Why is Japan using cassette tapes and faxes?
bbc.com
bbc.com
Sometimes I feel like we're building a prison for ourselves the way things are headed in the digital world. Where I live, some schools require kids aged 5 to own iPads so they can do homework. It as fun when it was optional, but I really don't want to continue digitizing and feeding the machine my own kids.
I worry about this every day, so my first reaction and general feeling with this article was, cool. Reminds me of walkmans and roll skates. I'm old fashined and have no problem admitting it. I also don't think everyone should feel the same way, it's just how I see things.
There are generally three points that need to be considered before upgrading an older system:
1. Is the older system still fulfilling the needs? (often jobs change over time and some systems are rigid thus require users to perform additional steps in the modern era to continue to make use of the older system).
2. Is support still available for the older system (eg if it breaks, is hardware available to replace it? Are engineers still available to maintain it? etc)
3. Will the new proposed system fix the aforementioned issues?
Often you'll find that the first two points are still or that the 3rd point isn't true. Sadly it's all too common that the reason someone pushes to upgrade older systems is either down to agism ("it's old. Old is bad!") or because someone needs to justify their own job / bulk out their CV ("I was responsible for migrating Company xyz from product a to product b.").
With the greatest of respect to yourself, as you get older I think you too will start to notice just how often upgrades go wrong and how some businesses would have been better off sticking with the old system. So there does need to be a carefully considered pragmatism with regards to just how robust some older systems can be and whether the upgrade is actually offering any benefit or whether the older system is genuinely just bad / no longer fulfilling the job requirements.
While other mediums do exist that can act as a direct replacement in many instances, some require additional steps (eg sending signed correspondence via e-mail would require an electronic signature, photocopier with SMTP support or another means of scanning the document to PC); or offer little benefit for the additional migration costs (eg backing up to removable HDD over tape doesn't offer any significant improvements. Backing up to the cloud does, but it also offers some significant drawbacks as well, which might mitigate it's practicality for a specific business).
They're common in the US too. They're not unsupported equipment.
Yes, fax machines are still used. That doesn't make them not obsolete.
Fax is ridiculously slow, requires both participants to have fax machines (so you can't even realistically not have another solution implemented) and on top of all that super insecure.
Backup tapes are cassette tapes. Audio cassettes and backup tapes are different (not "completely" as the technology is actually quite similar), but backup tapes are magnetic tapes that come in cassette cartridges. They quite literally are cassette tapes.
> Yes, fax machines are still used. That doesn't make them not obsolete.
I guess that depends on your definition of "obsolete". Google defines it as "no longer produced or used" and fax machines are still manufactured and -as I described before- used quite common. So definitely not obsolete.
It should be noted that I wasn't advocating the use of fax, but I feel the need to address your other points since you've posted quite a specific and one sided opinion on facsimiles:
> Fax is ridiculously slow
Sending a fax isn't slower than having to manually scan your documents and then email the resulting PDF. Which is the main usage I see it still being used for. In fact in many instances, the alternatives to fax are more laboured even though the actually communication protocol for fax is slow and outdated.
> [Fax] requires both participants to have fax machines
An endpoint is required with all communication mediums. Even e-mail would require the recipient to have an e-mail address. Plus your point is moot when talking about technology that has already been adopted. If anything, the reason fax is still used is because people already have one so make use of it.
> [Fax is] super insecure.
This is sadly very true. It is probably the best reason not to use fax but it's also worth baring in mind that even for all it's flaws, fax is still no less secure than a telephone conversation (let's all replace telephones with something! :p) or the depressingly high number of SMTP servers who don't default to TLS. Thankfully that e-mail criticism is now changing at a significant pace.
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Please be mindful that I'm not trying to advocate the usage of fax machine nor magnetic tapes. The tone of your arguments would suggest that you think I am promoting their usage, but I'm really not. I'm just being pragmatic about things. :)
You're trying to score "argument points". Stop that. The article was using it in the colloquial sense. They even had pictures. They're obviously talking about audio cassettes, not backup cassettes.
To elaborate: I was just commenting that the same technology is still in widespread use so it's still proving itself to be valuable in some infrastructures. From my perspective it seems odd to differentiate between audio and backup tapes since audio cassettes are really a subset of that technology (the magnetic tape was originally designed for computer data storage back in the mainframe days, albeit cassette form came quite a bit afterwards). So my point was that the technology itself is still widely used.
Personally I never liked audio cassettes, not even in the 80s. So I wasn't going to comment on why some people might be using that specific application of the technology.
I later briefly worked there again after they had "upgraded" to a modern system. This ran a GUI on Windows on commodity hardware. The text was smaller and harder to read (on an early LCD monitor). Not all functions had keyboard shortcuts, and the keyboard itself felt worse. The interface noticeably paused sometimes.
The new system was an obvious downgrade, and the build quality of the old one was high enough that I'd expect it to have at least another 10 years of life. I can only guess that management saw the green CRT, assumed it was unacceptably primitive, and didn't bother asking the people who actually used it.
Thankfully, the newer touchscreen interfaces are much faster than before - the delays between selections went down.
