"William Gib­son famous­ly observed that the future is already here, it's just not even­ly dis­trib­uted. That line is often thought to have been inspired by Japan, which was already pro­ject­ing a thor­ough­ly futur­is­tic image, at least in pop­u­lar cul­ture, by the time he made his debut with Neu­ro­mancer in 1984. But as any­one who's spent enough time in the coun­try under­stands - albeit not with­out frus­tra­tion - even twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry Japan remains in many ways a pre-dig­i­tal soci­ety."
"If they're suf­fi­cient­ly advanced, as explained in the BBC video above, they won't even have actu­al aba­cus­es; they'll just move around beads pic­tured in their heads. (It brings to mind how Dustin Hoff­man's savant in Rain Man explains his per­for­mance of seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble men­tal math: "I see it.") Such inten­sive aba­cus edu­ca­tion was com­mon across north­east Asia in the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, when the arith­metic skills it cul­ti­vat­ed were impor­tant for both indi­vid"
Japan combines a globally futuristic image with many persistent pre-digital practices such as cash-only businesses, fax communication, and hanko seals. Abacuses survive primarily as educational tools rather than everyday commercial devices, taught in private academies where children practice manual calculations. Advanced students perform calculations mentally by visualizing abacus beads, achieving rapid, visualization-based arithmetic comparable to savant performance. Intensive abacus instruction spread across northeast Asia in the mid-twentieth century to cultivate arithmetic skills valued for individual competence and practical economic tasks. Abacus training remains a distinctive blend of traditional technique and cognitive skill development.
Read at Open Culture
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