Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Is It Unusual For Japanese People To Use Computers?
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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Boston Dynamics doesn't do theatrical showing of their robots, do they? Of course they don't look very good with no stagecraft to shine them up. Plus don't they work on things like disaster rescue and military applications (although I think I read "Big Dog" got put down)? Not the domestic robot sci-fi that Asimo represents. |
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MrBonk
Posts: 192 |
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I had a computer in the early 90s, but never really fell in love with them until the 2000s or so.
I can't do life without a desktop. |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13589 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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At least Japan is more up to date than the computers they have in the Narutoverse. Those computers look even more outdated.
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Emerje
 Posts: 7390 Location: Maine |
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My first computer was a VTech Laser 128 (probably an EX/2 with the 5 1/2" drive) Apple II compatible bought in 1989 from Service Merchandise when I was in the fourth grade. In the early '90s I'd have an IBM 286 (running DOS) and later a 486 (with some sort of visual GUI, not Windows based) in the house. In '97 when I first started working (junior in high school) I'd buy my own personal PC, an Intel Pentium II based Pionex with a massive 2.1GB HDD that I could only keep two or three games installed on at a time. Later I'd upgrade to an AMD mobo and CPU, a VooDoo 3500 AGP 3D accelerator, and a 30GB HDD. And after all these years I've never bought another PC, nor have I built a new PC 100% from scratch, always recycling parts from upgrade to upgrade. I didn't stop using that original Pionex tower until 2007 (10 years and several upgrades later!) and even today the original 3 3/4" drive is still in my current tower (though it hasn't been plugged into anything since a 2010 upgrade).
I'm way overdue for another upgrade... Emerje |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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The basic typewriter keyboard is over 100 years old with very few upgrades and improvments. But it is all based on the English (or Laten) alphabet of 26 letters.and Hindu/Arabic numbers (0-9) When one considers that the Japanese have 3 forms of writing: hiragana, katakana, and kanji, written in a mixure called "kanji-kana majiri" each with its own function in expression. Kanji alone has the most at 2,141 characters, or "syllable-symbols", or "syllabary" with 2136 that are officially listed as "jouyou-kanji" Hiragana and katakana have 48 single symbols each and a few more that are combined derivations of those. Trying to get all those to function on the ASCII keyboard is a huge programme in itself. I've learned that as Japanese students go to university they not only have to study the courses for their chosen degree subject, but also have to learn the kanji symbols for that particular subject as the same symbol's meaning change with the profession/craft and very few can inter-exchange reading the others' manual. Like a medical doctor reading a car machanics manual to fix a car, or a car mechanic reading a medical procedure report. So knowing this it's not surprising that they would prefer to just short-hand text-speak on their smart phones instead of typing on a computer keyboard. Also there just physically isn't that many young persons under the age of 40 that have been exposed to a computer to be as common as in the West and that keeps falling every year. .
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
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Now, all of that is entirely separate from the keyboard issue, because Japanese people hardly ever input kanji directly these days. Like I mentioned in my previous posts, most of the time they use IMEs that convert either Roman characters or kana into kanji for them. The differences between typing on a computer keyboard and on a smartphone screen lie in the keyboard layouts and methods of conversion, not in the fact that them kids these days use them l44tspeaks. They certainly do, but that in itself isn't a barrier; the IME means that if they know how to say it, then they can input it into a phone. In fact it's been said that usage of less common characters has increased with the spread of both computer and mobile phone technology, since the kids don't actually need to know the exact kanji to input complicated words they've heard somewhere. Conversely, some people are ringing the alarm that kids are losing the ability to handwrite since the IMEs on phones and computers make it a non-essential skill (think of how spellcheck and autocorrect have made it easier to use proper spelling without actually learning it in alphabetically written languages). |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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All this talk about how kanji is typed makes me wonder: How does closed captioning for live events work in Japan? This sort of closed captioning looks crazy difficult enough in English. It must be an order of magnitude toughter in Japanese.
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hyojodoji
Posts: 586 |
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In Japan, when TV stations add Japanese subtitles for hearing-impaired persons to their live programmes, they use one of these methods. 1. Operators + ordinary OADG keyboards. 2. Special 'stenographic' keyboards + special operators. Faster than Method 1, but expensive. 3. Speech recognition. A computer 'listens to' what, say, an announcer is saying and quickly converts it into written Japanese sentences. |
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Desa
 Posts: 285 |
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This may be somewhat related but I remember reading an article a while back about Japanese web design which answered something I've always been curious about, which is why do so many Japanese websites look like they're unchanged from the 90s.
For a nation that pioneered a certain minimalist aesthetic, their websites seem to be the antithesis to this philosophy. To someone who doesn't understand Japanese, most Japanese websites appear very "cluttered" when compared to more recent trends in UX design for the English-speaking web, which strives not to "overwhelm" the user with too much information on any single page. It turns out the reason why Japanese websites look the way they do when viewed on a desktop monitor is because they were designed to accommodate both mobile and desktop viewing from almost the very beginning. If the Japanese are lagging behind in PC usage it's most likely because they're so far ahead in mobile internet usage. Years before the first smartphone existed, mobile internet usage was already widespread in Japan, so in a sense the Japanese are ahead of the global curve by almost a decade. http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/japanese-web-design/ |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16961 |
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Honestly I would agree. I'll pass along a suggestion to the admin about adding it to the word filter. Once that term gets tossed around discussion always heads south from that point. |
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Afezeria
 Posts: 817 Location: Malaysia, Kuantan. |
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Appreciated the consideration, Psycho 101.
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1791 Location: South America |
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So I would guess computer literacy in the industrialized parts of Brazil is probably higher than Japan's. Never would have guessed that.
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Ain'tnonerd
Posts: 1 |
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The Japanese have been pretty good at math, science, medicine, mechanical engineering, and electronics long before PCs and things like that existed, and they still are, their automobile manufacturers are No.1, their electronics are No.1, and their scientists and researchers are No.1, just like they were before it was even possible to have a PC, besides, too much TV and computer is turning people into retards these days
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