Comparative Computer Culture

All right, then, delivering on a long-overdue promise (threat?), I hereby subject you to my translated essay on Japanese computer culture. I've changed as little as possible, but all parenthetical notes are not part of the original text. Like everything I write, this is backed by little or no scholarship, and all opinions are mine, as are all typos and awkward phrasings. Enjoy!

A comparison of PC culture: differences between Japan and the US in using and thinking about computers
Among present-day households in developed nations, not having a computer is as unusual as not having a telephone. School reports and authors' manuscripts alike are not handwritten but word-processed. With the assistance of the Internet, the Information Age is spreading. And at its forefront are the birthplace of computers, the United States, and the world's electronics manufacturer, Japan. But while computers are essential to daily life in both the US and Japan, their significance and use differ in some respects. I'd like to think a bit about how computers are used and thought about differently in the US and Japan, and about how this difference came about.

From the invention of the digital calculator in the 1940's, computers have become progressively more useful. Year by year the size of new computers decreases, while their computing power continues to grow. The first successful computer for personal use was perhaps the Apple II, released in the 1970's, and from then "PC" (in Japanese, "pasocon") has become a household word. Currently (as of May 2008) the US-based HP is the world's largest computer manufacturer, and Japan's Toshiba is estimated to be the fifth-largest. According to national census data, the fraction of the total population that uses computers is about 74% in both the US and Japan. In 1995, this number was 54% in the US, and 16% in Japan. In summary, PCs spread extremely rapidly, and over the past few decades have become an essential part of daily life.

That computers have become essential to modern life is certain, but what are they generally used to do? Word processing, games, finding information and socializing on the Internet, and various other uses have become commonplace. At work as well, computers are more likely to be used than not. These uses have spread to the US and Japan alike, but there are differences in their use, in particular due to cell phones. Japanese people may read their email, surf the web, and play games on their cells rather than owning PCs. On the other hand, American cell phones can generally not be used as anything other than phones. (Wow, yeah, this is a bit dated. I think the point still holds, though.) Thus, in Japan, some of the functions of PCs are taken over by cell phones.

We can also see differences in the impressions of personal computers in pop culture. The computers that appear in American movies are, to put it simply, "inhuman". The most well-known example of this tendency is perhaps 2001's HAL. Though at first he plays nice and asks to be considered as merely a tool, HAL ultimately betrays his human companions and is destroyed by them. We are left with the impression that were computers to be able to think for themselves, they would not be able to coexist with humanity. In Japanese pop culture, on the other hand, computers are generally depicted not as competing with humanity, but rather as being used by or helping humans. For instance, in the popular Serial Experiments Lain (yeah, you knew that was going to come up, didn't you), whenever the protagonist turns on her computer, she addresses it, saying "hello navi"* and interacting with it as with a friend. As for why this should be the case, one might say that in Japan, a computer's capabilities are considered less important than its effect on one's lifestyle.

It is difficult to summarize the various attitudes towards personal computers, but I believe that, speaking generally, in the US the focus is on the specs and uses of a computer, while in Japan the interface and influence on one's lifestyle are considered more important. To Japanese people, whether computers are simply tools or beings on the level of humans, the heart of the matter is how they can be incorporated into daily life. They seem to spend more time thinking about the circumstances surrounding computers and their relationships with people. Over the course of thirty years, personal computers were invented and have become ubiquitous. If computer technology continues its rapid advance, then perhaps Japan, where so much attention is paid to the interfaces of computers and their effects on everyday life, will be able to adapt more easily to that new technology.



Whew! Finished. A plea for clemency: this was originally written in a language not my first, and has been translated, imperfectly, by me. This is no excuse for the fact that my evidence does not actually justify my conclusion. Nonetheless, let me know what you think!





*Footnote: while it may be obvious in Japanese (where "navi" is now a common term for a GPS), it's not in English, so I'll point out that "navi" here is the name of the computer. And yes, that's where Link's fairy got her name too.

Scientists Worry

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/science/26robot.html?_r=1&ref=us

Okay, how could I resist? The New York Times runs an article with the headline "Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man". When I first saw it, I couldn't stop laughing. But it only gets better from there.

"A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously."

What in this has anything to do with intelligence? Opening doors, maybe. It at least requires a bit of coordination; cats can do it, but most fish can't (though there may be other reasons for that). Being hard to wipe out? Later in the article, viruses are described as having reached a "cockroach" stage because they can't be easily gotten rid of. Yeah, sort of like cockroaches, or, I don't know, viruses? The least intelligent (arguably) living organisms in existence? And killing autonomously -- viruses can do that too, as can every predatory creature in existence, no matter how dumb.

But what really takes the cake is the caption on the photo of a robot that can plug itself in when its batteries run low. I quote: "This personal robot plugs itself in when it needs a charge. Servant now, master later?"

Ahahahahaha! Sorry. I thought I was in a 60's B-movie for a second. I usually put a good deal of trust in the NYTimes to come up with stories about things that are important, or at least coherent. This time, they've really let their readers down. Which is a pity, because the second quarter of the article is actually somewhat meaningful. When they talk about what actual scientists are actually afraid of, it becomes clear that it's not about intelligence at all.

