Japanese people tend to make a big deal out of the “human touch,” especially when it comes to service, so I can see how companies aren’t jumping on to the hype. We’re also pretty slow to adopt change.
Oh and maybe the shit exchange rate makes it expensive to use the service as everything is pretty much foreign tech.
Japanese people tend to make a big deal out of the “human touch,” especially when it comes to service, so I can see how companies aren’t jumping on to the hype. We’re also pretty slow to adopt change.
And that’s pretty cool, seems like a culture best suited for modern challenges.
I’ve heard\read there are many racist, paternalist, hierarchical and collectivist traits, but at the same time Japan apparently hasn’t hit those honeypots most of the humanity has.
Weird how you say collectivist like it’s a bad thing
I mean, one look at Japanese work culture should be all demonstration you need for that.
Work culture all over the world regardless of culture is fucked up.
I like the work culture in the Netherlands, on the whole, there’s a focus on work/life balance. I get to spend a day per week with my kids and I only lose 30% of the pay of that day.
After I spend those days, which are 45 total, I can still spend a day in the week with my kid, unpaid. But my boss cannot block me from doing that and needs to keep my 40 hour contract intact for when I want to resume my full-time work.
Also I don’t actually lose 20% of my pay, but due to government help I lose about 12% doing this unpaid day.
It is. It replaces one’s own choices with a collective’s common “choice”, and that is usually substituted with most loud and ambitious people’s choice from inside the collective, or the voices that those from outside prefer to hear from it. Bad all around.
Mutual aid and brotherhood are not collectivism. The philosophy that a group of individuals can be regarded as a subject is, possibly without regard for the comprising individuals.
This is incredibly reductionist. Wow.
The irony.
Like most things, there isn’t an a/b divide but a spectrum between the two, and in this case it’s even more complicated because a society could take a collectivist view about one thing and an individualist view about others.
Definitely. Even some abstract ideologies do.
Say, in ancap finite resources not created by humans (territory, numbers, technologies) are treated as collective property ideally, but since it’s impossible to create anything without them, as private property when mixed with labor. Which means that unused territory belongs to a person who claims it and uses it for something.
And that’s pretty cool, seems like a culture best suited for modern challenges.
I mean, looking at the Lost Decades it seems to be quite the opposite. Sometimes it helps to take things slow, but other times you really have to think “come on get on with the times already”.
Look at right now and consider that Japan still has something appearing to be a democracy. USA and the EU are in the “trade and denial” phase, countries like Russia and Turkey - the obvious, LOL.
That’s because Japan isn’t yet so compromised under the guise of progress.
The only reason Japan isn’t in the same boat as America and Europe (yet, far-right parties are slowly rising in popularity) is that they never got on the immigration train, so their population is mostly homogenous and there are few things for bigots to complain about. Of course, this came with a price; the dismal state of Japan’s industry, academia and economy compared to other first-world countries is at least partially due to their rejection of immigrants. Of course, they can’t keep this up forever, which is why they’ve been recently allowing more immigrants in, fueling the rise of the far-right. Unless they can change rapidly, what Japan is “enjoying” now is the calm before the storm. “Still has something appearing to be a democracy” is how the EU was described five years ago.
The only reason Japan isn’t in the same boat as America and Europe (yet, far-right parties are slowly rising in popularity) is that they never got on the immigration train, so their population is mostly homogenous and there are few things for bigots to complain about.
I think you’ve incorrectly guessed what I call honeypots.
It has nothing to do with bigotry and everything to do with unaccountable authority.
“Still has something appearing to be a democracy” is how the EU was described five years ago.
Perhaps. But I’m charmed by how they describe Japan as a nation where omnipresent surveillance is still not considered normal. This wasn’t the case with the EU 5 or 10 years ago.
It has nothing to do with bigotry and everything to do with unaccountable authority.
I mean, they’re two sides of the same coin. Authority capitalizes on bigotry (and division, more broadly) to avoid accountability.
But I’m charmed by how they describe Japan as a nation where omnipresent surveillance is still not considered normal. This wasn’t the case with the EU 5 or 10 years ago.
Fair enough.
mean, they’re too sides of the same coin. Authority capitalizes on bigotry (and division, more broadly) to avoid accountability.
Not really, it seems sane, but not always true. Bigotry should be replaced with xenophobia. A phobia of any other group or opinion or anything you haven’t accepted before.
That is - when you call someone a bigot (suppose they are certainly a bigot, a confident Nazi) with the meaning that you don’t have to conduct yourself honorably with them, as if they were guilty just by association, you are likely doing same amount or more of xenophobia than that bigot.
