Re: Daily Yomiuri editorial, 5/17/94

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Posted-Date: Fri, 20 May 1994 11:04:32 -0400
Date: Fri, 20 May 94 11:04:06 -0400
From: shap () viper cis upenn edu (Jonathan Shapiro)
To: farber () central cis upenn edu
Cc: interesting-people () eff org
Subject: Re: Daily Yomiuri editorial, 5/17/94


I found the posting on Japan's network infrastructure interesting
reading, and agree with Bruce's comments.  Some reactions:


   [Bruce writes:]


   - "Japan must approach this task with a grand design"
   This unnerves me a bit.  It smacks to me of "the government should take
   over the entire process and tell us what we're supposed to do."...


It's worth noting that a centrally managed approach is consistent with
Japan's prior efforts to advance strategically important technologies,
and more viable in the context of Japanese culture than it would be in
the US.  I'ld also suggest that Japan considers economic advances at
least as strategically important as military ones.


Hiroshi Inose, who is one of the major figures in the technical arena
in Japan, spoke here at Penn several months ago.  During his talk, he
pointed out that there has been a fundamental shift in the origins of
technical advances over the past 20 years.  Historically, high-tech
has been driven by the military industrial complex with secondary
benefits in consumer technology.  During the Gulf War, the majority of
US ELINT and tactical advantage was achieved by selective application
of technology *originally developed for commercial application.* The
implications of this for the effectiveness of current and future
federal funding are obvious.


I'ld add a reminder, as food for thought, that Japan was once far
behind the US in the automobile industry as well.  They will not
*stay* behind the US in networking for very long, nor should they.




Jonathan S. Shapiro
Synergistic Computing Associates