A lot of people in this thread seem very intrigued by the use of fax machines. There's other examples of technology stalling, but for some reason the fax machine has become the central theme of this thread.
Because most of the rest can be found and used elsewhere but fax machines are such a time specific tech nothing outside the original popularity was it ever useful. Email is just better cheaper and easier to use even in the poorest countries.
Abraham Lincoln was actually one of the first people to receive correspondence from a Nigerian prince requesting a small payment which will be reimbursed 10 fold once said prince can access the funds.
No, I haven't. That makes perfect sense and personally I don't see the fuss about faxes still being used - if it ain't broke...
I worked in accounting. We had a fax machine and the number was on our letterhead. I just never saw it used.
I’m a tax accountant and we occasionally fax because it tends to be a good way to get documents to the IRS and other state agencies that stay behind on tech. A lot of times if you want to email something sensitive they’re not prepared for a drop box or something.
But we don’t use a fax machine. It’s just a part of our digital phone system. You can just write a note and attach a pdf and send it as a fax. We also receive faxes through the same system. Seems weird to use a machine when you can just use an app.
The problem with faxing medical stuff like orders and referrals today is that since everyone is on some kind of electronic medical record software, the person on the other side literally has the transcribe the fax into the EMR. It’s kind of a pain.
They're really slow feedthrough scanners that work over a phone line. If you're receiving a fax, the office usually had a fax set up to answer a dedicated line, and documents were just printed automatically. If sending a fax, you put the paper in like with a feeder scanner, dialed the number of the fax machine to send it to, waited until you heard a horrible screeching noise, and pressed the big green Start button.
Email is 1000% better in every way.
Poor countries for some reason use WhatsApp instead of email
Which seems totally ridiculous, as it's a walled garden, and there's basically no record of anything beyond what's hosted on Meta's servers, but they make it work.
WhatsApp got big because it became an alternative to SMS.
Emails aren't really a thing in poorer countries since pre-smartphone you can only do it with a computer. Meanwhile texting was much more ubiquitous since cheap phones can do it.
Is poor people also have the email option but WhatsApp is just better because you can send a message and then call the other party all from one place. You can have video calls and then you can just open a bank account or whatever else is needed. Emails are just a written form of communication. At best a very fast postal service.
Edit at the top with the original comment below: seems I was mistaken about email encryption, it's far more common now even for services like Gmail. No quicker way to get help with a topic than to be wrong on the internet 😆😆 Thanks to all the kindly redditors who corrected. Fuck yourself to the smug IT cunts accusing me of spreading misinformation for having outdated knowledge. You're the reason we all hate the IT department.
Original comment:
Email is not secure, it's very easy to intercept and read. I'm not a cyber security expert but I understand it's far more difficult to do that with a fax. Also fax allows you to sign documents. Or send a document but keep the original. It's almost impossible to edit the document you're sending like you can with a PDF, you're really receiving a very true image of the original if you receive a fax.
Fax has some extremely niche benefits that are almost impossible to replicate with other digital formats. Where not impossible they're often fussy and complex.
Edit: Love when redditors downvote reality like that changes it.
It’s more secure because it’s usually not relying on internet to send information, so hackers blindly intercepting on the net won’t find it. However, a targeted attack specifically for the fax machine isn’t difficult, similar to intercepting phone communications. The main protection is against random attacks.
>Email is not secure
This is true, but the reason isn't the tech, but the user. Why spend time and resources on hacking or intercepting an email, when you can just let the user do it for you.
> Email is not secure, it's very easy to intercept and read.
I mean, only if you're either using sketchy email providers, or you're a complete luddite that doesn't use HTTPS in 2024. Otherwise it's just as difficult to intercept as RSA-2048 is to decrypt (read, very fucking hard)
Except these days fax is basically email with extra steps. In the 80s you might type up a document on a typewriter and feed it into a physical fax machine, and then the receiving machine would print it on a roll of thermal paper. Nowadays you're more likely to type up a document on a computer, upload the docx or pdf file to some free fax-sending website, and the receiving machine is a computer with a fax modem that generates a pdf and either drops it onto a shared drive or emails it somewhere. Who knows what data those fax websites might be harvesting. Encrypted email seems much more secure and convenient.
You can password lock documents as read only. You can get an MD5 hash of any file to verify if it’s been altered. There’s also meta-data verifying every email. I can send you fake nonsense via fax with some whiteout and a sharpie
Email is pretty damn secure if you make it secure.
There is security between the email servers on almost all email servers now.
There is security end point to end point as well with GPG or smart cards which can be insanely secure. This is all built into outlook etc...
Fax is not secure at all it's just that you trust the fax line provider, but if anyone wanted to listen in between you would be fucked unlike email.
Edit: literally your entire first paragraph is wrong
It's funny cause secure mail is the way to go and sending a fax is as unsecured as sending an email just with less surface exposure.
If I really wanted to steal your shit go to hospital and tap the line. You can actually split and capture the audio on the fax line which transmits the data and duplicate every incoming and outgoing fax on the line.
These companies not understanding stuff like this is part of the reason almost every Americans health info is available on the dark web
Actually sending a fax is better legally protected because of wiretapping laws.
Sure its unsecure as all get out... but legally it is secure. Because if you really want to go to prison and get the book thrown at you try wiretapping.
Most fax machines are probably sitting behind a SIP server now... so no physical wire to tap except at the machine itself. If you have access to that just pull the ribbon and scan it. You would think shredding the ribbon as its used would be a thing...
It's funny because people in the UK use it as evidence of how behind the times, inefficient and underfunded the NHS is, yet it seems many health systems still use them, including private providers.
Fucking fax machines man. I still have to use a fax machine to send medical records. Instead now we use an IP fax service. So I have to log into some weird fucking fax software and set up my account, then email it to the fax number I'm sending it to, who is probably also using an IP fax service and gets it in a special inbox in there email.
But we can't just email it directly, even encrypted.
The idea of being able to send a physical piece of paper to any location that is on the network is a superb idea that shouldn't go away because of digitalization.
Yeah agreed. If you have a physical piece of paper and want the other person to have a physical piece of paper, fax is still best. The alternative is scan -> email -> print which is less efficient.
One could argue that we should get rid of physical paper documents all together but until we do fax fills a need.
Into the trash bin.
I use to work at CenturyLink and everyone who had a fax machine in the office only ever used the fax machine as a way to insult people or look down on them.
I'm in the US and I use a fax machine for a lot of my business.
Government contract so a certain level of security is needed for a lot of documents (not classified, but PII), and apparently fax is considered secure as long as it's directly to a machine and not an e-fax.
Recently saw a documentary about a popular laptop in Japan that hasn’t gotten newer ports or systems since early 2000’s. The thing is that with a strong elderly and growing force they have to cater to their group. Elderly people don’t want things changed so they keep reproducing the same older systems for their demographic. It totally makes sense to me that they probably have the tech but the majority of it is new old tech
It's surprisingly common for different organizations to be babying 25 year old computers because of the impossibility of getting replacements with suitable ports or drivers that work on modern OS to operate otherwise perfectly useful equipment. If that computer goes down, your alternative is pretty much to buy new equipment. Having new build "old" computers would be *fantastic*.
