Society and Computer — Shin-Denshi Rikkoku

Shin-Denshi Rikkoku (Society and Computer) is a Japanese documentary from 1995 showing how automation influenced the sewing industry in Japan.

There are many parallels we can trace with the revolution that happened in the Japanese sewing industry and what is happening in many fields, from civil construction and mining to Synthetic Biology, ≜ Automation.

tip: Auto-translate subtitles to English 🤗 !

What I learned

[I] Spreadsheets

• Industries love spreadsheets because it parametrizes (reduces to a finite number of variables) a given process. In this case, a sewing step.

• Work can be organized in parts. This is the first step into efficient industrialization. 🔧
• After you simplify a process by a given number of key variables, with relationships defined by clear equations, you can automate computation.
• Work can be decentralized. Instead of spending hours doing math, you can just type in your input variables and let the computer crunch the numbers for you. That’s why we made them 🤓!
• In reality, they probably used something VisiCalc (the OG spreadsheet app). Even today excel

“Excel Sells” —by Me, 2020.