[PHOTO] Looking east, streetcar platform, St. Clair station

Looking east on the platform for the 512 St. Clair streetcar at St. Clair station on the evening of the 30th, I saw an alignment.

[PHOTO] Looking east, streetcar platform, St. Clair station

Looking east on the platform for the 512 St. Clair streetcar at St. Clair station on the evening of the 30th, I saw an alignment.

[LINK] “Spiked: Eamonn Fingleton”

Earlier this month, an article published in the New York Times written by one Eamonn Fingleton, “The Myth of Japan’s Failure”, achieved wide circulation online. Briefly, Fingleton argued that the prevailing picture of Japan as a country stuck in a slump for the past two decades is wrong, that by many measures Japan is thriving–he cites the Japanese trade surplus, growth in life expectancy, and the increasing number of skyscrapers for instance–and that in fact Japan is a stronger country, relatively even, than before.

Spike Japan has none of that. In a very thorough fisking, that Japan blog argues that Fingleton has either cherry-picked evidence to support his case or is an incompetent commentator. For instance, on Fingleton’s report that “of the 50 cities in the world with the fastest Internet service, 38 were in Japan”.

Our first lesson is on the use and abuse of statistics. That the Japanese city with the fastest average Mbps, Shimotsuma, ranked 3rd in the world, is a small Tokyo dormitory community to which very few Japanese could point on a map, and that one of the Japanese “cities” in the top 50, Marunouchi, is not a city, nor even a ward of Tokyo, but a few blocks of office buildings clustered around Tokyo station, make it readily apparent that if you are a largish country for which Akamai has a lot of data collection points and you have a highish average connection speed, then of course you are going to dominate the city rankings. For a more truthful picture of Internet infrastructure, we need to turn to a country-level analysis.

In 2011 Q2, Japan ranked third for average connection speeds, at 8.9Mbps, behind South Korea at 13.8Mbps and Hong Kong at 10.3Mbps. Impressive, to be sure, but not quite the picture of global leadership that Fingleton insinuates it has. Indeed, the broader the metric becomes, the worse the picture looks for Japan: for high broadband connectivity (above 5Mbps), the Netherlands ranks first at 68% of all connections, Japan ranks 6th, at 55%, and the US 13th at 42%, while for good old-fashioned broadband connectivity (above 2Mbps), 10 mostly European countries have penetration rates over 90%, the US ranks 35th at 80%, and Japan is actually behind the US, coming in 39th place at 76%. What’s more, Japan’s high broadband connectivity actually fell 8.9% YoY and its broadband connectivity fell 12% YoY, while the rates of almost all other countries surged. Not all that stellar a performance at the broadest end of the spectrum, especially given how suited relatively small, very densely populated Japan is to the build-out of broadband.

Fingleton goes on at length. Is the number of skyscrapers more relevant a figure than the square footage of real estate that is being used? Can the low Japanese birth rate really be put down to a canny plan to maximize Japanese food security? Why would anyone think that the number of restaurants in Tokyo highly rated in the Michelin guide has any particular relevance to general standards of living, likewise growth in electricity use per capita?

Read the whole post. It’s a devastating, brilliant, fisking of a man whose views on Japan are almost humourously off-kilter. It’s also very good journalism.

[PHOTO] Jersey Avenue at night

Walking up Jersey Avenue, an alley north and east of Harbord and Grace, one night last week, I was struck by the cool dim silence.

[LINK] “Spiked: Eamonn Fingleton”

Earlier this month, an article published in the New York Times written by one Eamonn Fingleton, “The Myth of Japan’s Failure”, achieved wide circulation online. Briefly, Fingleton argued that the prevailing picture of Japan as a country stuck in a slump for the past two decades is wrong, that by many measures Japan is thriving–he cites the Japanese trade surplus, growth in life expectancy, and the increasing number of skyscrapers for instance–and that in fact Japan is a stronger country, relatively even, than before.

Spike Japan has none of that. In a very thorough fisking, that Japan blog argues that Fingleton has either cherry-picked evidence to support his case or is an incompetent commentator. For instance, on Fingleton’s report that “of the 50 cities in the world with the fastest Internet service, 38 were in Japan”.

