Comment on Why Japan's internet is weirdly designed

leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Same reason fax is still a thing you need if you want to do anything official or business related, why PC-98 was a thing, why their smartphones are weird, why they invented the term Galapagos syndrome, or why they use laptops that still have compact disk drives and look like this:

No, really, this is a 2025 model.

Japan innovates early. They innovate fast. And then they sort of… stop.

Technology in Japan looks futuristic for a while, then the rest of the world catches up, but, since Japan has already been there for a decade and made different decisions their technology looks… odd, and then the world carries on, while Japan seems stuck in some kind of retrofuturistic limbo.

Of course this is happening with different innovations at different times and paces, so from an outside perspective Japan is always a weird combination of futuristic, weird old alternate future, and just plain weird.

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