Intrepid reporter covers fiber, networked VR, Sega, SGI and 3DO and more, in one trip

Despite the common view that the Japanese are far ahead of us in all things relating to technology, a recent trip to Japan by Digital Media contributing editor Tom Hargadon — he was working the lecture circuit about virtual reality, networking and “the future of the museum” — showed that technological advances aren’t all they’ve been cracked up to be across the Pacific. The Japanese seem to be battling all the same issues we’re facing in the U.S.: how to change the infrastructure, how to get more computers into the schools, how to get up to speed in the networking arena, etc. Here’s his report.

It is April in Tokyo, cherry blossom time, and all the newspapers are agog about a possible massive investment in “social infrastructure” in the about-to-be announced stimulus package for the Japanese economy. It was expected that the package would include up to $15 billion to build a nationwide fiber-optic network and to put large numbers of computers in schools. The highly visible Clinton administration’s words about development of a technological infrastructure were emphasized.

Such a program would have used long-term bonds for what were perceived as short-term results and Japan’s finance ministry was deeply opposed to such use, so hopes for building the new infrastructure were dashed. Just as in the U.S., the warring factions in the telecommunications and computer industries could not settle their differences as to who would get what.

Some companies, such as national phone giant NTT, announced grand plans to invest more than ¥45 trillion ($405 billion) through 2015 to install a fiber-to-the-home nationwide network a week before the stimulus package was announced on April 13. Like Robert Allen, president of AT&T, president Masashi Kojima of NTT felt that the private sector could provide the needed network without government intrusion.

The Japanese were also baffled by why a cable company like TCI was spending $2 billion to put fiber into its systems. With only 3 percent of Japanese homes in the country even passed by cable, they have no conception of cable TV systems as a viable alternative to the telephone companies in the provision of interactive video and data services.

Bob Johnstone of the Far East Economic Review pointed out that the stimulus package was a straight imitation of the Clinton initiatives. The Japanese had done a very careful analysis of those initiatives and noted that there was very little new money for telecommunications infrastructure, but there was money for supercomputers and some money for computers in the schools; so they did the same.

Until 1992, Japan had very few Internet hosts and access was severely limited. The number of hosts quadrupled in 1992; it had been hoped that the stimulus package would add many more hosts in universities, upgrade the present hosts and begin commercial development in earnest. But substantial funds for Internet development in Japan must now wait until next year, Johnstone said.

U.S. COMPUTERS, U.S. PRESSURE

During the second week of April, the foreign ministers of the seven leading developed nations met in Tokyo, primarily to discuss aid to Russia. But Warren Christopher of the U.S. State Department made a specific effort to ask about the purchase of U.S.-brand personal computers by the Education Ministry. The result seems to be that some U.S. computer companies — probably mostly IBM, which has been in Japan for many years — will get substantial orders. It was felt that Apple Japan was not adequately organized to obtain much benefit.

Japanese disconnect. Perhaps only 10 percent of Japanese PCs in office locations are connected to any local network, compared to perhaps 40 percent in the United States. When I spoke in Tokyo last August about networking trends, the general impression was that the Japanese were five years behind in the use and manufacturing of networking gear. When I spoke in April, the new consensus was “two years back and moving fast,” especially in asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) broadband technologies.

At a much subdued Communication 93 conference in Tokyo, the only major application garnering any attention was video conferencing. With the advent of substantially cheaper video compression-decompression units for desktops (chip sets in the Px64 format may be available for $1,000 in early 1994), there was an expectation that the desktop video conferencing business would explode in Japan in the next year or so.

All the Japanese manufacturers from computer (Fujitsu) to consumer electronics (Sony) companies have video conferencing gear ready to roll. The Japanese will be fierce competitors to Compression Labs and Picture Tel in the low-end video conferencing marketplace worldwide.

NETWORKED VR AND MULTIMEDIA

Japanese firms love the notion of “networked virtual reality.” The research arms of Sony, NTT, Hitachi and Fujitsu are all spending substantial sums investigating the area, because networked VR promises to provide a different kind of immersive and interactive experience for work and play.

Networked VR will be graphical and visually rich — an environment the Japanese are comfortable with, and where they are not much behind the U.S. in programming skill. But do not expect to see even prototypes for a year or more, followed by advanced input devices based on gesture recognition, high-resolution “worlds” on affordable machines, and networked multiuser commercial applications in such areas as design.

Multimedia means CD-ROM. In Japan, multimedia still means CD-ROM titles for Fujitsu’s FM-Towns or Sony players. We met with the executive directors of Japan’s Electronic Publishing and Interactive Multimedia associations, as well as with the manager of new media for the advertising giant Dentsu. All bemoan the primitive Japanese distribution channels for any new media.

Of much greater interest to them was Sega’s venture with TCI and Time Warner for a Sega channel. This was very big news in Tokyo. It was the front page banner headline in Nikkei, the equivalent of our Wall Street Journal (banner means 2.5 inches, two columns!).

Shingo Minato, manager of the new electronics media division of Dentsu, leans over the dinner table and asks solemnly, “What is the strategy here? It cannot just be downloading.” When I mentioned the purported upcoming announcement of the Sega 32-bit RISC machine for $400 at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show, which would allow much higher graphic performance and upstream multiuser interactivity, there was much nodding.

“We are familiar with Sega’s ‘Saturn’ [code name for Sega's 32-bit RISC machine] and it would be quite useful in such a setting," one said. I noted that such a box could probably be modified to be the set-top interface box for interactive television in general, to compete with the likes of General Instruments/Intel/Microsoft or 3DO boxes. It appears unlikely that Sega would get many system operators to purchase its box in the U.S., but the rapidly growing cable markets of Asia would be a natural fit.

32-bit RISC is coming. It was generally known in multimedia circles in Japan that Sega was perhaps only the first to have such a 32-bit RISC box with full-motion video well under way. NEC has such a project under way, as well as Fujitsu and, of course, Sony. All seemed prepared to announce products if it looked as if there were likely to be any sort of market.

They were amazed to hear that the Silicon Graphics Inc. set-top decoder box that Time Warner is apparently evaluating -- as SGI chairman Jim Clark outlined a year ago in Digital Media, another big story in Japan -- was able to perform hundreds of millions of instructions per second and had billions of bits of communications capability. This was orders of magnitude more capability than anyone conceived possible for consumer products in this century. They just shook their heads as I outlined what I remembered from the Digital Media story (see Vol. 2, No. 1, "Silicon Graphics Tastes the Future").

3DO JAPANESE DEVELOPER CONFERENCE

In the midst of all the commotion about Sega and Silicon Graphics, 3DO held its first Japanese developer conference in Tokyo. I spoke with six or so of the participants.

They were all quite aware what 3DO had been demonstrating in the U.S., and expressed some disappointment that little -- or any -- more was shown to potential Japanese developers in the way of real titles or authoring tools, by either 3DO or Matsushita. Matsushita is a hardware company, so it was a bit unfair to expect it to have much to say about such issues.

On the other hand, everyone I spoke with was quite excited about what 3DO was attempting to put together. Since it really did not cost anything to become a software licensee, most planned to sign the licensing agreement that requires a $3-per-disc payment for all titles. Significantly fewer were going to put down the $9,000 or so to purchase the development kit required actually to build titles. A real wait-and-see attitude was prevalent.

Tom Hargadon