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Comment by lnsru | Hacker News Reader

Add fax machines and it will be perfect picture of current situation in Germany.

How are two of the most advanced manufacturing countries so backwards?

This might be an over generalization, but the answer is in your question. Culturally, both places just don't respect digital as much as they love anything physical.

It is a pendulum swing: these countries advanced a lot after WW2, then they believed they found the ideal way and got stuck there. In the meanwhile time flows linear, other countries were left behind but caught up and moved on. This way Japan and Germany still work well due to their excellent history, not recent trends.

I would say more like they found a local maxima and stayed there, never going even slightly less efficient in order to find a higher maxima than the one they had.

Kind of reminds me of which countries have the fastest/cheapest Internet access now. The countries that had Internet first tend to have shitty copper infrastructure and expensive plans, while the newer countries are all up with the latest fibre infrastructure and fast/cheap plans.

I don't think there is a need to go slightly less efficient in order to improve the current processes; they just got frozen in time and there are many such examples with companies and countries. Remember Japan is not the first time doing it, at the end of the shoguns era they were behind the rest of the world they were more advanced than.

There is always a dip in productivity when switching systems as you need to untrain people from the old and train them in the new system. Then you need to work out all the bugs and edge cases in the new system.

So even if it will make you far more efficient there will be a temporary productivity slump as people get adjusted to it.

Naturally. You can't do business in Japan without a fax machine.

Seriously!? I thought, Germany was unique with this fax machine thing.

A surprising amount of American personal business is still dependent on a fax machine. Especially in dealings with government, if you can't physically hand it in, it may need to be faxed. Always a terrifying feeling when you send a document containing all your personal identifying information to the fax nether, hopefully you dialed correctly.

One example from the US: Back in March, I was reading about people having trouble filing for unemployment because somehow faxes were deemed a secure communication method and they couldn't find a place to send a fax.

I recently had to get a copy of my car loan from chase in order to get new state license plates after moving. The 2 options for delivery were by mail or fax...

Yep... dealing with a large US bank right now and fax is the only way to do what I need to do. I made an inquiry at the IRS last year, fax was my only option for submitting some info they needed to fulfill my request. Fax is not dead in the US yet.

At a large Seattle-based technology company ~10 years ago, the only way to submit an expense report was via fax "for security", but there were no fax machines in the office, only multifunction printers that could send virtual faxes (not via a phone line)

When I legally changed my name in 2014, I had to fax my name change paperwork to a ton of different institutions. Fax or snail mail were the only methods they would accept.

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