Madplanet

Urban Dirt: The New Silk Road - or Why I Went to Yiwu

Japan: A spent technological force?

You can tell what I thought of this piece from the comment I left.

I didn’t get into a full dissection of the issues and I don’t intend to here, either; it would take all day. But this is journalism as self-fulfilling prophecy and space filler; the “Some Sweeping Generalizations on Japan’s Doomedness” piece is as much a staple as the “how much is Facebook worth?” or “when will Twitter stop claiming that the dog ate its homework and hand in a revenue model?” articles these days.

Speculating about secular trends on the basis of extraordinary data is close to pointless, but when things abruptly become worse there is a natural tendency to question whether they will continue in the same direction. Ultimately, though, it’s a species of jaw-flapping that would best be kept in the pub. Adding to the volume of bootless speculation already in print doesn’t really help.