at 1 am was a genuine shocker to me. (this is Germany in my case)
- aaomidi 5y ago
  I don't think I'd expect people to know how to install linux, or any other operating system for that matter tbh.
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  > I got tons of emails from people who couldn't manage to boot and/or install the linux distro we gave them on an introductory usb drive This was also true back in 2006 when I took Computer Engineering (in Canada). Installing an OS was never trivial.
fomine3 5y ago
Japanese is worse because of smartphone environment. Most Japanese people use "Flick Input" to input Japanese and Alphabet characters on smartphone, that's totally incompatible to Qwerty. Meanwhile most Japanese people use (and be taught) Qwert Input to input Japanese and Alphabet character on PC. Flick input is really useful, but it's not good to be familiar with Qwerty input on PC. Add to this, we tend to don't need PC for life (but is needed for office work). Nintendo and Sony is headquartered here (technically SIE is now HQ'd in the US but most people don't know) so PC gaming isn't a huge thing (but now it'S growing). Tax filling isn't needed for normal sararyman. Urban homes are tend to small. Schools are really behind for everything. People tend to not good at English.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

I have a theory about the Japanese and their relationship to the PC, having lived there for a bit in the mid 90s. This comes down to three things: First, Japan had a mindblowing consumer electronics industry way before we did. There were special purpose devices for everything you could want. They were all user friendly and did not require understanding how the underlying system worked. They didn't need a PC since all their electronic needs were already met and met better. Second, Japan is basically 99% urban living, as space is at an insane premium, and even when you are in the country the houses are built small due to culture and lack of open space, since if you're not in the city you're probably in the mountains. This means there was no physical place to even put a PC in most Japanese houses the way American houses might have a desk in a corner or even an office. Third, and probably the most important, phone calls in Japan were always pay by minute, even for local calls. This meant that if you were online with a modem, you were paying the phone bill just sitting there. This meant that if a person even had a modem, the would rarely use the internet. Since America had monthly-billed phones, there was no problem staying up all night on AOL chatrooms, and AOL really was the killer app that pushed PCs into American houses. IMO this is why the PC revolution that really took off in American homes, and by association a bunch of us who cut our teeth mucking about with bat files so we could play our DOS games and ended up learning useful skills out of necessity never happened in Japan.

jonny_eh 5y ago
Fascinating. I wonder if the lack of early internet usage led to their companies falling behind on providing competitive internet services. I'm thinking of otherwise innovative companies like Nintendo and Sony that were very late to the game compared to their Western competitors.
fomine3 5y ago
I don't think phone calls makes huge difference for current situation. Flat rate calling plan only for night was available in 90s (but yeah it's for nerds so your point is vaild). ADSL were widely available in about 2001-2006. FTTH is now virtually available everywhere (except some condos with fragile "free" internet).
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  The timing is huge. There was a period time from the late 80s to I'd say Win98 when computers became affordable, they were useable by laypeople, but they still weren't easy yet. You still had to learn about some of the underlying ideas to do anything useful. By 2001 user-focused OSes had gotten figured out to the point where they mostly worked and people needed to know less and less about the underlying technology. The key really was that brief time period where hardware had finally become widely available but software was still catching up with the new mass market.
nikau 5y ago
They also skipped PCs and went straight to doing web tasks on cell phones. I remember going there in 2001 and imode websites were already in heavy use with the people I met, whereas at home they were trying to push WAP but it was too expensive to get traction.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

It’s the same in Germany and the US from what I can tell. Seems technology has reached the point of “good enough for daily use” the same way cars have reached that point and people don’t need to understand how cars work.

Barrin92 5y ago

I used to teach computer science first semesters a few years ago and I got tons of emails from people who couldn't manage to boot and/or install the linux distro we gave them on an introductory usb drive. These were intelligent kids with plenty of education and many of them couldn't figure out how to do basic networking or formatting stuff either. My working class dad who had like 8 years of formal education in his entire life taught himself visual basic in the 90s through magazines and books. Getting emails from students who could theoretically just type stuff into google at 1 am was a genuine shocker to me. (this is Germany in my case)

aaomidi 5y ago
I don't think I'd expect people to know how to install linux, or any other operating system for that matter tbh.
jonny_eh 5y ago
> I got tons of emails from people who couldn't manage to boot and/or install the linux distro we gave them on an introductory usb drive This was also true back in 2006 when I took Computer Engineering (in Canada). Installing an OS was never trivial.

fomine3 5y ago

Japanese is worse because of smartphone environment. Most Japanese people use "Flick Input" to input Japanese and Alphabet characters on smartphone, that's totally incompatible to Qwerty. Meanwhile most Japanese people use (and be taught) Qwert Input to input Japanese and Alphabet character on PC. Flick input is really useful, but it's not good to be familiar with Qwerty input on PC. Add to this, we tend to don't need PC for life (but is needed for office work). Nintendo and Sony is headquartered here (technically SIE is now HQ'd in the US but most people don't know) so PC gaming isn't a huge thing (but now it'S growing). Tax filling isn't needed for normal sararyman. Urban homes are tend to small. Schools are really behind for everything. People tend to not good at English.