The touchscreens still stink from a UI perspective - too many elements too close to each other, where inadvertent touches can result in unwanted behavior.
For example, a week or so ago I encountered an ATM that prompted me for my e-mail address to e-mail a receipt (or, as smaller, secondary options, buttons for printing a receipt or declining a receipt all together). It really rubbed me the wrong way. Who is trying to collect my e-mail address? How are they storing it? What else will they use it for? Why is this the default option?
Some time ago I worked on a modern travel reservation system frontend, to replace an aging 5250-based one. When I finally spent a day with the customer's end users to validate some things and learn how they worked (those things never shine through the specs) it was like a punch to the stomach. They were happy to see me and happy for the system replacement, but they worked with such lightning speed in the old system (where all 24 F-keys were bound and known by heart) they could keep up a conversation with the client while contantly pulling out the information they needed.
Just reaching for the mouse in that situation would have incurred noticeable latency for the customer. A snowball's chance in the proverbial hell would constitute much better odds than my web based system would have to improve their productivity. I didn't stay on that project until the end (for other reasons) so I don't know how it turned out, but it was my first real encounter with "legacy" systems and it humbled me like nothing since.
There are still high cost to maintaining these systems, and their batch-orientedness makes modern always-online mode very difficult. But productivity for end users should be very hard to match, especially since they were built for kilobit lines and megahertz computers in mind.
It seems to me that if the goal is not just public safety, but to put a human face on law enforcement, a human traffic signal is exactly what is required. True, a robot can do the job, but a robot would be ineffective at the task of humanizing the reasons behind the laws and in providing assistance to people who need it.
And frankly i would prefer that over automated lights, as the person could compensate for elderly or kids (or other less perfect events).
Its not like they have some lone officer sanding in the middle of the most busy intersection of Tokyo, now it is?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibuya#Shibuya_Crossing
Frankly i don't see how an article of this "quality" made it onto BBC.
In Japan you drive to the station and sit in the car while several people fill your tank, wash your windows, and do other busywork. It seems like a huge waste and makes gas cost more.
We know how to do things better and more efficiently in the US. But in the US those same young people are sitting at home unemployed.
I was just in elementary school in the 90s, so I didn't drive, but I don't recall this sort of service at gas stations in Japan. I do recall gas being much more expensive at Japanese gas stations that what you'd see on American military bases. Am I misremembering? This was in Okinawa.
>We know how to do things better and more efficiently in the US. But in the US those same young people are sitting at home unemployed.
We know how to do certain things more efficiently in the US. We are terrible at running our transit systems and intercity rail systems as compared to the Japanese. Japanese roads are generally in better condition than American ones. Our laws have mandated sprawl in many localities decreasing the efficiency of our infrastructure--from sewer lines to roads to transit--causing great environmental and economic harm.
Of course, there is a dark side to Japan. Rampant age discrimination everywhere. Disposable housing. A 'justice' system with a 99% conviction rate. Clinging to fax machines for hotel reservations when a simple Web form would be more efficient.
Frankly i don't know what is more complicated, given that with a web form you have one computer talking to another, several exchanges of data, and computing of same (request form, transfer form, render form, transfer inputs).
It may look simpler once the form is on screen, but the processes behind the scene seems no simpler than fill out a sheet of paper and stick it in the machine.
With a fax machine you also have two computers talking to one another: the fax machines. Then, after the two computers talk and deliver a low quality copy of a document using a very slow communication mechanism that doesn't have any encryption, a person then must take the contents of the document and input this into a computer system.
If the document is filled out incorrectly--for instance, a name is missing--the data entry person has to communicate with the original submitter this mistake.
There are also the accessibility issues inherent to the medium of paper. How difficult is it for a blind man to fill out a paper form?
With a Web form, users can check themselves whether or not rooms are available. The form can determine if there are errors before it is submitted so no further communication needs to be made. It can be built in an accessible manner so that the blind can use it. Even people without the use of their hands can use it given text to speech technology today. Encryption can be added to the process, no paper or ink is used (reducing the cost of the transaction on both ends), and no landline (or access to a landline) is required on the user's end.
Even a very simple form submission system that does nothing but replicate the fax machine form would still be better than the fax just due to the ability to encrypt the communication and accessibility issues.
He wrote a description back to his bosses, saying something like "It would be suicide to challenge the US industrial machine". Too bad they didn't listen.
it's a bit like that in Germany too - mostly small and middle sized companies are dominating, and people don't like to upgrade that much over there. The end of support for Windows XP last year used to be a major shocker, so the issue got some media coverage and reports were generally speaking of the danger to smaller firms [1]. Still nowadays only 17% of all installations are running XP (down from 26-30% last year). [2]
[1] http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/windows-xp-eingestellter-suppo...
[2] http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_presse/archive/2015/04/...
I once had to make a Japanese website for a cars wholesale company that ship cars for different countries on the world and they used to do a lot of work manually on their old website wanted to update it because they lost contact with the old developer (used to HTML the website).