So - EU and USA have plenty of xenophobia which doesn’t fit into their narrow ideas of bigotry. Much more than Japan or any East Asian country, in my subjective feeling.
And, if you have met some real-life nationalists, they might be pretty tolerant people in the sense of xenophobia. Having some idea of society they want to build, but no hate, hostility and dehumanization against you (suppose you are of a different ethnicity). They usually have a project of what the nation looks like, not a cleansing rage.
Those are a really distasteful association, but some of the “separate but equal” types I’ve met were like this too.
In general, the western idea of bigotry has lost its meaning completely. It started with Voltaire, Christian love, openness of mind and preference for resolving conflicts peacefully and with dignity.
Now there are lots of arrogant apes thinking they are enlightened people, sorting everyone around into groups by markers and deeming some unworthy of understanding, attention or honorable conduct. There’s literally nothing in them of the philosophical traditions of liberalism and humanism they pretend to follow.
That’s not what an enlightened human is. And since most people wouldn’t even understand what I said here, I’d say the civilization we took for the final step before some heaven in the 00s is over.
And yes, this means that acceptance of bigotry is clearly good, if it means acceptance of all other similarly divergent ways of thought.
ugh. “collectivist” is a word coined by western chauvinists. that’s not a real dichotomy. your fucking Abrahamic countries are far more collectivist than us soulless confucianists
Depends on the point in time really. I meant “collectivism” in the bolshevik sense, the kind somewhat preventing horizontal mobility because why treat a person separately from their collective.
I’ve heard\read there are many racist, paternalist, hierarchical and collectivist traits,
We definitely have all that!
Also, I found it interesting that someone mentioned how you used “collectivist” as a negative feature of Japanese culture. While it certainly could be, it’s actually nice to see when people are genuinely wanting to help each other. The problem is our hierarchical culture where some shitbag on top takes advantage of our collectivist mindset for their own gains.
*Everyone else is working unpaid overtime, why can’t you?! *Almost nobody being worked overtime is going to say that. Workers will take it for the good of the imaginary “team” because some manager convinced them it’s the right thing to do. Luckily, probably thanks to my Canadian upbringing, I’ve always been able to say no to ridiculous shit like this. That, and I work for myself, so the only ones who boss me around are my wife and kids.
Edit: Whoops, maybe collectivism isn’t the right word for what I found to be positive after reading your other comment. Sorry, but I hope you got my point.
Well, yes, I got your point and also
We definitely have all that!
TBH sometimes it’s better to have all that explicitly than implicitly and deny it, like most western societies do, because, well, a human society can’t morally raise above the human limitations.
Japanese people tend to make a big deal out of the “human touch,” especially when it comes to service
Aren’t they the ones that first came up with robot servers in restaurants? Or maybe that was South Korea?
It might actually be China. All the robots I see here are the one with the cat face and I’m pretty sure that’s where they come from. We don have remote control robot cafes where people with physical/mental disabilities to serve you using avatar bots which is cool!
Japan also did that, but it mostly just for the uniqueness of the robot, not for replacing workforce.
Nah, you wouldnt see 24/7 restaurants like ガスト using them; similar to the conveyors at sushiro, it enables the company to run a 30 table restaurant with like 3 people.
We probably don’t have the workforce to replace since we won’t open up to immigration lol
This statement is in complete contradiction to the prevalence of vending machines for everything. Methinks you are romanticizing a culture you don’t live in by only seeing the positives you like.
Methinks you are romanticizing a culture you don’t live in by only seeing the positives you like.
That’s kind of an insulting assumption as I’m Japanese and live in Japan. So while I may have a biased opinion, I wouldn’t say it’s romantisizing.
In fact, I’d say you’re the one that seems to be making assumptions based on snippets of our culture that you see on the internet. The weird vending machines that sell letters from your pretend grandma to used panties aren’t found everywhere you go — they’re in specific locations for the novelty.
Also having regular vending machines for drinks and food doesn’t exactly contradict my point. The vending machines are more for the customers’ convenience. They’re not installed specifically for removing human contact. Yes, we lose human contact as a result, but it’s a tradeoff to better serve customers whereas most companies that deploy AI support agents probably do so to save a buck.
Sorry about the rant.
I miss the good ol days when I could have a nice chat with the neighborhood cashier while I bought my used panties.
Remember when we used to talk to the producers of the used panties?
I think it’s more likely that a few C level execs just tried using AI to do their jobs for more than 10 minutes, said “man, this really doesn’t live up to the hype”, and wisely decided to hold off until AI wasn’t a huge waste of time.