Our first lesson is on the use and abuse of statistics. That the Japanese city with the fastest average Mbps, Shimotsuma, ranked 3rd in the world, is a small Tokyo dormitory community to which very few Japanese could point on a map, and that one of the Japanese “cities” in the top 50, Marunouchi, is not a city, nor even a ward of Tokyo, but a few blocks of office buildings clustered around Tokyo station, make it readily apparent that if you are a largish country for which Akamai has a lot of data collection points and you have a highish average connection speed, then of course you are going to dominate the city rankings. For a more truthful picture of Internet infrastructure, we need to turn to a country-level analysis.

In 2011 Q2, Japan ranked third for average connection speeds, at 8.9Mbps, behind South Korea at 13.8Mbps and Hong Kong at 10.3Mbps. Impressive, to be sure, but not quite the picture of global leadership that Fingleton insinuates it has. Indeed, the broader the metric becomes, the worse the picture looks for Japan: for high broadband connectivity (above 5Mbps), the Netherlands ranks first at 68% of all connections, Japan ranks 6th, at 55%, and the US 13th at 42%, while for good old-fashioned broadband connectivity (above 2Mbps), 10 mostly European countries have penetration rates over 90%, the US ranks 35th at 80%, and Japan is actually behind the US, coming in 39th place at 76%. What’s more, Japan’s high broadband connectivity actually fell 8.9% YoY and its broadband connectivity fell 12% YoY, while the rates of almost all other countries surged. Not all that stellar a performance at the broadest end of the spectrum, especially given how suited relatively small, very densely populated Japan is to the build-out of broadband.

Fingleton goes on at length. Is the number of skyscrapers more relevant a figure than the square footage of real estate that is being used? Can the low Japanese birth rate really be put down to a canny plan to maximize Japanese food security? Why would anyone think that the number of restaurants in Tokyo highly rated in the Michelin guide has any particular relevance to general standards of living, likewise growth in electricity use per capita?

Read the whole post. It’s a devastating, brilliant, fisking of a man whose views on Japan are almost humourously off-kilter. It’s also very good journalism.

[PHOTO] Jersey Avenue at night

Walking up Jersey Avenue, an alley north and east of Harbord and Grace, one night last week, I was struck by the cool dim silence.

[FORUM] Does it matter if things spoken in other languages get missed? How much?

Elaborating on a theme from my previous post, I’m curious this evening about what people think about the way things get missed because they’re communicated in language communities that are less prominent than other language communities.

Here in Canada, for instance, the predominance of English over French with the asymmetrical bilingualism that’s a consequence still means that speakers of English are rather less familiar with the culture and opinions of Canada’s speakers of French than vice versa. Things get missed. Arguably the missing of these things goes some ways towards explaining Canada’s ongoing if recently quieted existential issues.

Then again, does it really matter that much? Arguably, if speakers of English in Canada were more familiar with what was going on in French Canada, tensions could be greater. Many of the successful multilingual countries of the world–Switzerland, say–have survived with relatively little contact between language groups, each having its own secure territory and happy to cultivate its own gardens.

What say you about all this?

[H&F] “Preliminary notes on N’Ko and language communities”

I’ve a post up at History and Futility noting the challenges faced by a particular language community–the users of N’Ko script, used by the Manding languages of Africa–and wonder briefly about the effects of the marginalization of relatively disadvantaged language communities. What’s getting missed?

[FORUM] Does it matter if things spoken in other languages get missed? How much?

Elaborating on a theme from my previous post, I’m curious this evening about what people think about the way things get missed because they’re communicated in language communities that are less prominent than other language communities.

Here in Canada, for instance, the predominance of English over French with the asymmetrical bilingualism that’s a consequence still means that speakers of English are rather less familiar with the culture and opinions of Canada’s speakers of French than vice versa. Things get missed. Arguably the missing of these things goes some ways towards explaining Canada’s ongoing if recently quieted existential issues.

Then again, does it really matter that much? Arguably, if speakers of English in Canada were more familiar with what was going on in French Canada, tensions could be greater. Many of the successful multilingual countries of the world–Switzerland, say–have survived with relatively little contact between language groups, each having its own secure territory and happy to cultivate its own gardens.

What say you about all this?

[H&F] “Preliminary notes on N’Ko and language communities”

I’ve a post up at History and Futility noting the challenges faced by a particular language community–the users of N’Ko script, used by the Manding languages of Africa–and wonder briefly about the effects of the marginalization of relatively disadvantaged language communities. What’s getting missed?