He was like no-no for everything that will cost money (themes, plugins...), I didn't felt comfortable dealing with him since he said no for a $50 translation plugin and he wanted translation on his website (he will get transitioned text himself somehow, don't like this step step things...) and I'm sure I will charge him more than $50 to write a translation plugin (since I won't put it on an online store).
I was just at the Openstack Tokyo Design Summit where there were plenty of Japanese companies sharing their stories of adopting and contributing to Openstack technologies: NTT DoCoMo, NEC, Fujitsu, Yahoo Japan, and others. These are not small companies and many of them are building critical public infrastructure on Openstack.
You can still buy cassette tapes in corner stores in Canada and there are many industries here where people still use fax machines (ie: lawyers, realtors, contractors). I don't think Japan is unique in this regard.
I was using a HP Gen 3 server to query DNS to get here to input this comment.
I've also watched bank clerks using systems that were obviously running on 3278 simulators.
Most businesses are no more high tech and up to date than they have to be.
Co-incidentally the other bank I use with state of the art kit (relatively at least) is worse in every other way.
I don't much care what kit they use as long as they get the important stuff right.
>"Japanese companies generally lag foreign companies by roughly five-to-10 years in adoption of modern IT practices, particularly those specific to the software industry," says Patrick McKenzie, boss of Starfighter, a software company with operations in Tokyo and Chicago.
Didn't know it was quite that much lag.
After all, the reason for said morass was the private debt accrued during the 80s.
Over the years I have been trying, testing and implementing a paperless office. But Not in a tech industry, and you can imagine how hard that is.
Yes we even tried iPad or tablet rather, it didn't work as well. There is digital whiteboard, I dont have the budget to test those out. But I guess it still wont replace stickers and massive whiteboard.
You still draw and sketch or design on a piece of scrap paper. I haven't try the iPad Pro ( its not out yet ), but i am not convinced this will improve my work flow either.
Then I start to question the notion of paperless. And it turns out may be getting rid of paper isn't the solution at all. Pen and Paper is the possibly the easiest form of recording down information. The problem with paper is how we find and file these information later. ( And its environmental issues. )
Why? Because the character set in Eastern languages was far too large to fit into something like Morse Code. There was no real alternative.
I wonder if fax persists today for some similar reason?
Here's all I found today: http://www.recordnations.com/articles/pantelegraph/
It doesn't matter if its fashionable, fast, or efficient. If it works, use it.
But in the US, 98.2% of companies have less than 100 people (ie, they're SMEs): http://www.census.gov/econ/susb/
So, that statistic might not be telling you what you think it's telling you.
And if that's the world they want to live in, that's fine - no judgment here.
I, however, choose to live with and embrace a culture of advancement and change. That requires living in the USA. Maybe in Europe.
And they produce more jobs, from all of the people needed to create the plastics, glass, metal, to the engines, etc. and the oil companies, quicky-marts, etc.
However, horses are more environmentally friendly, as long as you don't mind their feces, urine, and gas.
That's a very narrow minded view of the world.
Yes there are progressive aspects of US culture but there are also deeply ingrained backwards aspects.
Take banking for example. To pay bond for rent many landlords won't accept anything but checks or money orders. People still "authenticate" their credit card purchases with an easily copied scrawl that is literally on the card. If this somehow doesn't work out, the merchant is responsible. Meanwhile companies like Google and Apple attempt to introduce contactless payments which aren't accepted by merchants due to politics and aversion to change. Meanwhile in Australia, banks are cooperating with Visa and Mastercard, resulting in nearly every credit card having built in contactless payments of some kind and the majority of retailers (most major supermarkets, petrol stations, cinemas, restaurants) accepting them.
For another take transit. It can take over 2 hours to move a paltry 20 miles in the bay area, where a car/bus is the main way to move. Meanwhile you can get from rural Victoria, Australia to the capital city (Melbourne) - a 50 mile journey - in a little over an hour and a half for ~$10 while sitting in comfort on a train. In China you can get from Shanghai to Nanjing (163 miles) in 2 hours, again on a train. In Malaysia you can take a train from the airport to the city by simply touching a modern Visa card to the gate.
Yes the US is a world leader when it comes to developing software and much consumer technology but it's behind in many other areas and it's certainly not unique when it comes to advancement and change.
To eavesdrop on a fax transmission would require you to eavesdrop on a telephone line just at the right time.
It's a point to point communication over a private line, as opposed to email that travels over public trunks, and past At&T 'closets' full of FBI/NSA equipment.
So for sending sensitive documents like passports etc, I'd much rather scan and fax than send an email.
(Now of course, the first thing the office worker does on receiving my fax is surely to scan and email it to some other coworker, but that is beyond my control.)
For the worse or the better, it's the country where the posture of commitment counts. There are so many people who take printed out material "cold" or sign of slack, for example.
I can certainly relate to this article when a fairly recent project I worked involved passing around bug report as spreadsheet file instead of a bug tracking system...
Meaning that a faxed document holds more power in court.
If the ageing workforce just keeps doing its thing, without a your person showing them the new stuff, the new stuff does not happen.
Simple demographics.