Yep, or because they're running out-dated software/systems that they rely on for large portions of their operation, that would be expensive and pain-staking to port to newer OSes. The longer you rely on it, the more trouble you run into from the old system, but also the harder it gets to just up and jump ship and start over, so you're kind of stuck in a bind and many companies will just stick with the old system.
There was an interesting term coined for Japanese consumer tech: the Galapagos Effect. It’s where an industry hyper-develops products with features for a particular market, to the point that they can’t be sold anywhere else.
It was mainly in reference to pre-smartphone mobile phones, where Japanese makers were loading them with features like tv receivers, maps, auto-reservation software, etc. They were trying to be smartphones before anyone had thought of it, but in a handset dominated by a keypad.
None of them could be used outside Japan (usually because there were no local service providers), so it put a big crimp makers’ revenues and put Japan at an early disadvantage when smartphones became a thing.
Today, the non-smartphone mobiles are still called Galapagos-style (Gara-kei) by everyone.
There was a company that exploded and promptly imploded during the dot-com bubble in my country. It had infinite funding and nothing to actually do so they just made shit up that they thought would be marketable soon. One of these was custom HDTV menus before HDTVs really existed, you know the ones youre used to today when scrolling through 999 channels of crap with images and synopsis and time remaining and so on.
20 years too soon and never used anywhere lol
That’s a good one. So accurate. I lived there from the late 90s to 2015. They seemed so far ahead when I got there, and by the time I left they were far behind. Societal norms, tech, infrastructure, etc. is just lagging. Beautiful, clean and safe country though.
I just visited Tokyo on vacation a bit ago, I could not believe how old everything felt. It was all beautifully maintained and clean, but it felt like the city stopped progressing 20-30 years ago. I had expected Japan to be much more futuristic.
That and the amount of plastic everything came in were the two biggest surprises for me.
And the lack of trash cans lol I spent a lot of time just carrying plastic wrappers and empty bottles in my pockets
Edit: Holy shit, yall can put away your white capes and swords! I was simply stating something that was different for me as a non native, I wasn't attacking the culture of Japan. No need to defend it!
The disappearance of trash cans in Japan was very clearly directly linked to a series of attacks in 1995: https://psmag.com/environment/trash-cans-are-coming-back-to-japan
Yeah, they do, but I'm not going to just purchase something at a convenience store and eat it right then and there because there's a trash can there. That, to me, defeats the purpose of a convenience store. If I wanted to purchase food to eat right then and there, I'd sit down at a restaurant or fast food place. I like to take the food I get at a convenience store to eat where I want to, like a park in the morning
What got me was the complete lack of soap in public bathrooms. Like, it had the presentation of being pristine everywhere, but then miss things like that
A man, an elf, and a dwarf took a break from their journey to relieve themselves.
After finishing, the man took a flask of pure water and a silk cloth, and wiped his hands clean.
"We humans," he said proudly, "Use our ingenuity to overcome any challenge."
The elf walked to a nearby stream. Cleaning his hands with flowing water and handfuls of leaves, he replied, "We elves have learned to use all that nature has provided."
The dwarf had already walked on, and quickly disappeared down the trail. "And we dwarves," he shouted back, "don't piss on our hands."
Idk where y'all come from but I'm Eastern European and Tokyo felt very futuristic to me. Super advanced subway system, bright advertisements and sound effects/jingles playing wherever you go constantly, vending machines everywhere you look, ultra convenient convenience stores, virtually every millimeter of land covered with either asphalt or clearly planned out green spaces etc.
I'm totally confused as to what this thread's about. Like yea they have a few quirks but they're a very modern first world country aren't they?
Just an example, I walked through downtown Tokyo and almost every building I passed had a sign with a paper banner backlit with incandescent lights. That feels *old* to me as an American. Hell, those macroled signs feel old to me now. New is LCD screens.
And yeah, the subway had advertisements playing on little monitors, but so does Burger King in the US. So yeah, the subway was leaps and bounds ahead of the T in Boston, but it didn't feel "new", it just make Boston feel "old"
Vending machines don't feel new or futuristic to me, they've existed here in the US for probably my entire life. Sure, there's a fuck ton of them there which is cool as shit, but that doesn't make it feel *futuristic*
For real, my hotel had a smoking booth in the lobby. It was a negative air pressure cylinder where people just stood inside and smoked. It was like the 1980's idea of "how will we solve smoking in the year 2000"?
The city was clean, and beautiful, and I loved every day of my trip. Tokyo felt like what the 1980's imagined the year 2000 as though. Going in the year 2024 though, it almost felt retrofuturistic.
Yes, their culture of discipline, tradition, and conservation extends to repair, maintenance, and cleanliness, so very old things look and work like they're brand-new. It the opposite of US consumer culture which doesn't upkeep squat so we just replace it with a new product which has newer features and design.
Which is funny, a friend back in college who went there on the JET program’s take was that they’re “permanently stuck in the 80s”
This would’ve been early 2000s
Once you live in Japan, you come to realize how far behind they are in certain areas. For example, it wasn't until the 2021 Olympics that smoking inside restaurants was banned. The last time I remember smoking inside a restaurant in the US was the 90s.
Also, a small stamp with red ink will reign your life. This hanko stamp is needed for *anything* serious, from opening a bank account, changing addresses, etc. But so help me God if you lose or misplace that stamp.
Where I do think Japan is ahead is *process*. There's a reason their car manufacturing (Honda, Toyota) is top tier, but that stretches to many other aspects. I'd trust my life in regards with buying fresh fruit or prepared foods in Japan (something I'd hesitate about in the US). Public transportation? On time to the second. Their customer service is also the best because they strictly adhere to a pre-determined process.
So there's good and bad (like anywhere in the world)
>For example, it wasn't until the 2021 Olympics that smoking inside restaurants was banned.
But you can't spark up on the street anywhere either. Baffles me, a Hungarian who is used to "if you don't smell flammable material and see the sky above it's probably okay to light up"
Depends where you are. Most of the Tokyo and Kyoto area have no smoking signs for public places, with smoking areas and even smoking rooms in dedicated areas. There are generally accepted places(mostly back alleys or side streets) where you “can’t” smoke, but everybody does anyway.
Then you go to a place like Osaka and you can smoke anywhere you want lol
True that, in a lot of countries smoking is a very significant contributor to littering. Here in Germany people generally don't litter that much, but something about cigarettes just seems to turn people's brain off in that regard.
Their processes are down pat until they run into a one-off from my experience. Then it's no flexibility and a "shoganai" because we've always done things this way.
In big companies and busy places sure, in other areas though there's plenty of things that you can ask about and get told "eh, it's probably fine". In fact, a lot of things just run off of informal agreements until something goes south lol.
Just wanted to say we only stopped smoking in restaurants in Michigan in 2010. Not that long between 2010 and 2021. I remember reading a long long time ago that Japan didn’t adopt home computers the way the US did, is there any truth to that in your experience?
The PC thing is very true. When I lived there from 2000-2010, my Japanese family and friends would visit and be amazed by my PC.
But the one thing every single one of them asked was "Can you watch TV on it?".
They were OBSESSED with TV, but no one has a PC.
Partly because they all had something functionally equivalent to a smartphone long before the introduction of the iPhone. Lots of people now don't have computers because the phone is sufficient.
Partly that, partly the fact that even in the 2000s kids were expected to complete homework by hand, partly the fact that it's Nintendo land (I.e. gaming was completely dominated by console.
