I watched this documentary about how Japan’s technology and (thus) cybersecurity was lagging behind everyone else’s, and that’s a potential vulnerability to hacking. But the question I have the entire time watching it was this: Is Japan really lagging, or are we just advancing too much?

I believe we’re charging full steam ahead towards a track that we're still building. In contrast, here’s Japan creating the perfect train infrastructure at its few stations, which were reliable, pro-human, and efficient — even perfected. They don’t find the need to rush (aside from not getting late for work).

‘Perfection is the enemy of done, ’ as was often said in the self-help space. I suppose maintaining that mindset would help if you struggle with taking the first step. It’s effective if you can’t find the push you need to move your creation from a nonexistent state into something material. However, I think this presents a new problem: we keep making one mediocre thing after another (especially if we don’t come back for self-reflection after).

Old technology and analog items were still being widely used in Japan. However, they’re not the same things that the rest of the world has left behind. They were so optimized, full of features, and dependable that they were winning design awards. They’re making Gundam versions of their fax machines and rice cookers. Most of them still cling to their ketai because their society’s technology still holds those keypad flip phones within its structure. Ketai may be simple, true, but they remain as tools. They’re robust tools that people don’t often change because no one markets them as a way to improve other people’s validation of you. They rarely sell new things; they sell improved and better things that last longer. I think they have this perspective of continuously improving the items and systems that the people already use. They see improvement in the byproducts of humanity, not humanity itself. The result? Heirloom appliances. Impressive public transportation that is borderline utopia.

Does this mean that they were less novel ideas in Japan? Yeah, probably. But you would know your idea isn’t compelling enough if no one outside yourself were willing to improve it. Scientists publish their findings so that other people can disprove them. If they can, then maybe the research needed more work, or you need a new hypothesis. Maybe you need a new idea.

Capitalism sells the solution it made for the problem it created. It’s the AirPod business model: remove the audio jacks and sell the AirPods. It only likes being cheap if it’s from the creation and manufacturing phase. We paid for planned obsolescence; it’s a feature and definitely not a bug. We can’t use our possessions repeatedly and reliably because they’re intentionally made to break down and are unrepairable, so that you have no other choice but to buy a new, even crappier, one.

Writing with pen and paper is reliable. Even if you don’t have them on hand, it’s relatively cheap to buy or you can borrow a pen from anyone and write on a napkin or receipt – heck, you can even write on your palm. What you’ve written cannot be hacked. Mechanical and quartz watches last for a long time, won’t die on you before you head out the door, and won’t collect your data to be sold off later. Prints of both photos and art, when displayed where you would often see them, do a better job in making you feel better than photos posted online, where they get flooded and overshadowed by other people’s microtrends, rage baits, dream travel destinations, and must-haves. They weren’t trivial and disposable like the 24-hour stories. You can expect your laundry to be fresh all the time for a long time, your rice to be consistently well done, your cooktop to not fuck up in the middle of cooking dinner when your blood sugar’s running low.

From one perspective, Japan might look like it’s lagging behind every technologically advanced country. They can be exploited or hacked, but I think they’re gonna survive a destructive solar flare that could fry and incapacitate all of Earth’s tech because they still kept paper. But really, what is at the end of the line? An AI that pushes people to kill themselves? A social media the fucks everyone up mentally, physically, and financially? The endless consumerism that was speeding up our already short time before we experience hell on Earth? I don’t know about that, but I’m going to continue my writing drafts longhand.

The reliability of analog and perfected devices.

7/21/2025