IT. Does it supposed to make life easier for us? More fun?
Life has become more complicated because IT created ways to measure simple things at amazing speed. Since we humans love measurement, and if we can have measurement quickly, than we will compromize on content of matters being measured.
Like sales forecasting. How beautifully numbers are collected and sorted out to be presented to the headquarters people. Those who submitted the numbers may have to eat their numbers, to fudge with them when one order is cancelled and two replaces it.
Like office fitout cost. If we can provide desk, chair, computer, what else do we need? Why would we need graphics in an office? Why would we need to worry about layouts?
Like call center operation. China has the best numbers in numbers of calls picked up, short duration of the calls. But when the calls are monitored, poor quality of servicing each call is revealed.
On the other hand, IT made train ticket pass so much easier to use for everyone. Blog is possible because of IT. We can be connected to family, friends, partners from many places, regardless of time.
This really dawned on me last Tuesday when I was preparing for Wednesday morning presenation. The stuff I was going to talk about was merely background of our work, introduction. Then why am I trying to create nice chart on the computer when it’s only to make handwritten words on the whiteboard look more formal. The audience are not even interested in seeing these chart in the first place anyway. Why am I spending 5-6 hours on such stuff? And what time I have spent doing this kind of things in the past!! When I gave up on trying to create pretty stuff, and did the introduction solely by speech, nobody argued. Nobody disapproved. As I expected, they wanted to see the main part done by the architect.
Time to get away from being the slave to the Powerpoint. Words. Excel. I guess I will save about 10 hours per week. Thats the total of 1/4 of my working hours!! I can spend things up so much with this 1/4 of time saved. I repeat, I was wasting 1/4 of my work life because of IT convenience.
This is just time factor. I wonder how much quality factor will be gained by being un-addicted to the IT.
FUJIKO SUDA 
Dear Fujiko,
Lately I have been thinking much the same thing, how much time the computer has taken up in our lives and how,
in many ways, the computer makes life more complicated, wastes a lot of precious time, separates us from the people we should be spending our time with, and often requires us to do tasks in an overloaded way that, as you described, could be much better done simply by speaking or using a pen and paper. As an illustrator I find that I can draw a conceptual sketch by hand in about 2 minutes, whereas it will take 3 or 4 hours on my computer’s drawing program.
I’m also finding that, though I can instantly contact all my friends by e-mail, the sheer number of people to contact and the rapidity of their responses makes it impossible for me to keep up with everyone. In the past I stayed in much more contact with friends when I wrote letters by hand. The writing forced me to think carefully about what I was saying. Since e-mail became popular I rarely receive letters any more and friends have contacted me far less than in the past. Everyone is overwhelmed.
Besides, i just love holding a letter in my hand. There is something reassuring about it.
—-
I wanted to ask a question: I am a German/Filipino living here in Tokyo and as I speak Japanese and do some reading and writing, I’d like to be able to write occasionally in Japanese in my blog. May I ask how you set up the Japanese writing in your blog? Do I need to download any special coding for Moveable Type or can I already just write in Japanese?
Miguel
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Gaseous Clouds
The window is open and through the screen drifts the music of various crickets all rehearsing for the Autumn Gala. The repetitious strokes of the Common Cricket, the melodious. liquid-like warble of Teleogryllus yemma, the slow-sawing buzz of Loxeblemm…
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Hi Miguel!
I am very happy to have your comment. Thank you! I visited your blog site, and enjoyed it very much. Hope you won’t mind me listing your blog on my link section.
As for making entries in Japanese… Have you tried making entries in Japanese yet? I am not well versed on the technical side of blog, so I will ask my friend who is a wiz at this kind of thing, and get back to you.
You probably did not know about the blogger’s gathering last Thursday at my company’s office. If you are interested in maybe attending the next one, please see http://metamemos.typepad.com/ for reference.
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Hello Fujiko,
Please, do feel free to list my site on yours. I’ve taken the liberty of listing yours on mine. I’ve been wanting to include blogs and pages made by Japanese people, rather than just non-Japanese living in Japan. My experience living in Japan since 1969 is that most of my contacts here and most of my friends and activities are with Japanese, not non-Japanese, so it is a little strange that most of my blog links are to non-Japanese sites. Perhaps it is that finding the Japanese blogs is a little difficult for me. But I would certainly like to be in more contact with Japanese bloggers. It might be nice to meet the people you mentioned. Please let me know when you will be meeting again. (I will honestly try to go, but as I’m quite busy often– I do a lot of mountain walking on the weekends– I’m not sure I can guarantee that I can make it reguarly)
It was very nice to hear from you. I hope we can correspond more occasionally.
cheers,
miguel
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Hi there,
Re: Japanese support for MovableType, please visit http://weblog.uva.ne.jp/ (Hirata-san’s blog), in which a patch to let MT support Japanese language (basically MT can handle Japanese when you set the language encoding as UTF-8, which is the unicode. But there are four major Japanese encoding so that comments/trackabacks from others may be encoded incorrectly…)
Hirata-san also wrote a book re: MT installation.
I think this is the easiest way, since you read and write Japanese, Miguel.
Feel free to ask me if you have difficulties installing Japanese patches.
Enjoy,
Nob
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Nob: Great!! Thank you for your help!!
Miguel: Best of luck with turning your blog into one with Japanese language capability. Walking in mountains….. Sounds like time to meditate and to find inspiration, like photographs on your blog. No worry about making promise to attend our events. I’ll e-mail you with friendly invitations, and if the subject interests you and the timing is right, please come. No obligation at all.
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Nice page!!!
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