Good for them.
Country known for historically being resistant to rapid technological change is resisting newest technological change trends.
How surprising.
Not that surprising considering Japanese government only retired floppy disks in 2024 and fax machines are still in widespread use there.
Japan has been living in the year 2000 since the 80s.
They could have AI on a floppy that faxes generated images.
And when the power goes out during fax transmission, they could use one of those portable power stations from GearScouts to keep the legacy tech running - some of the LFP battery ones have gotten really good price per watt-hour latlely.
And that’s very good. You need a newer and better technology for the same job, if it does the same job better. Not for a different job with new “wow effect component” baked in.
We use pencils, pens and writing paper still.
It wasn’t an option to have a “new and better” writing paper synchronizing all our records with some vault authoritative people have before. Now it is. Japan apparently has passed the test of people_not_ trying to move everything to that honeypot.
All hail Japan, can they please conquer us? Technically I live in a nearby country, except, eh, Moscow is kinda far from the far east …
Weeeell… floppies have more downsides that upsides and could’ve been replaced ages ago (along with implementing backup policies). They could’ve at least migrated to data MiniDiscs. 😁
Faxes from what I’ve heard were mostly because back in the day it was easier to write Japanese on a paper and fax it… in the age of Unicode, fax-to-mail and alike… dunno, maybe.
I generally agree though, no point in adopting new stuff just because.
Fax is an analog system that can be built without very complex production lines in place, that’s a good enough reason.
Have you heard if this thing called a mobile phone?
Yes, that thing can’t
be built without very complex production lines in place, that’s a good enough reason
. I want to live in a free and humanist world, which means that such technologies are more valuable.
I suddenly have a love for Japan and want to live there among my 2000s tech hoard
Japan Not Entirely Stupid Fucking Morons
ftfy
Japan has always been behind most of the world in software advancements. They built their reputation on hardware, but even there they’re significantly lagging.
It was weird watching the divergent development of cell phones in Japan vs the US. The US cell phone industry went all in on software advancements. Japan had phones with all of these weird attachable hardware modules. I remember Japanese cell phones looking like an old gameboy with every attachment accessory on it.
Japan also started the whole emoji thing, though.
Well sort of. But pretty much all of the current emoji are Western inventions. Seriously we added like a bajillion things to it.
The original Japanese ones were only about 25 or something.
They also embraced QR codes a decade or more before the West did.
It’s okay. We all make mistakes sometimes.
I take issue with this article using the language “lagging behind in the use of generative AI”. That language seems to imply there is something wrong in this behaviour.
Wonder if that will end up helping in the longer term.
As opposed to the shorter term?
Shorter term: less foreign investments in the speculative industry casino of AI in their country
Longer term: A less brainrotted workforce
Idk, their population is pretty brain rotted…
thing | thing, japan
It’s a creative country. They don’t need a slopbot to make substandard garbage for them.
To real
then where?
Yeah, they’ll just make substandard garbage themselves.
That Time I got Isekai’d into a World Where Everything is a Woman!
Human created substandard garbage > AI slop
Can’t argue with that
Hey! You take that back! I love my vending machine waifu more than any human woman!
That show was so fuckin stupid. But also weirdly wholesome. Nary a jot of creep shit for the whole run. I was genuinely surprised.
Well, there’s no fax API so how would they access it?
…. God I have the dumbest idea for a project now
IPoF? IP over Fax? Almost as good as IPoAC.
In other news, Japan has an aging population.
And do you think all the shrimp jesuses on facebook are made by and for young people?
I don’t know what are those, and for some reasons, I am afraid to look it up…
You know, Japan…
Shrimp Jesus is wery western phenomenon
if any country has an actual interest in replacing their disappearing population with AI workers, it would be Japan
Youmay not be wrong, but it reinforces the notion AI is a new tiktok fad and nothing truly useful
Yeah, I bet TikTok isn’t really popular among the elderly people too…
Use it for what? Generating a bunch of nonsense text that others have to waste time reading? Generating shitty images with fucked up hands and garbled text to use in stupid ads for worthless trash?
This is a “competitive advantage” not worth pursuing. Most AI products/services lose money and even if they didn’t, they’re creatively bankrupt as a whole and shouldn’t be admired for squeezing money with lower quality.
Because they’re not brain dead idiots perhaps ?
Like I did not already like the way that country does things enough.
Yeah, their work-the-workers-literally-to-death culture is top notch.
That, and doing all they can to eliminate romance in their population. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had the highest incel rate per capita in the world.
