Internship Report, 8/12/95

Last week work continued much as it always has done, except that I have finally moved on to a new stage in my project. You may recall that my assignment is to create a multimedia company information system in World Wide Web (WWW) format, so that it could be accessed by all sorts of interested people when the company finally has internet access. I conceived the idea of a "virtual tour" in which guests can guide themselves around the company's facilities via a 3-D interface. My jichou liked the idea and asked me to make a prototype. This prototype is nearly complete. It took a lot more time than I anticipated, and I have had to put in quite a bit of overtime.

We had our last seminar at Softopia on Wednesday. Actually, it wasn't at Softopia, but at the construction site of the new Softopia center. Several hours of dry lecture (about how great the new building will be when it is completed) were concluded by a tour of the first few floors of the building. About the only thing I learned from this particular kengaku were how life-saving hard hats are for tall gaijins crawling through narrow access shafts.

However, during one of the lectures about the purpose of Softopia, I was surprised to learn that there will be a "Multimedia College." Japanese companies are really hopping on the multimedia bandwagon. They are certainly giving it more marketing attention than American companies. If Americans ever start liking multimedia as much as the Japanese do, then the Japanese may already have a corner on the American market. However, it's still a relief to know that all the technology for it is still coming out of America. I speculate that this is because the Japanese work-as-a-group mentality is fundamentally contrary to progress in software technology.