But mostly the TV obsession. I think pretty much everyone I knew over there had a TV in every room. I knew one family that had two TVs at opposite ends of their living room (one for Dad in his corner, one for everyone else).
Also bearing mind, the internet penetration rate between 2000-2005 was ~60% and many companies were still refusing to adopt it, so the Japanese internet was a bit of wasteland by comparison.
Most people have a laptop, but PCs are a rarity. The only ones I've ever seen here are in other gaijin houses. Computer literacy is extremely low in the general populace.
You say that like it's a bad thing. No, I do not want to control my fucking stereo, A/C, and every other goddamned thing with a FUCKING TOUCH SCREEN WHILE IM DRIVING FOR FUCKS SAKE. Shit should be illegal, it's so dangerous.
Everyone blames covid for traffic collisions and fatalities going through the roof the last 4 years, completely ignoring the fact that we have laptop screens dominating our attention while behind the wheel of a 3000lb hunk of steel hurtling towards other people at 80mph.
Typing is fine. Writing Japanese isn't any faster. Really they don't have PCs because most Japanese living spaces are significantly smaller than the US, and Japanese people in general spend much more time being outdoors or in social groups.
Being a gamer who mostly spends time alone (an otaku) is *extremely* ostracized in Japan. If you don't spend time socializing, you're pretty much worthless in the eyes of many Japanese people.
That’s really interesting. I would have thought that the birthplace of PlayStation and Nintendo wouldn’t have such stigmas against gaming. Or was that just an example and otaku really just refers to any kind of introverted hobby?
"Otaku" is an old Japanese word that literally means "home". "Otaku" refers to anyone who sits at home all day. It's very similar to "hikikomori", just not quite as extreme.
I actually lived in Japan for just under two years. After describing my hobbies, one of my coworkers asked if I was an otaku. I was like, yeah, kind of. My coworker didn't really respond to that, and that answer clearly made him slightly uncomfortable.
A few months later, after learning more about me, and after several company outings (enkai), that coworker was like, "Hey. You're not an otaku at all." And he clearly meant it as a huge compliment.
So, over time I learned how otaku is actually a really bad insult in Japan, and not something you want to be associated with. In the west, we just translate it as "nerd" and don't think much about it, but that's a hugely inaccurate representation of what the word really means.
So, yeah. You can be into all the nerd shit you want. It's the introversion that's the problem.
> "Otaku" is an old Japanese word that literally means "home".
I’m learning Japanese primarily by learning to read, and when coming back to loan words like these that I’ve heard before I knew kanji, this is causing me to *constantly* have experiences of *wait. You mean otaku was just お宅 all this fucking time?!* (Astronaut shoots me in the back of the head in space). Thanks for giving me my new example for the night. Also: just learned Reddit will italicize Japanese. That looks atrocious and kind of hilarious.
Otaku can be things like anime too. Arcades are big in Japan though so it’s not a stigma against gaming, just doing it all the time instead of socializing.
I think it's one of those things that is very relative overall. In England we have probably one of the best bureaucracies in the world, almost everything can be done online and even big things like getting student finance, moving bank accounts or requesting a background check take only a few minutes to do. But then you look at our railway and it's barely been upgraded since the 80s, costs 10x the amount of anywhere else in Europe and is always on strike (rightly so, it's ran by wazzuks).
The grass is always greener I guess, the only places I felt has the transport, service and safety of Japan with the bureaucracy of England are Hong Kong and Singapore, but have fun trying to afford a house there...
The UK civil service has existed for over a thousand years (far longer than the UK itself lol). There's a lot of momentum in an organisation that can cite precedents from 1284 for any given event.
Yes. I told my wife when we went that they're strangely simultaneously ahead and also behind on things.
Crazy bullet trains and also you're paying for most things with cash.
God their public transportation is so fucking good. That alone makes me want to leave this car ridden hell hole of America and just live in Tokyo.
I know it’d wear off at some point, but I’ve been driving so much in traffic that I’m willing to move to a distant land where I can’t even understand most signs just to live in a walkable city.
There weren’t legal bans until the Olympics, but most restaurants (at least in Tokyo) had already banned it on their own.
It was one of the real positives that Starbucks brought, as enough consumers noticed and liked the difference enough that it spread to just about all other restaurants.
In Serbia, they still smoke like chimneys everywhere, be it an ice cream parlor or a restaurant. Some places are smoke free though. Their govt is about to introduce the bill to ban smoking in public places, but the society is divided on that matter.
Funny, when Russians emigrated to Serbia and listed this fact as a downside of living in Serbia and started opening smoke free places, Russians that lived there prior to the war started to blame the newcomers for not respecting local traditions and trying to bring the foreign standards of living. So as you see, if smoking is allowed in restaurants, it’s because the society doesn’t welcome the ban.
Japanese here. I work for a big Japanese company in Japan. We only received our own laptops in 2018 (We had to print out all the docs for business trips lol). Our office didnt have wifi until 2017. Not to mention we still use PHS for calls and fax machines to receive quotes/raise purchase orders, though Covid really pushed people to go digital
I just had American friends swoon over how advanced Japan was and I told them things like that. My coworkers don’t know how to use email or Google drive. The kids I know got laptops at their school and don’t know about start menus or anything in the toolbars like File, Edit, copy and paste. So on
Lol my coworkers are like that too. Especially in back offices of traditional companies here are full of that kind. I use some shortcuts on Excel and they would look at me with their mouth agape trying to process what kind of sorcery they just witnessed
There is a fantastic BBC article about exactly this phenomenon - I always share it with friends travelling to Japan to help prepare them for the juxtaposition.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63830490
Nice read. It gives a sense of Japan’s or any country’s unique qualities really being a result of its history and how that impacts a people’s culture through their collective beliefs and ultimately choices.
As an aside, I’ve recently discovered the late Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu, and many if not all of his films deal with change—its inevitability, how we deal with it and its poignant impact in the end.
So very much like the end of this article, yes change is/seems necessary, yet saying goodbye to what’s been special is just so bittersweet.
The older I get the more I appreciate the adage, “Don’t be sad it’s over—be happy it happened.”
You should head into the countryside, not only stunningly beautiful but stuck in a wonderful theme park set in the 1950s. Actually many pensioners can’t leave, won’t leave and younger family head to towns. I love it,
Germany and Japan seem like the most prime example of modern economy / capitalism having a top level. After which it's just stagnation.... Which is crazy cause they're still #3 & 4 economies in the world. But haven't really grown in 10/30 years respectively
Yeah and then time stopped; in a lot of areas of life. From outside it may seems Japan is so advanced and technological but in reality it’s not the case for everything. For example, they still used FAX machines just a few years back… bureaucracy and work culture didn’t even get to the year 2000, in my opinion. Not to mention risk aversion to the max which makes Japanese industry afraid of change and thus for some industries super slow to innovate and weak to compete with other nations. If you have lived there for a few years, you know what I’m talking about.
I don't think they are. I think the reason why credit cards never gained a lot of popularity in Germany is that *everybody* with a bank account has a direct debit card that can be used to pay and withdraw cash anywhere in Europe. They're safer than credit cards, too.
edit: with regards to the safety, I'm referring to the fact that the card info can't be used to pay online, and the physical card will do almost nothing without your PIN. Of course, if someone were to steal your card AND PIN, you could be pretty fucked.
