
Minister in Charge of Japan’s Cybersecurity Says He Has Never Used a Computer - riotta
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/world/asia/japan-cybersecurity-yoshitaka-sakurada.html
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dusted
That's the difference between a technocracy and a democracy. If one were to
draw a Venn diagram of people who are technically competent (in the field,
whatever it may be) and people who are likely to be elected (due to multiple
factors, such as interests, "likeability", format of public discorse, the
ignorance of the population, etc, etc, etc) one would have no intersection.

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marsrover
I feel like I’ve seen an article about how Japanese people in general don’t
really use computers but all I could find was this Reddit thread:
[https://reddit.com/r/japan/comments/4kpeac/why_is_it_unusual...](https://reddit.com/r/japan/comments/4kpeac/why_is_it_unusual_for_japanese_people_to_use/)

Associated article:
[https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2016-05-23/.10240...](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2016-05-23/.102406#pcQmuVmrZDauDiDz.16)

> According to a 2015 study by the Japanese Cabinet Office, only 30% of
> Japanese high schoolers use laptops, and only 16% use desktop computers. (In
> the US, 98% of our teenagers use one or the other, with similar numbers out
> of the UK.)

Edit: those are comments on an article. Not the article I was looking for
though.

Edit: excuse my incoherentness, I’m tired this morning.

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jrockway
This shows up every few months and never generates much discussion.

Political appointments don't seem to be based entirely on subject matter
expertise. So it goes.

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Blackstone4
One has to wonder how he was selected? I wonder what the Japanese people think
of this.

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pvaldes
The message told is "I'm unreachable via computer by hackers, so don't even
try". If the message is true or not, or "something in between" is another
question. I had seen other politicians do the same thing before.

Nobody would expect an expert in cybersecurity exposing details on internet
that would help to find his personal machine. That would be really naive.

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malms
I think there's definitely something to be impressed from a "human"
perspective by from someone able to reach that high without the help of
technology. It's the same with Trump or Putin

