IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-4039-9007-5_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Uneasy Steps: Japan and the Development of the Digital Society

In: Japan and the Internet Revolution

Author

Listed:
  • Ken Coates

    (University of Saskatchewan)

  • Carin Holroyd

    (University of Saskatchewan)

Abstract

Fifty years ago, only the most visionary dreamer would have conceived of Japan as being at the cutting edge of the digital revolution. In the early 1980s, it would have been a relatively safe bet to guess that Japan would be a world leader in the evolution of computer-based technologies and consumer electronics. Both assumptions, ironically, would prove to be wrong. Through the 1960s, Japan emerged as a major innovator in retail and industrial technologies and played a critical global role in introducing the world to the opportunities posed by transistors. Having established itself as the leading producer of consumer electronics and as major player in the emerging field of personal computers, the country nonetheless reacted very slowly to the potential of the Internet and delayed the nation-wide implementation of this crucial technology. Continuing the unusual pattern of leading and then falling behind on technological innovation, Japan again reverted to its position in front of other nations in terms of the mobile Internet, becoming the first nation to establish cell phone-based Internet services as the key element in national innovation and transformation.

Suggested Citation

  • Ken Coates & Carin Holroyd, 2003. "Uneasy Steps: Japan and the Development of the Digital Society," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Japan and the Internet Revolution, chapter 1, pages 17-40, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-4039-9007-5_2
    DOI: 10.1057/9781403990075_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-4039-9007-5_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.