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The Japanese electronics challenge
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encouraging US willingness to take the notion of alliance seriously and Europe’s ability to negotiate on a united basis with the US. The title of Stanley Hoffman’s Duties Beyond Borders reflects an aspiration for a statescraft that is not wholly bound up with the narrow confines of national interest. Hoffman’s investigation into this matter is a welcome relief from the compressed prose of Griffiths or the analytical detail of the Burt edition, and offers a marvellous example of how a broadly based intellect can still say something of relevance to the hardpressed policymaker. The book contains five lectures, delivered in 1980, that attempt to “reconcile what is usually referred to as the realistic approach to international politics, with the demands of morality”. The difficulties are all acknowledged but, sustained by a residual liberal
319
optimism, Hoffman sketches out the features of an ethical and reformist approach to international affairs. Not surprisingly he ends up focusing on the people who determine foreign policies and who would have to implement his approach. Morality may govern the rhetoric of foreign policy but something less elevated governs the practice, and as Hoffman notes, President Carter “often displayed an almost schizophrenic disconnection between lofty principles and daily tactics with no strategy in between”. He realizes that nobody is going to be put into positions of power without their having a keen sense of the national interest, but he does ask that they develop a capacity to think in the long term and, when the occasion demands it, “to rise beyond the purely national”. That is not a bad basis upon which to think about arms control.
A disjointed rehearsal Geoff Simons The Japanese Electronics Challenge edited by Mick McLean 163 pages, S15.50 (London, 1982)
Frances Pinter,
This book summarizes the proceedings of two seminars sponsored by TECHNOVA, an organization created in Tokyo in 1978 to promote research in new technology and innovative management systems and to encourage technology transfer between Japan and other countries. The two parts of the book carry 15 papers. Unfortunately, only about half-a-dozen are worth reading. Two aspects are dealt with; the scale and character of Japanese microelectronics, and the impact of microelectronics on Japanese society. We all Geoff Simons is Chief Editor, The National Computing Centre Ltd, Oxford Road, Manchester Ml 7ED.
FUTURES August 1993
know, given Japan’s place in innovative technology, that these topics are important enough, but this book gives the impression of an uneven and disjointed rehearsal of key issues. Its most valuable feature is the collection of statistical data (graphs, tables, pie-charts etc occupying about 30 pages out of a total of 163) intended to quantify the microelectronics impact in Japan. For example, the information provided in the papers by Yamamoto (Managing Director of Fujitsu), Sasaki (Senior Executive Director of Sharp), Amou (Shibaura Electronic Company), and Tao (Institute of Researching Life Structures) is hard and informative. Alas, many of the other papers are dross and there are platitudes in abundance throughout the book (“. . . microelectronics is an issue which demands urgent consideration”). Some of the discussion section is at this banal level, and there is little useful
320
Book5
analysis of social impact. In one of the contributions, Alexander King (Chairman of The International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study) makes a brief and misleading reference to the Luddites; they did not fear change, as he suggests, but believed that technology innovation should not be indifferent to human well-being. Industry
and social services
And when Ferdinand Rauwenhoff (a Senior MD at NV Philips, The Netherlands) tries to compare the Japanese and European industrial scenes, he says nothing about the security offered to many workers in Japan, about the unique banking arrangements in the Japanese economy, or about the weighty military expenditure in, say, the United Kingdom. He notices that Japan has lower social security and government spending than Europe, and with implied approval suggests that European public spending should be reduced to finance industry. I have little sympathy with this sort of posture-that, in the name of business competitiveness, governments should cut down on social services. Rather I would like to see better social services in Japan, not increasingly impoverished ones in the West. number of the Indeed, a TECHNOVA papers seem to assume that business success is synonymous social benefit. Yet with employee consider the following quotation from the Financial Guardian (216182): Japan’s management success hinges availability and disposability of armies of who receive no health, retirement, bonus, or other beneftts and are discarded in a slump.
on the workers housing business
More recently, The Sunday Times (17/4/83) ran a piece called “Diary of a human robot” by a Japanese journalist,
Satoshi Kamata, who worked for a time in a Japanese factory: While management journalism may applaud Toyota’s high profit and production records, the human cost of Toyota methods--suicides, injuries, fatal accidents, and occupational diseases -increase at a horrifying rate.
There are other indications that many of the papers may have been dashed off in a thoughtless manner. Albert Jan Huart, an MD of NV Philips, declares that only human beings possess the power to reason; “no computer, no matter how clever, can do better than man himself”. But he must know of the 1956 Logic Theorist that found theorem proofs missed by Russell and Whitehead in Principia Mathematics, of Luigi Villa, world champion backgammon expert, beaten by a computer in four games out of five, and of David Levy and John international chess experts, Nunn, beaten by computers. Such ‘off-thecuff’ remarks should be totally absent in a book of this sort. Misleading
stereotypes
The Japanese Electronics Challenge purports to deal with the social relevance of microelectronics production. The central importance of any technology must be its effects on the quality of human life, but in this area the book is almost invariably superficial, often doing little more than reinforcing misleading stereotypes (eg, of the lazy European). In the final resort you may buy the book for its statistics (on shipreduction chip price trends, ment trends, extent of micro popularization in Japan, sales of micros, production volume of home appliances, trends in office automation, etc), except that even here sources of data are not always given. Moreover, there is no bibliography or guide as to further information sources. And there is no index.