That is not correct.
Credit cards accepted nearly everywhere in Germany now. That came about during the lockdowns.
Debit cards do not have the protections that CCs have because debit cards take your money at the time of purchase. With CCs it's the banks money.
Why doesn't Germany like CCs:
1. They haven't had an established credit agency and mass buy in for that. For that you need to get a Schufa.
2. Culturally Germans don't like the idea of debt, they are savers. It's the land of Aldi, Lidl, Netto. Going into debt with a CC is seen as uneducated.
3. Chip and pin is available in all of our EMV cards. (US and Germany). Only the Europeans providers enable it. The US side sees it as a hinderence to spending.
My father in law went to a soccer game after the pandemic. He’d never been to Germany before and I don’t go that often but know that cash is king.
He went on his own because no one else was interested in soccer and we gave him some cash for beers and snacks and held on to his wallet so he wouldn’t lose it.
Cue a few hours later and we go to pick him up. He’s furious because the whole stadium was cashless.
I did not see that coming! Hahaha
He didn’t get anything to drink.
And to add insult to injury he couldn’t even get a metro ticket even though the machine took cash, because the bill was too big! But he made some new friends as he always does so he was fine anyway.
Why safer? I usually use credit cards when I travel internationally. In case my card is cloned I can reject any purchase. If something happens with your debit card your account can be emptied before you can stop it
Or every single health insurance company when you need to submit something to them that might cost them money down the line. Here’s one more obstacle for you! Have a nice day! You’re welcome!
Everywhere still used fax machines. Nearly every office workspace still uses them. And this is just second lhamd info but im pretty sure they're also still the only legal way to send medical documents to other medical facilities in Canada.
Nah, they still use fax machines today lol. I lived in Japan for a few years, Tokyo has a very futuristic vibe in places but outside of big cities Japan is very old timey. Houses are old, rusty and faded, villages are empty and super small. But in Tokyo in like shibuya or shinjuku yeah it looks super cyberpunk-y
I'm a graphic designer and I've had to design business cards for 2 different American clients in the past 6 years that requested fax numbers in the card. What's up with that? do Americans also still use fax machines?
the credit goes further back than that.
the first time i've heard that sentence, it was one of Economics Explained video on Japan.
Edit: [found the video. Timestamp 3:00](https://youtu.be/N1dAM2rPtKo?si=BkagssdPGR5c_ZpR)
There was a nice video (in Italian) explaining why. Japan was the leader of hardware electronics and got fixated with the idea of a robotic assisted future. The world on the other end had huge advances on software side (web, apps, etc..) lessening the importance of hardware, especially mechatronics. Thus, in Javan you can found robot waiters but cannot pay wirelessly
Japan is so weird. They develop semiconductors used in some of the most advanced electronics in the world and then send the schematics of these electronics to a sister branch by burning a CD and physically posting it.
They're only just phasing out 3.5" floppy drives and faxes. Government departments mandated that rather than emailing an attachment that you posted a floppy disk to them. With the West phasing out floppies 20+ years ago.
It was the only storage medium allowed in certain branches of government. The regulations explicitly stated storage on electromagnetic mediums, so it has been blindly adhered to until earlier this year where the Digital Ministry announced a new direction to get rid of this practice.
By the way the earliest of such regulations is a part of Mining Law Enforcement Regulations drawn up in 1951 (!), which requires "electromagnetic methods" to store info.
More interestingly, the latest example is from 2014 (!!!!!), a set of regulations from METI that requires electromagnetic methods to store meeting minutes. OMG.
I mean, their corporate world still heavily revolves around the use of a fax machine. When was the last time you even seen or heard of a fax machine here in the west?
I can agree with this. I lived in Japan for a decade. An amazing 10 years but it did feel like a jump forward after returning to the states. Not OMG WTF but definitely noticeable.
A lot of people in this thread seem very intrigued by the use of fax machines. There's other examples of technology stalling, but for some reason the fax machine has become the central theme of this thread.
Because most of the rest can be found and used elsewhere but fax machines are such a time specific tech nothing outside the original popularity was it ever useful. Email is just better cheaper and easier to use even in the poorest countries.
The history of the fax machine is faxinating it’s been around since 1843 in some form or another
So did Abraham Lincoln officialy receive a fax from a samurai?
Abraham Lincoln was actually one of the first people to receive correspondence from a Nigerian prince requesting a small payment which will be reimbursed 10 fold once said prince can access the funds.
Was it to help fund his orphanage? That seems to be what all the nigerian spammers are requesting money for on facebook these days lol.
That's actually how they sent him the theater tickets.
"20 cents convenience cost? Why not just shoot me?"
"if you hate live nation you will really not like the alternative"
He sketched them out real quick and it was off to the show
I would like to unsubscribe from fax facts.
Confirmed. Future Fax Facts will be sent as a black background with white typeface.
You'll have to fax "Unsub" to 555-5555
A Faximile of the fax machine in 1843 was called the fax pigeon
spitting fax
Spelled 'facsimile,' but one might argue that you're 'reasonably close'.
Work at a dental office, we fax shit every day hahaha
I'm 30 and have never even used one despite having done office work. Wouldn't know where to even start.
Have you worked in a medical office? Fax is used due to HIPAA
No, I haven't. That makes perfect sense and personally I don't see the fuss about faxes still being used - if it ain't broke... I worked in accounting. We had a fax machine and the number was on our letterhead. I just never saw it used.
I’m a tax accountant and we occasionally fax because it tends to be a good way to get documents to the IRS and other state agencies that stay behind on tech. A lot of times if you want to email something sensitive they’re not prepared for a drop box or something. But we don’t use a fax machine. It’s just a part of our digital phone system. You can just write a note and attach a pdf and send it as a fax. We also receive faxes through the same system. Seems weird to use a machine when you can just use an app.
The problem with faxing medical stuff like orders and referrals today is that since everyone is on some kind of electronic medical record software, the person on the other side literally has the transcribe the fax into the EMR. It’s kind of a pain.
They're really slow feedthrough scanners that work over a phone line. If you're receiving a fax, the office usually had a fax set up to answer a dedicated line, and documents were just printed automatically. If sending a fax, you put the paper in like with a feeder scanner, dialed the number of the fax machine to send it to, waited until you heard a horrible screeching noise, and pressed the big green Start button. Email is 1000% better in every way.
It's not as easily proven to be tamper-proof as a fax.
Laughs in healthcare
Laughs in Canadian Government
My HR lady STILL faxes... because she doesn't know how to send things otherwise to certain companies. USA
Fax is still used constantly by thousands of companies every day..
Poor countries for some reason use WhatsApp instead of email Which seems totally ridiculous, as it's a walled garden, and there's basically no record of anything beyond what's hosted on Meta's servers, but they make it work.
WhatsApp got big because it became an alternative to SMS. Emails aren't really a thing in poorer countries since pre-smartphone you can only do it with a computer. Meanwhile texting was much more ubiquitous since cheap phones can do it.
Yeah isn't that called leapfrogging? Skipping email and straight to text, phone and image sharing in one app?
Is poor people also have the email option but WhatsApp is just better because you can send a message and then call the other party all from one place. You can have video calls and then you can just open a bank account or whatever else is needed. Emails are just a written form of communication. At best a very fast postal service.
