Robot revolution stymied by defective consumers

[james_davis_nicoll]

Current cohort of elderly Japanese don't want robots.

Of course, the people who will make up the elderly by the mid-point of the century aren't the current cohort of elderly, who presumably were young back in the 20s or 30s. Arbitrarily defining "elderly" as 70, the 2050 elderly will be about 20 now and I wonder what that group thinks of robots.

nicked from sclerotic_rings

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Japanese fertility is rockbottom due to screwed up gender politics / sociology. Basically, due to "conservative" social norms women can have carrers, but mothers cant - once you have childern there is a stong expectation that you should dedicate heart and soul to sacred motherhood, while men are still expected to dedicate same to the company when fathers. and since japanese women arent stupid, they say screw that and stay single, or at least childless, in really large numbers, as being an office lady may not be the most satisfactory life possible, but it beats being a housewife.
The only robot solutions to that problem is the robot citizen (it pays taxes, and can be raised in a foundry!) or the robot nanny. both of which require full AI..

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I'm not disagreeing, but Japan is far from the only country to experience a sharp drop in its fertility rate, which perhaps makes Japan-centric cultural explanations a little too specific. There's little expectation of sacred motherhood or a life of corporate dedication in modern Italy or Spain, which have fertility rates even lower than Japan. And some places which did level off have rebounded, like Denmark, where the (enormous) perambulators are crowding out the bicycles from the local trains.

If I had to guess, watching Japanese culture from afar, I'd expect a rash of panicky late-30something women trying desperately to have kids, and getting very angry with the status quo of gender relations in the process. The artificial conservatism of postwar Japan is, after all, artificial.

(Curious factoid: current projections for Filipino TFR aren't expected to fall below replacement level. Period. Even professional Filipina women, when polled, express the desire to have closer to three kids than to two -- and they do. And it's a country that takes motherhood very seriously.)