In fact, they're thinking about two main problems: first, the rather pedestrian worry that computers will take human jobs (it's happened before, it'll happen again, and we seem to have survived somehow); and second, the far more important concern that people will have difficulty adapting to advances in technology. This is really something worth writing an article about -- the idea that our current social structures won't stand up to rapidly advancing technology, AI or otherwise. It's the same problem the music industry has been struggling with for years now, without anything even remotely resembling intelligence involved (on either end, heh). They take the time to publish a few interesting questions the scientists came up with: "What could a criminal do with a speech synthesis system that could masquerade as a human being? What happens if artificial intelligence technology is used to mine personal information from smart phones?" Unfortunately, they seem more interested in sounding alarms than actually answering these questions.

After this, the rest of the article is devoted to the usual singularity nonsense, which makes for great sensationalist reading (once) but doesn't really forward the dialogue here. I'm not really the person to pick up the ball the NYTimes dropped, but I'll at least say a little about the issues they should have been talking about.

Computer intelligence isn't really a concern here; in fact, as time goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that the label "AI" exists only to impress and frighten the laypeople (for those who don't know, these days it's mostly statistics). Intelligence isn't the operative variable in determining whether or not a particular technological breakthrough causes societal problems. What matters is how it can be used in people's daily lives, to do things that are already possible differently and more efficiently. It doesn't matter how huge Google's database of personal information is if they don't have efficient algorithms to make sense out of all the numbers. A criminal can already simulate another person's voice with a vocoder or just a talent for imitation, so I'm not so worried about intelligent speech systems. Similarly, I'm not (yet) worried about Ray Kurzweil's singularity, because it's about a completely different mode of existence; it wouldn't so much clash with our society as rewrite it. Someone needs to think about these things, but they're blue-sky next to the real and present concerns (I won't say dangers) caused by any technological innovation that affects our way of life.

All right, enough of this rant. I hope the Times does a bit better next time they decide to cover a computer science conference. Really, very few of us take over the world for a living. I suppose I ought to thank them, though, for demonstrating that the infamous Frankenstein complex is alive and well in the modern age. Here's to more enlightened times; the singularity can't get here soon enough.


(Oh, by the way. This post came pretty quickly after the last one, but make sure to read that one too! It has important news and such.)

Profiles in Awesome: Webcomics of SCIENCE!

First, I'd like to mention that SCIENCE! is awesome. SCIENCE! is a way of re-envisioning science and engineering, a counterweight to the negative image that science has among so many people (particularly students) today. SCIENCE! isn't boring, overly complicated, or mechanical; it's a craft, an art, maybe even a superpower. SCIENCE! can be biology, chemistry, or physics, but it can also be biothaumaturgy or crisis theory, transhuman robotics, Frankenstein-style reanimation, or even magic (in the words of one of the webcomics I'm about to mention, "any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science"). You know those shirts that say "STAND BACK, I'M GOING TO TRY SCIENCE"? This is the SCIENCE they mean. Referring back to my previous post, SCIENCE! is quite clearly *not* a purely left-brain enterprise; it requires knowledge, skill, will, and the hubris to want to change the world. So, SCIENCE! is awesome.

So, on to the comics. First, Girl Genius. The setting is a Victorian-era world where a lucky few are blessed/cursed by the Spark, an intuitive talent for all things scientific and technological. Sparks can perform amazing feats of SCIENCE! on a whim, the likes of which normal people can't hope to achieve even with years of study and practice. Of course, they have a tendency to go insane, destroy themselves with their own inventions, or be brought to justice by angry mobs with pitchforks and torches. The hero is a girl named Agatha, who really wants to be good at science but isn't.... And so a steampunk epic ensues. I first discovered this comic on an off-week during exams; for three days, I did nothing but eat, sleep, and read Girl Genius. Not only are the art, characters, story, setting, etc., all amazing, it also updates regularly, three times a week, all the time, which is really rare for webcomics, and even rarer for good ones.

Second, Dresden Codak. This is a very weird comic in which Kimiko Ross, a college student, roboticist, and quantum physicist, explores the strange corners of science and philosophy, along with her possibly nuclear-powered friends Dmitri and Alina. It starts off very strange and random (but hilarious), but eventually gets into an epic saga of futurism and transhumanism (which is also still hilarious). It's a bit less accessible than Girl Genius, because 1) it's full of references to advanced science and obscure philosophy and 2) it's extremely surreal, but it's definitely awesome nonetheless, and even more awesome when you know what it's talking about. The epic saga ended last October, and it doesn't seem to be updating very often anymore, but it's still an awesome read, and unlike Girl Genius could (theoretically) be read in a single day. If you've ever dreamt of becoming the light guiding humanity into a scientific/technological utopia (and who hasn't?), you have no excuse not to read this comic.

As a side note, it occurred to me that the protagonists of both these comics are female. There doesn't have to be a connection or an underlying reason for this, but in my capacity as an untrained amateur sociologist I theorize that it's because SCIENCE! is all about breaking taboos and stereotypes, and one of the strongest stereotypes afflicting science in our society is that women don't do it. So, support the last, best hope for scientific progress: read awesome webcomics, and believe in the power of SCIENCE!