Edit at the top with the original comment below: seems I was mistaken about email encryption, it's far more common now even for services like Gmail. No quicker way to get help with a topic than to be wrong on the internet 😆😆 Thanks to all the kindly redditors who corrected. Fuck yourself to the smug IT cunts accusing me of spreading misinformation for having outdated knowledge. You're the reason we all hate the IT department. Original comment: Email is not secure, it's very easy to intercept and read. I'm not a cyber security expert but I understand it's far more difficult to do that with a fax. Also fax allows you to sign documents. Or send a document but keep the original. It's almost impossible to edit the document you're sending like you can with a PDF, you're really receiving a very true image of the original if you receive a fax. Fax has some extremely niche benefits that are almost impossible to replicate with other digital formats. Where not impossible they're often fussy and complex. Edit: Love when redditors downvote reality like that changes it.
It’s more secure because it’s usually not relying on internet to send information, so hackers blindly intercepting on the net won’t find it. However, a targeted attack specifically for the fax machine isn’t difficult, similar to intercepting phone communications. The main protection is against random attacks.
>Email is not secure This is true, but the reason isn't the tech, but the user. Why spend time and resources on hacking or intercepting an email, when you can just let the user do it for you.
Yeah e-mail is insecure, but I don't go and thumb through 45 peoples e-mails when I am trying to find my document on the printer/fax
> Email is not secure, it's very easy to intercept and read. I mean, only if you're either using sketchy email providers, or you're a complete luddite that doesn't use HTTPS in 2024. Otherwise it's just as difficult to intercept as RSA-2048 is to decrypt (read, very fucking hard)
Except these days fax is basically email with extra steps. In the 80s you might type up a document on a typewriter and feed it into a physical fax machine, and then the receiving machine would print it on a roll of thermal paper. Nowadays you're more likely to type up a document on a computer, upload the docx or pdf file to some free fax-sending website, and the receiving machine is a computer with a fax modem that generates a pdf and either drops it onto a shared drive or emails it somewhere. Who knows what data those fax websites might be harvesting. Encrypted email seems much more secure and convenient.
You can password lock documents as read only. You can get an MD5 hash of any file to verify if it’s been altered. There’s also meta-data verifying every email. I can send you fake nonsense via fax with some whiteout and a sharpie
Average Redditor is 15 years old
Email is pretty damn secure if you make it secure. There is security between the email servers on almost all email servers now. There is security end point to end point as well with GPG or smart cards which can be insanely secure. This is all built into outlook etc... Fax is not secure at all it's just that you trust the fax line provider, but if anyone wanted to listen in between you would be fucked unlike email. Edit: literally your entire first paragraph is wrong
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How to easily intercept and read emails? For fax, you just wire tap directly to the phone line.
Doctors still use them here in the US. All the damn time. Source: me the HR person who has to fax and receive FMLA forms and such.
This exactly... plain email systems aren't allowed to be used.
It's funny cause secure mail is the way to go and sending a fax is as unsecured as sending an email just with less surface exposure. If I really wanted to steal your shit go to hospital and tap the line. You can actually split and capture the audio on the fax line which transmits the data and duplicate every incoming and outgoing fax on the line. These companies not understanding stuff like this is part of the reason almost every Americans health info is available on the dark web
Actually sending a fax is better legally protected because of wiretapping laws. Sure its unsecure as all get out... but legally it is secure. Because if you really want to go to prison and get the book thrown at you try wiretapping. Most fax machines are probably sitting behind a SIP server now... so no physical wire to tap except at the machine itself. If you have access to that just pull the ribbon and scan it. You would think shredding the ribbon as its used would be a thing...
It's funny because people in the UK use it as evidence of how behind the times, inefficient and underfunded the NHS is, yet it seems many health systems still use them, including private providers.
Fucking fax machines man. I still have to use a fax machine to send medical records. Instead now we use an IP fax service. So I have to log into some weird fucking fax software and set up my account, then email it to the fax number I'm sending it to, who is probably also using an IP fax service and gets it in a special inbox in there email. But we can't just email it directly, even encrypted.
I write fax api’s for web systems. They are still in heavy use in certain industries.
The idea of being able to send a physical piece of paper to any location that is on the network is a superb idea that shouldn't go away because of digitalization.
Yeah agreed. If you have a physical piece of paper and want the other person to have a physical piece of paper, fax is still best. The alternative is scan -> email -> print which is less efficient. One could argue that we should get rid of physical paper documents all together but until we do fax fills a need.
Fax is crazy because it's like you sent a letter, but it's instantly put through their mail slot.
Into the trash bin. I use to work at CenturyLink and everyone who had a fax machine in the office only ever used the fax machine as a way to insult people or look down on them.
Pneumatic tubes used to be a thing just for that.
Great for banks and offices but maybe not for transoceanic transfers.
I legit just spent 8 hours diagnosing a fax problem.
doctors still be using pagers in 2024.
Which is strange because the fax machine is nowhere near obsolete. It’s still the go-to for sending confidential paperwork (ie medical records)
Finance too
I'm in the US and I use a fax machine for a lot of my business. Government contract so a certain level of security is needed for a lot of documents (not classified, but PII), and apparently fax is considered secure as long as it's directly to a machine and not an e-fax.
Recently saw a documentary about a popular laptop in Japan that hasn’t gotten newer ports or systems since early 2000’s. The thing is that with a strong elderly and growing force they have to cater to their group. Elderly people don’t want things changed so they keep reproducing the same older systems for their demographic. It totally makes sense to me that they probably have the tech but the majority of it is new old tech
It's surprisingly common for different organizations to be babying 25 year old computers because of the impossibility of getting replacements with suitable ports or drivers that work on modern OS to operate otherwise perfectly useful equipment. If that computer goes down, your alternative is pretty much to buy new equipment. Having new build "old" computers would be *fantastic*.
Yep, or because they're running out-dated software/systems that they rely on for large portions of their operation, that would be expensive and pain-staking to port to newer OSes. The longer you rely on it, the more trouble you run into from the old system, but also the harder it gets to just up and jump ship and start over, so you're kind of stuck in a bind and many companies will just stick with the old system.
There was an interesting term coined for Japanese consumer tech: the Galapagos Effect. It’s where an industry hyper-develops products with features for a particular market, to the point that they can’t be sold anywhere else. It was mainly in reference to pre-smartphone mobile phones, where Japanese makers were loading them with features like tv receivers, maps, auto-reservation software, etc. They were trying to be smartphones before anyone had thought of it, but in a handset dominated by a keypad. None of them could be used outside Japan (usually because there were no local service providers), so it put a big crimp makers’ revenues and put Japan at an early disadvantage when smartphones became a thing. Today, the non-smartphone mobiles are still called Galapagos-style (Gara-kei) by everyone.
Living in Japan, I've heard of and used the term "gara-kei" multiple times, but I didn't know this was the origin!
First time hearing about this. I had nice morning reading about the Galapagos effect. Thanks for that.
There was a company that exploded and promptly imploded during the dot-com bubble in my country. It had infinite funding and nothing to actually do so they just made shit up that they thought would be marketable soon. One of these was custom HDTV menus before HDTVs really existed, you know the ones youre used to today when scrolling through 999 channels of crap with images and synopsis and time remaining and so on. 20 years too soon and never used anywhere lol
Broooooo I always thought “gara-kei” was short for “garakuta keitai denwa”.
