Japan’s Contradictions
I don’t normally make this a travel journal, but a lot of things hit me on a recent trip to Japan(my 5th trip there), that I felt were interesting and vaguely relevant to share in the spirit of this newsletter and how technology changes the world.
Trips to Japan used to feel like visits to the future, a country that invested radically in the great hardware age of the 1960’s to 2000’s. But somehow it never moved on, and it ignored the software age, so trips to Japan are a tension between marvelous physical brilliance, and underlying terrible systems.
I’ve been to Japan about 7 times over the last 20 years, so I know just enough to know I know nothing about it, but this is what I felt.
The contrasts are EVERYWHERE
The chaos and the serenity, the passion for the future, but an enormous respect for the past, ultra-efficient at times but typically painstakingly bureaucratic, an ultra-connected country where you need a physical stamp to do many things. Companies seem like giant conglomerates or keiretsu, or the tiniest bars or stores or restaurants you’ve ever seen. At times it feels like there are more commercial premises than people.
Japan seems either ultra urban with vast swathes of mid-height skyscrapers covering every valley, or ultra rural where any slope of any size is an untouched pristine green. At times it seems blisteringly fast, at other times bafflingly slow.
I’ve never been somewhere where beauty and serenity are so admired, where decor is so rich, where craft and materiality are so powerful, and yet more than 50% of the coastline is Concrete tetrapods, where typical buildings are astonishingly bland and ugly, and where almost all rivers of any size have been concreted into channels, even high up in otherwise untouched valleys. Japan rightly sees nature as an enemy, but the corruption-driven need to concrete every single thing, jars against every other part of Japanese aesthetics.
What you have feels like a country battling the future and the past, unsure where to look. A country trying to build modern systems on old foundations, where cash is king, but advanced machines are used everywhere to count it in stores. Where fast train tickets require long queues. Where toilets are either ultra-advanced or ultra-primitive, where ATMs play wonderful music as they present cash to you.
Big One’s
I’m out of the office, don’t email me.
The weird thing about a lot of technology as we've always said yes but never where or why or how, it has been able to fill out life, and lines blur, few places are this more true than how we work and email, the laptop made the working day, the whole day, and the mobile phone made the whole world the office.
Like many modern dilemmas, the issue is now how do we put the genie, how can we allow people the time to think, to do their work well, to say no, to focus. Disconnection has been a right across many places in Europe but is now being discussed in the UK and Australia.
I’ve long felt matters like this are essential, but best fixed by culture, not government regulation.
hMMMmmmm
I got quoted while talking in Australia about my feelings towards Media Mix Modeling, which I still stand by, people seem to think we can paint by numbers, it’s possible but that’s not what painting is about.
Amazon is the world’s 16th largest media owner, something interesting is happening
Amazon has rapidly become one of the worlds' largest media owners, which raises a few questions.
1) Where does this money come from, is it ad money moving to retail, trade marketing money moving online into ads, or is it new money?
2) Retail ads appear to be successful, but how much is causality vs proximity, if people see ads for beer in a pub, we still think they came to a pub to drink beer, more than the ads made them?
3) Why does everyone want to be someone else? Retailers want to be Media owners, Media owners want to be Retailers, the blurred lines are messy.
Fake’fluence
In theory, fake reviews, fake followers, fake likes, review suppression, and a whole host of other things will in late 2024 become illegal in the US, I don’t think many people understand how prevalent this has all become, even the most outlandish data I see seems to underestimate the scale of the issue. As ever quite how this could be monitored and punished is less clear.
NFC unlock
I'm always aware that my wallet is thicker than ever, no, it's not cash, it's a variety of travel cards, credit cards, loyalty cards, ID cards, entry passes, and many more things that were supposed to vanish by now. At the same time it astonishes me that most people still use keys to enter their homes. Now, Apple is finally opening up the NFC part of the phone, things could change for a lot of app makers and hardware companies and systems thinkers
Cool Chart
I love data that’s a bit unexpected, here we can see the rates of Air Conditioning in homes across the world, something presumably less about the wealth of nations and more about the age of home construction. How technology impacts the built environment always fascinates me.
Little ones & Curiosities.
I've long said that the impact of Bay I will first be found in boring jobs. Here we see proof. Let’s write poetry but leave PLU copy to the bots
Loved hearing about this site which helps people live near friends, a sneaky brilliant idea for an age where people are more connected, but more lonely than ever, something I personally don’t think AI can help with.
This slightly curmudgeonly piece on how the digital world changed dining, thanks Shann, I’m mostly happy about the changes, I just wish I didn’t need my phone for everything or have tech transfer the workload onto the customer
No your phone is not listening to you, what’s likely happening is things in your mind are things you speak about and also Google.
Scott Galloway a long time ago talked about the “Rundle”, our companies can bundle products together from other companies as part of loyalty programs, it always made a lot of sense to me, we’re seeing some signs of this happening, with Walmart + offering free burgers.
The Telegram CEO’s arrest asks many questions, many of which are related to geopolitics, which I’ve no clue about. But such things always do test the idea behind Section 230 , where an online company can pretty much avoid responsibility for ANYTHING by just saying “we’re a platform!”
79 percent of workers in the US feel somewhat or very satisfied with their own job but think only 49 percent of Americans feel the same way
Some recent and updated figures on Adblocking use around the world. I’m amazed anyone can exist without adblocking these days
“The typical American, it seems, texts a bunch of people “we should get together!” before watching TikTok alone on the couch and then passing out”. A piece on loneliness. One day I want to explore this more. I think people have more free time than ever, they just are exhausted, overwhelmed and have become crap at doing things that they don’t find easy and immediately stimulating, like friendship.
Why has home construction never become more factory’ified and modularized, this piece offers a deep dive into why, with some excellent comments.
What’s the biggest equipment you can imagine shifting from combustion to battery-powered, a ferry or something else? The BBC investigates
“CIOs say they are aware of the pressure to shoehorn the technology into areas best addressed by something as simple as a spreadsheet”. I’m not shocked by this piece. When all you have is AI, every problem looks like a potential press release.
The age of inconveniences, how expectations of customer service are and are not changing.
CBInsights evaluates 50 large insurance companies by AI readiness, which strikes me as a very impossibly vague task, AI as always has impacts across every single business function.
Product design news, Johnny Ive reinvents the button
Me and my travels
My next public speaking engagement sees me fly to Calgary on 1st - 2nd October to speak alongside Jacinda Ardern, Yuval Noah Harari, and Sanna Marin, no pressure!.
That’s it for now.
Thanks
Tom
Thanks for reading Nowism by Tom Goodwin! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Thanks Tom, great read as usual! Always look forward to your emails.
Many thanks for the article, Tom! It's great – as always