> I need an article to explain why the Japanese clean up for others.
In very broad terms, the culture in Japan is very much "I take care of you, and you take care of me". Sure, it doesn't work the same way abroad, but by the time a Japanese person travels abroad it's already ingrained at a subconscious level.
Source: lived in Japan for 3 years, have a Japan-educated grandmother.
While I agree with your general assessment, I want to point out that it cannot be concluded from your example: in Russia (at least when I was in elementary/high school in the 90s), children clean the classroom in much the same way as in Japan (scrub the floors etc), very hands-on. Yet Russia is pretty much opposite Japan in littering on the streets.
Could you name a country, where the majority of college-educated population is unlikely to feel comfortable speaking or reading English, where there has been many successful startups?
I'm trying to see whether my hypothesis that "country with successful startups" correlates with "country where the potential startup demographic is likely to be exposed to Silicon Valley ideas" holds up.
Whitney's is the most precise account of problems minorities (women among them) face in technology, starting with "Anger does not accurately describe my true feelings, and so I don’t feel angry.". Thank you for providing a good template for speaking about the issue.
I've even been a bit shaken by how accurate she can describe the typical every-day experiences:
"You’ve met a lot of great people, and you have a lot of friends that you like to work with. Sometimes you don’t feel lonely or like a novelty, like when you’re sitting around the lunch table, cracking jokes with your coworkers. You feel happy and included. But when one of your coworkers makes a joke that is crude, even though it doesn’t offend you at all and you haven’t even had time to laugh, he turns to you and apologizes, because you are the only woman at the table and your delicate sensibilities must have been affronted. (...)
After that, when you meet new people in the game industry, sometimes you go out of your way to swear or say something off-color as quickly as possible, so your new male acquaintances will feel comfortable and won’t feel the need to walk on eggshells. You feel unnatural."
(I had to resort to this strategy a number of times. It didn't seem to work).
Interestingly enough, I never had this problems in Germany (where I'm originally from, and where I graduated university while working part-time as a developer). Hanging out with your typical geeks in high school and then university, the only attitude towards me was joy at finding one more person who shared their interests. I like the way John Scalzi put it:
"Many people believe geekdom is defined by a love of a thing, but I think — and my experience of geekdom bears on this thinking — that the true sign of a geek is a delight in sharing a thing. It’s the major difference between a geek and a hipster, you know: When a hipster sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “Oh, crap, now the wrong people like the thing I love.” When a geek sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “ZOMG YOU LOVE WHAT I LOVE COME WITH ME AND LET US LOVE IT TOGETHER.”"
(he clarifies, in a later post I think, that it is not meant to be an attack on hipster culture, but rather him using these words to describe these two different attitudes. there're "geeks" among hipsters and "hipsters" among geeks, too). It was only after I have moved to another country have I experienced the apologies for crude jokes during late-night bar outings, and the rest of it.
Nice article, thanks. I find the idea that merely describing your social connections influences/changes them to be pretty insightful, so is calling the current situation a "social version of the Uncanny Valley". His advice of waiting for the current internet landscape to organically start changing into the right direction is one way to look at it, but I do not want to wait this long. There must be a less crippled way of bringing your social life online.
Chinese kids selling their organs to buy iPads is straight out of a cyberpunk novel, as you say many things we read about 10-20 years ago are already here, but it's human nature to find the present the most boring place to be.
But as the article duly notes, -punk is about counterculture, and counterculture is timeless. And when you look at how many people still code in neon green on black background, or read those books, there still seems to be a need for these topics. The conversation is not over yet.
I'm a fan of the daydreaming induced by cyberpunk novels, although I don't understand why, since it's something we experience daily already anyway (and I can take or leave the leather coats, shades, matrix rain, and all other visual hallmarks of cyberpunk). But I think a modern cyberpunk work of fiction can be done, and I hope we will see it done someday.
Marriage does not imply "monopoly on each others sexual-ability" (unless you mean marriage in strictly christian terms, for example), this is up to the partners to decide.
In very broad terms, the culture in Japan is very much "I take care of you, and you take care of me". Sure, it doesn't work the same way abroad, but by the time a Japanese person travels abroad it's already ingrained at a subconscious level.
Source: lived in Japan for 3 years, have a Japan-educated grandmother.