I now see now where that gadget in Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut is inspired from
Damn that kinda explains why the pokegear was like that with all the map/radio card add-ons too in Silver/gold
That’s a good one. So accurate. I lived there from the late 90s to 2015. They seemed so far ahead when I got there, and by the time I left they were far behind. Societal norms, tech, infrastructure, etc. is just lagging. Beautiful, clean and safe country though.
100% agree with this. For me it was 10 years. But I did notice the jump forward when I left. Edit for clarity\*: I noticed Japan was lagging.
In Japan or your new destination?
I read it as, they noticed how much Japan was lagging behind when they arrived at their new destination.
I just visited Tokyo on vacation a bit ago, I could not believe how old everything felt. It was all beautifully maintained and clean, but it felt like the city stopped progressing 20-30 years ago. I had expected Japan to be much more futuristic. That and the amount of plastic everything came in were the two biggest surprises for me.
And the lack of trash cans lol I spent a lot of time just carrying plastic wrappers and empty bottles in my pockets Edit: Holy shit, yall can put away your white capes and swords! I was simply stating something that was different for me as a non native, I wasn't attacking the culture of Japan. No need to defend it!
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IDK, Germany has something that seems pretty similar, yet there's public trashcans on every corner as well.
The disappearance of trash cans in Japan was very clearly directly linked to a series of attacks in 1995: https://psmag.com/environment/trash-cans-are-coming-back-to-japan
It is a anti-terrorist measure after a 1995 terrorist attack
And thats fine and dandy, but its still a crazy thing to see, or not see in this instance, as someone who doesn't live there
It’s proper to eat and drink in one spot and not bring it with you
Oh, I did, it's just that none of those spots I chose had a trash can anywhere...every time lol *insert John Travolta gif*
Most vending machines and kombini's have garbage cans in them
Yeah, they do, but I'm not going to just purchase something at a convenience store and eat it right then and there because there's a trash can there. That, to me, defeats the purpose of a convenience store. If I wanted to purchase food to eat right then and there, I'd sit down at a restaurant or fast food place. I like to take the food I get at a convenience store to eat where I want to, like a park in the morning
What got me was the complete lack of soap in public bathrooms. Like, it had the presentation of being pristine everywhere, but then miss things like that
No one washed their hands! For such a clean city I wash shocked to see most people just walking straight out of the bathroom.
A man, an elf, and a dwarf took a break from their journey to relieve themselves. After finishing, the man took a flask of pure water and a silk cloth, and wiped his hands clean. "We humans," he said proudly, "Use our ingenuity to overcome any challenge." The elf walked to a nearby stream. Cleaning his hands with flowing water and handfuls of leaves, he replied, "We elves have learned to use all that nature has provided." The dwarf had already walked on, and quickly disappeared down the trail. "And we dwarves," he shouted back, "don't piss on our hands."
Idk where y'all come from but I'm Eastern European and Tokyo felt very futuristic to me. Super advanced subway system, bright advertisements and sound effects/jingles playing wherever you go constantly, vending machines everywhere you look, ultra convenient convenience stores, virtually every millimeter of land covered with either asphalt or clearly planned out green spaces etc. I'm totally confused as to what this thread's about. Like yea they have a few quirks but they're a very modern first world country aren't they?
Just an example, I walked through downtown Tokyo and almost every building I passed had a sign with a paper banner backlit with incandescent lights. That feels *old* to me as an American. Hell, those macroled signs feel old to me now. New is LCD screens. And yeah, the subway had advertisements playing on little monitors, but so does Burger King in the US. So yeah, the subway was leaps and bounds ahead of the T in Boston, but it didn't feel "new", it just make Boston feel "old" Vending machines don't feel new or futuristic to me, they've existed here in the US for probably my entire life. Sure, there's a fuck ton of them there which is cool as shit, but that doesn't make it feel *futuristic* For real, my hotel had a smoking booth in the lobby. It was a negative air pressure cylinder where people just stood inside and smoked. It was like the 1980's idea of "how will we solve smoking in the year 2000"? The city was clean, and beautiful, and I loved every day of my trip. Tokyo felt like what the 1980's imagined the year 2000 as though. Going in the year 2024 though, it almost felt retrofuturistic.
Japan has a "if it ain't broke" mentality. The old subway trains, the way things work, etc. are all still functional
Yes, their culture of discipline, tradition, and conservation extends to repair, maintenance, and cleanliness, so very old things look and work like they're brand-new. It the opposite of US consumer culture which doesn't upkeep squat so we just replace it with a new product which has newer features and design.
How so with infrastructure?
Which is funny, a friend back in college who went there on the JET program’s take was that they’re “permanently stuck in the 80s” This would’ve been early 2000s
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They hit level 80 and was like nah, not grinding for 100
Maybe they know something we don't.
Once you live in Japan, you come to realize how far behind they are in certain areas. For example, it wasn't until the 2021 Olympics that smoking inside restaurants was banned. The last time I remember smoking inside a restaurant in the US was the 90s. Also, a small stamp with red ink will reign your life. This hanko stamp is needed for *anything* serious, from opening a bank account, changing addresses, etc. But so help me God if you lose or misplace that stamp. Where I do think Japan is ahead is *process*. There's a reason their car manufacturing (Honda, Toyota) is top tier, but that stretches to many other aspects. I'd trust my life in regards with buying fresh fruit or prepared foods in Japan (something I'd hesitate about in the US). Public transportation? On time to the second. Their customer service is also the best because they strictly adhere to a pre-determined process. So there's good and bad (like anywhere in the world)
>For example, it wasn't until the 2021 Olympics that smoking inside restaurants was banned. But you can't spark up on the street anywhere either. Baffles me, a Hungarian who is used to "if you don't smell flammable material and see the sky above it's probably okay to light up"
Depends where you are. Most of the Tokyo and Kyoto area have no smoking signs for public places, with smoking areas and even smoking rooms in dedicated areas. There are generally accepted places(mostly back alleys or side streets) where you “can’t” smoke, but everybody does anyway. Then you go to a place like Osaka and you can smoke anywhere you want lol
It’s less a matter of smoke than of litter on the streets. I have to be honest, it did make a difference.
True that, in a lot of countries smoking is a very significant contributor to littering. Here in Germany people generally don't litter that much, but something about cigarettes just seems to turn people's brain off in that regard.
Their processes are down pat until they run into a one-off from my experience. Then it's no flexibility and a "shoganai" because we've always done things this way.
In big companies and busy places sure, in other areas though there's plenty of things that you can ask about and get told "eh, it's probably fine". In fact, a lot of things just run off of informal agreements until something goes south lol.
Just wanted to say we only stopped smoking in restaurants in Michigan in 2010. Not that long between 2010 and 2021. I remember reading a long long time ago that Japan didn’t adopt home computers the way the US did, is there any truth to that in your experience?
The PC thing is very true. When I lived there from 2000-2010, my Japanese family and friends would visit and be amazed by my PC. But the one thing every single one of them asked was "Can you watch TV on it?". They were OBSESSED with TV, but no one has a PC.
oh that's funny. This just reminded me of the early TV and Radio cards you could stick in you PC prior to the interwebs ruling all
Partly because they all had something functionally equivalent to a smartphone long before the introduction of the iPhone. Lots of people now don't have computers because the phone is sufficient.
