Utopianism and National Competitiveness in Technology rhetoric: The Case of Japan's Information Infrastructure

Abstract

The ideologies of technological utopianism and national competitiveness are two common strands of twentieth century technology policy in developed nations. The former is the tendency to paint an unrealistic picture of schedule or benefits for a planned technological shift, while the latter is the use of a (real or imagined) advantage held by another nation as a justification for domestic policies. Both are techniques that can and have been used to sell technology policies to government, industry, and the public at large. This theoretical framework is used to analyze the emergence of the ''multimedia''/information infrastructure boomlet in Japan in the mid 1990s, and, in the context of the country's history and institutions, is used to explain the policy distortions that resulted.