It occasionally makes me think that the only thing holding back trends are overarching cultural norms, rather than a small, devoted group of people willing to fight to take back the "old ways". It's very hard to change Japanese society unless everyone is moved into action at once (as the continued use of paper forms would show). I think from this resistance to change, we people from other cultures are able to view this alternate version of some other Internet where people don't care or don't want to use the latest tech all the time.

I once read in a Japanese economics newspaper that the general sentiment is: if you ask your boss if you can use shiny new technique 'X' to solve a problem, you're going to be told "no." As a result, nobody bothers to ask.

Sometimes, I wonder if nothing short of that kind of deep-rooted hesitance at a societal level would have been necessary to stop today's Corporate Memphis web.