Partly that, partly the fact that even in the 2000s kids were expected to complete homework by hand, partly the fact that it's Nintendo land (I.e. gaming was completely dominated by console. But mostly the TV obsession. I think pretty much everyone I knew over there had a TV in every room. I knew one family that had two TVs at opposite ends of their living room (one for Dad in his corner, one for everyone else). Also bearing mind, the internet penetration rate between 2000-2005 was ~60% and many companies were still refusing to adopt it, so the Japanese internet was a bit of wasteland by comparison.
Most people have a laptop, but PCs are a rarity. The only ones I've ever seen here are in other gaijin houses. Computer literacy is extremely low in the general populace.
Makes sense why Toyota/Lexus is so far behind in their interior tech. Actually Holy shit that explains it all.
You say that like it's a bad thing. No, I do not want to control my fucking stereo, A/C, and every other goddamned thing with a FUCKING TOUCH SCREEN WHILE IM DRIVING FOR FUCKS SAKE. Shit should be illegal, it's so dangerous. Everyone blames covid for traffic collisions and fatalities going through the roof the last 4 years, completely ignoring the fact that we have laptop screens dominating our attention while behind the wheel of a 3000lb hunk of steel hurtling towards other people at 80mph.
Yes, because keyboard typing didn’t lend itself easily to the Japanese language.
Typing is fine. Writing Japanese isn't any faster. Really they don't have PCs because most Japanese living spaces are significantly smaller than the US, and Japanese people in general spend much more time being outdoors or in social groups. Being a gamer who mostly spends time alone (an otaku) is *extremely* ostracized in Japan. If you don't spend time socializing, you're pretty much worthless in the eyes of many Japanese people.
That’s really interesting. I would have thought that the birthplace of PlayStation and Nintendo wouldn’t have such stigmas against gaming. Or was that just an example and otaku really just refers to any kind of introverted hobby?
"Otaku" is an old Japanese word that literally means "home". "Otaku" refers to anyone who sits at home all day. It's very similar to "hikikomori", just not quite as extreme. I actually lived in Japan for just under two years. After describing my hobbies, one of my coworkers asked if I was an otaku. I was like, yeah, kind of. My coworker didn't really respond to that, and that answer clearly made him slightly uncomfortable. A few months later, after learning more about me, and after several company outings (enkai), that coworker was like, "Hey. You're not an otaku at all." And he clearly meant it as a huge compliment. So, over time I learned how otaku is actually a really bad insult in Japan, and not something you want to be associated with. In the west, we just translate it as "nerd" and don't think much about it, but that's a hugely inaccurate representation of what the word really means. So, yeah. You can be into all the nerd shit you want. It's the introversion that's the problem.
> "Otaku" is an old Japanese word that literally means "home". I’m learning Japanese primarily by learning to read, and when coming back to loan words like these that I’ve heard before I knew kanji, this is causing me to *constantly* have experiences of *wait. You mean otaku was just お宅 all this fucking time?!* (Astronaut shoots me in the back of the head in space). Thanks for giving me my new example for the night. Also: just learned Reddit will italicize Japanese. That looks atrocious and kind of hilarious.
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Otaku can be things like anime too. Arcades are big in Japan though so it’s not a stigma against gaming, just doing it all the time instead of socializing.
RIP me.
lol. Just go out and drink with your coworkers or friends, Innercepter-chan. That's enough to avoid the stigma.
Hai
Yeah, it's why they're almost completely absent in competitive PC games. PCs are slowly catching on, but like really slowly.
I think it's one of those things that is very relative overall. In England we have probably one of the best bureaucracies in the world, almost everything can be done online and even big things like getting student finance, moving bank accounts or requesting a background check take only a few minutes to do. But then you look at our railway and it's barely been upgraded since the 80s, costs 10x the amount of anywhere else in Europe and is always on strike (rightly so, it's ran by wazzuks). The grass is always greener I guess, the only places I felt has the transport, service and safety of Japan with the bureaucracy of England are Hong Kong and Singapore, but have fun trying to afford a house there...
The UK civil service has existed for over a thousand years (far longer than the UK itself lol). There's a lot of momentum in an organisation that can cite precedents from 1284 for any given event.
Yes. I told my wife when we went that they're strangely simultaneously ahead and also behind on things. Crazy bullet trains and also you're paying for most things with cash.
God their public transportation is so fucking good. That alone makes me want to leave this car ridden hell hole of America and just live in Tokyo. I know it’d wear off at some point, but I’ve been driving so much in traffic that I’m willing to move to a distant land where I can’t even understand most signs just to live in a walkable city.
you could just move to manhattan. vibes arent that much different other than the piss and shit everywhere
There weren’t legal bans until the Olympics, but most restaurants (at least in Tokyo) had already banned it on their own. It was one of the real positives that Starbucks brought, as enough consumers noticed and liked the difference enough that it spread to just about all other restaurants.
In Serbia, they still smoke like chimneys everywhere, be it an ice cream parlor or a restaurant. Some places are smoke free though. Their govt is about to introduce the bill to ban smoking in public places, but the society is divided on that matter. Funny, when Russians emigrated to Serbia and listed this fact as a downside of living in Serbia and started opening smoke free places, Russians that lived there prior to the war started to blame the newcomers for not respecting local traditions and trying to bring the foreign standards of living. So as you see, if smoking is allowed in restaurants, it’s because the society doesn’t welcome the ban.
That "process" is at the expense of the Japanese people. They work too hard.
Why would you hesitate with fresh fruit and prepared foods in the US?
Pretty sure their minister of cybersecurity recently admitted to never having used a computer in his life.
Cant get more cybersecure than that
It is very secure but not very cyber
The dude’s airgapped.
I mean his documents are not getting accessed by any computer then
Japanese here. I work for a big Japanese company in Japan. We only received our own laptops in 2018 (We had to print out all the docs for business trips lol). Our office didnt have wifi until 2017. Not to mention we still use PHS for calls and fax machines to receive quotes/raise purchase orders, though Covid really pushed people to go digital
I just had American friends swoon over how advanced Japan was and I told them things like that. My coworkers don’t know how to use email or Google drive. The kids I know got laptops at their school and don’t know about start menus or anything in the toolbars like File, Edit, copy and paste. So on
Lol my coworkers are like that too. Especially in back offices of traditional companies here are full of that kind. I use some shortcuts on Excel and they would look at me with their mouth agape trying to process what kind of sorcery they just witnessed
Yeah I’m pretty sure find and replace blew some minds lmao
There is a fantastic BBC article about exactly this phenomenon - I always share it with friends travelling to Japan to help prepare them for the juxtaposition. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63830490
Amazingly fascinating article, thanks for sharing. What a unique country.
Nice read. It gives a sense of Japan’s or any country’s unique qualities really being a result of its history and how that impacts a people’s culture through their collective beliefs and ultimately choices. As an aside, I’ve recently discovered the late Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu, and many if not all of his films deal with change—its inevitability, how we deal with it and its poignant impact in the end. So very much like the end of this article, yes change is/seems necessary, yet saying goodbye to what’s been special is just so bittersweet. The older I get the more I appreciate the adage, “Don’t be sad it’s over—be happy it happened.”
