How long will Japan continue to drive technological innovation? For years I have made my pilgrimage here to see the next generation of the cool, the shiny and the super-advanced. Lately, I'm no longer sure. Hanging out in Tokyo is always a strangely mesmerising experience. Like some alien artifact, the city itself is both impossibly futuristic and yet beguiling in its retro contradictions. Beneath tomorrow's gleaming skyscrapers glide yesterday's Toyota Crown taxis, with their 'SuperDeluxe' badging and white lace seat covers. It is a striking contrast. Amid the neon billboards and blinking red lights of rooftops, the freakish and the familiar blend with equal aplomb.
In a small outdoor cafe in Shibuya, I caught up with Dr Serkan Toto - who is Techcrunch's Tokyo based correspondent on all things Japanese, mobile and gadget wonderful. We had a terrific discussion about the local market, and a few things resonated with me. Firstly, mobile. With its tiny advanced phones, QR codes, e-wallets and content ecosystem - Japan has led the mobile world for the last decade. That's starting to change. The iPhone, which borrows so much from Japan in its design and execution has, after a slow start, managed to now take nearly 5% of the local market with an estimated 3 million phones.
Now that they have it, I'm certain the Japanese will do interesting things with the Apple platform. They have a tendency to see things in a different way. Take for example, the Tokyo N building, covered in QR codes that lets you see people tweeting floor by floor as an augmented reality application. Another interesting augmented reality application is Sekai Camera, fast growing popular with local Japanese users. The application now features a cool gaming hook which allow people to remotely virtual assault devices that attack unsuspecting users in geo-tagged locations.
That said, I'm not sure how much disruptive innovation will continue to come from Japan in the mobile space. Following Samsung's decision to create the Bada platform, NTT Docomo have also announced their own attempt to compete with Apple and Android. If this was 1989 and we were talking about PC operating systems, they might stand a chance. But there is a new innovation dynamic at play in the mobile space, and my gut instinct is that it will be at the bottom of the pyramid.
I'm writing the sequel to Futuretainment, and my new focus is technological innovation in the BRIC countries. I've come to believe that constraint is the mother of invention - especially when applied to the magic of large numbers (big domestic population, fast growing middle classes, rising literacy levels, growing export markets, falling technology prices). Immediately prior to my trip to Tokyo, I spent a month in Brazil and Latin America. There is a real contrast between the kind of grassroots technological innovation you are seeing in the BRIC countries and the brilliant, but closed loop ingenuity that has traditionally come out of Japan.
That's not to say that Japan will not play a key role in technology in the next decade. One area in which they will continue to excel is robotics. It's hard to articulate just how much the Japanese love robots. Yesterday I was walking around Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics district. I marveled at small robot shops that sell highly advanced toy robots that cost thousands but will let you compete in martial arts and soccer games. At the new Gundam robot cafe, the line snaked around the block. And not surprisingly, they are also morally ambiguous on cybernetic pop culture characters like Darth Vader, who currently features in a bizarre viral campaign from NTT Docomo. Japan is the one country in the world where they plan to solve their aging population crisis through robot helpers and companions.
Serkan had an interesting observation on this point. The Japanese religion Shinto is based on a principle of Animism - all things have a spirit. Like a Kabbalistic Golem, to create a robot is to literally breathe life into a piece of technology. Not so in the West. For like Tony Stark in Iron Man, we have a different vision. We dream of turning ourselves into machines.
