Since the 1970s, the United States and Japan have found themselves in competition in a variety of industries, ranging from the basic, such as automobiles, to the advanced, such as computers. The course of development of industries in the two countries has been quite different, driven on the immediate level by very different national policies, but more fundamentally by underlying differences in their cultures.
The core focus of our concern in the following discussion is in the relationship of government technology policy with the technical and commercial development of a high-technology industry, specifically the computer industry. In the course of exploring this relationship, however, we must go far afield of the narrow specifics of policymaking. Technology policies are not formulated in a vacuum. Nor, indeed, do technologies themselves emerge in a vacuum. Neither technology nor technology arises in simple consequence of a purely objective decision-making process. Instead, technologies and technology policies are shaped by the political and cultural environment in which they take form. Therefore, to understand "technology policy," we must look less at specific policies than at the social context in which policy is formed.
In the course of this discussion, we will argue for a number of propositions regarding the role of technology policy and the culture of technological development in Japan and the United States. In Japan, we will suggest, centrally directed technology policy is comfortably accepted because it is a natural outgrowth of Japanese values and traditions. In the United States, in contrast, formal technology policy has not been so readily accepted, at least with respect to economic goals.
Central direction cuts against American values of individualism and entrepreneurship. During and after the Second World War, however, centrally-directed technology policy was accepted, though it was framed in terms of de...