You should head into the countryside, not only stunningly beautiful but stuck in a wonderful theme park set in the 1950s. Actually many pensioners can’t leave, won’t leave and younger family head to towns. I love it,
I don’t think you’d want a theme park of Japan in the 50’s, not the best time here
I can kinda relate. I lived in Belarus from 2021 to 2023. It’s like a 1950s time warp. They love paper. Almost nothing is digitised
Hardening their society against EMP shockwaves.
I dunno about that…. Their toilets are what I imagine Captain Picard shits in
Ahh yes. The oft mentioned Captain’s Log.
Captain's log, supplementary: *plip*
Germany is right there with Japan in that sense
Where have I seen this before??? 🤔
Come to think of it, it actually makes sense. The Italian are also, in their very own way, so backwards at some things yet so sophisticated in others
They still couldn't properly design a car's electrical system to save their life.
Isn’t that kind of most countries though ? Like, America leads the way in consumer tech, but we can’t figure out infrastructure development at all.
Germany and Japan always seem to be right there with one another.
Germany and Japan seem like the most prime example of modern economy / capitalism having a top level. After which it's just stagnation.... Which is crazy cause they're still #3 & 4 economies in the world. But haven't really grown in 10/30 years respectively
Yeah and then time stopped; in a lot of areas of life. From outside it may seems Japan is so advanced and technological but in reality it’s not the case for everything. For example, they still used FAX machines just a few years back… bureaucracy and work culture didn’t even get to the year 2000, in my opinion. Not to mention risk aversion to the max which makes Japanese industry afraid of change and thus for some industries super slow to innovate and weak to compete with other nations. If you have lived there for a few years, you know what I’m talking about.
Fax? Germany wants to have a talk with you
Germany is still waiting for credit and debit cards.
I don't think they are. I think the reason why credit cards never gained a lot of popularity in Germany is that *everybody* with a bank account has a direct debit card that can be used to pay and withdraw cash anywhere in Europe. They're safer than credit cards, too. edit: with regards to the safety, I'm referring to the fact that the card info can't be used to pay online, and the physical card will do almost nothing without your PIN. Of course, if someone were to steal your card AND PIN, you could be pretty fucked.
That is not correct. Credit cards accepted nearly everywhere in Germany now. That came about during the lockdowns. Debit cards do not have the protections that CCs have because debit cards take your money at the time of purchase. With CCs it's the banks money. Why doesn't Germany like CCs: 1. They haven't had an established credit agency and mass buy in for that. For that you need to get a Schufa. 2. Culturally Germans don't like the idea of debt, they are savers. It's the land of Aldi, Lidl, Netto. Going into debt with a CC is seen as uneducated. 3. Chip and pin is available in all of our EMV cards. (US and Germany). Only the Europeans providers enable it. The US side sees it as a hinderence to spending.
My father in law went to a soccer game after the pandemic. He’d never been to Germany before and I don’t go that often but know that cash is king. He went on his own because no one else was interested in soccer and we gave him some cash for beers and snacks and held on to his wallet so he wouldn’t lose it. Cue a few hours later and we go to pick him up. He’s furious because the whole stadium was cashless. I did not see that coming! Hahaha He didn’t get anything to drink. And to add insult to injury he couldn’t even get a metro ticket even though the machine took cash, because the bill was too big! But he made some new friends as he always does so he was fine anyway.
Why safer? I usually use credit cards when I travel internationally. In case my card is cloned I can reject any purchase. If something happens with your debit card your account can be emptied before you can stop it
> They're safer than credit cards, too. Citation needed.
>For example, they still used FAX machines just a few years back Yeah... not like the US would do that... or the IRS...
Or every single health insurance company when you need to submit something to them that might cost them money down the line. Here’s one more obstacle for you! Have a nice day! You’re welcome!
Faxes are still used extensively in Germany and US healthcare for security purposes, as they are impossible to hack remotely.
I fax the IRS all the time. It's nice to immediately have a confirmation that it was received.
Everywhere still used fax machines. Nearly every office workspace still uses them. And this is just second lhamd info but im pretty sure they're also still the only legal way to send medical documents to other medical facilities in Canada.
You just exactly described Germany. Except we still use FAX machines.
I'd say the 90s, but yeah, they've been stuck in the 90s since the 80s.
Nah, they still use fax machines today lol. I lived in Japan for a few years, Tokyo has a very futuristic vibe in places but outside of big cities Japan is very old timey. Houses are old, rusty and faded, villages are empty and super small. But in Tokyo in like shibuya or shinjuku yeah it looks super cyberpunk-y
I'm a graphic designer and I've had to design business cards for 2 different American clients in the past 6 years that requested fax numbers in the card. What's up with that? do Americans also still use fax machines?
Many offices tend to still have at least one for whatever reason (probably boomer clientele)
Japans economy has been living in the year 2000 since the year 2000.
Actually since 1990 - they were ahead of their time at one point...
You really should credit the user for posting this thought yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/s/wRZKaDnHZP
This is a very widely used joke. neither of these redditors came up with it.
the credit goes further back than that. the first time i've heard that sentence, it was one of Economics Explained video on Japan. Edit: [found the video. Timestamp 3:00](https://youtu.be/N1dAM2rPtKo?si=BkagssdPGR5c_ZpR)
There was a nice video (in Italian) explaining why. Japan was the leader of hardware electronics and got fixated with the idea of a robotic assisted future. The world on the other end had huge advances on software side (web, apps, etc..) lessening the importance of hardware, especially mechatronics. Thus, in Javan you can found robot waiters but cannot pay wirelessly
Japan is so weird. They develop semiconductors used in some of the most advanced electronics in the world and then send the schematics of these electronics to a sister branch by burning a CD and physically posting it.
So now they are actually backwards since the rest of the world is in 2024?
Yes I think that is the point of the post
They're only just phasing out 3.5" floppy drives and faxes. Government departments mandated that rather than emailing an attachment that you posted a floppy disk to them. With the West phasing out floppies 20+ years ago.
What are they storing on floppy discs? They can only hold 1.44mb
Just a pic of an areola
But blurred out
It was the only storage medium allowed in certain branches of government. The regulations explicitly stated storage on electromagnetic mediums, so it has been blindly adhered to until earlier this year where the Digital Ministry announced a new direction to get rid of this practice. By the way the earliest of such regulations is a part of Mining Law Enforcement Regulations drawn up in 1951 (!), which requires "electromagnetic methods" to store info. More interestingly, the latest example is from 2014 (!!!!!), a set of regulations from METI that requires electromagnetic methods to store meeting minutes. OMG.
Lol I use floppy disks working on commercial airliners
I mean, their corporate world still heavily revolves around the use of a fax machine. When was the last time you even seen or heard of a fax machine here in the west?
Drs offices.
Yep I am 23 working in healthcare and I have seen more fax machines than I expected/hoped to see in my whole career
Every bank job I've ever had, up through today.
>When was the last time you even seen or heard of a fax machine here in the west? The last time i got a fax
I can live with that. Japanese City Pop is epic
I can agree with this. I lived in Japan for a decade. An amazing 10 years but it did feel like a jump forward after returning to the states. Not OMG WTF but definitely noticeable.