FUTURES August 1993
encouraging US willingness to take the notion of alliance seriously and Europe’s ability to negotiate on a united basis with the US. The title of Stanley Hoffman’s Duties Beyond Borders reflects an aspiration for a statescraft that is not wholly bound up with the narrow confines of national interest. Hoffman’s investigation into this matter is a welcome relief from the compressed prose of Griffiths or the analytical detail of the Burt edition, and offers a marvellous example of how a broadly based intellect can still say something of relevance to the hardpressed policymaker. The book contains five lectures, delivered in 1980, that attempt to “reconcile what is usually referred to as the realistic approach to international politics, with the demands of morality”. The difficulties are all acknowledged but, sustained by a residual liberal
319
optimism, Hoffman sketches out the features of an ethical and reformist approach to international affairs. Not surprisingly he ends up focusing on the people who determine foreign policies and who would have to implement his approach. Morality may govern the rhetoric of foreign policy but something less elevated governs the practice, and as Hoffman notes, President Carter “often displayed an almost schizophrenic disconnection between lofty principles and daily tactics with no strategy in between”. He realizes that nobody is going to be put into positions of power without their having a keen sense of the national interest, but he does ask that they develop a capacity to think in the long term and, when the occasion demands it, “to rise beyond the purely national”. That is not a bad basis upon which to think about arms control.
A disjointed rehearsal Geoff Simons The Japanese Electronics Challenge edited by Mick McLean 163 pages, S15.50 (London, 1982)
Frances Pinter,
This book summarizes the proceedings of two seminars sponsored by TECHNOVA, an organization created in Tokyo in 1978 to promote research in new technology and innovative management systems and to encourage technology transfer between Japan and other countries. The two parts of the book carry 15 papers. Unfortunately, only about half-a-dozen are worth reading. Two aspects are dealt with; the scale and character of Japanese microelectronics, and the impact of microelectronics on Japanese society. We all Geoff Simons is Chief Editor, The National Computing Centre Ltd, Oxford Road, Manchester Ml 7ED.
FUTURES August 1993
know, given Japan’s place in innovative technology, that these topics are important enough, but this book gives the impression of an uneven and disjointed rehearsal of key issues. Its most valuable feature is the collection of statistical data (graphs, tables, pie-charts etc occupying about 30 pages out of a total of 163) intended to quantify the microelectronics impact in Japan. For example, the information provided in the papers by Yamamoto (Managing Director of Fujitsu), Sasaki (Senior Executive Director of Sharp), Amou (Shibaura Electronic Company), and Tao (Institute of Researching Life Structures) is hard and informative. Alas, many of the other papers are dross and there are platitudes in abundance throughout the book (“. . . microelectronics is an issue which demands urgent consideration”). Some of the discussion section is at this banal level, and there is little useful
320
Book5
analysis of social impact. In one of the contributions, Alexander King (Chairman of The International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study) makes a brief and misleading reference to the Luddites; they did not fear change, as he suggests, but believed that technology innovation should not be indifferent to human well-being. Industry
and social services
And when Ferdinand Rauwenhoff (a Senior MD at NV Philips, The Netherlands) tries to compare the Japanese and European industrial scenes, he says nothing about the security offered to many workers in Japan, about the unique banking arrangements in the Japanese economy, or about the weighty military expenditure in, say, the United Kingdom. He notices that Japan has lower social security and government spending than Europe, and with implied approval suggests that European public spending should be reduced to finance industry. I have little sympathy with this sort of posture-that, in the name of business competitiveness, governments should cut down on social services. Rather I would like to see better social services in Japan, not increasingly impoverished ones in the West. number of the Indeed, a TECHNOVA papers seem to assume that business success is synonymous social benefit. Yet with employee consider the following quotation from the Financial Guardian (216182): Japan’s management success hinges availability and disposability of armies of who receive no health, retirement, bonus, or other beneftts and are discarded in a slump.
on the workers housing business
More recently, The Sunday Times (17/4/83) ran a piece called “Diary of a human robot” by a Japanese journalist,
Satoshi Kamata, who worked for a time in a Japanese factory: While management journalism may applaud Toyota’s high profit and production records, the human cost of Toyota methods--suicides, injuries, fatal accidents, and occupational diseases -increase at a horrifying rate.
There are other indications that many of the papers may have been dashed off in a thoughtless manner. Albert Jan Huart, an MD of NV Philips, declares that only human beings possess the power to reason; “no computer, no matter how clever, can do better than man himself”. But he must know of the 1956 Logic Theorist that found theorem proofs missed by Russell and Whitehead in Principia Mathematics, of Luigi Villa, world champion backgammon expert, beaten by a computer in four games out of five, and of David Levy and John international chess experts, Nunn, beaten by computers. Such ‘off-thecuff’ remarks should be totally absent in a book of this sort. Misleading
stereotypes
The Japanese Electronics Challenge purports to deal with the social relevance of microelectronics production. The central importance of any technology must be its effects on the quality of human life, but in this area the book is almost invariably superficial, often doing little more than reinforcing misleading stereotypes (eg, of the lazy European). In the final resort you may buy the book for its statistics (on shipreduction chip price trends, ment trends, extent of micro popularization in Japan, sales of micros, production volume of home appliances, trends in office automation, etc), except that even here sources of data are not always given. Moreover, there is no bibliography or guide as to further information sources. And there is no index.
FUTURES August 1993