India’s Aadhaar Has Put “Japan far behind the technology curve” Says Japan’s ‘Father of Internet’ Jun Murai
By Indian governments implementation of Aadhaar and India Stack few years ago has left behind Japan’s technology curve says Japan’s very own ‘Father of Internet,’ Jun Murai.
Murai who is a Japanese technocrat says, “We were far behind after the Indian deployment of Aadhaar and India stack, especially because we didn’t have the numbers,” while on a video call at India Japan Science Technology Innovation Forum taking place in Bengaluru at the Indian Institute of Science.
Professor Murai, also known as ‘Internet Samurai’ said that Japan has been closely following India Stack and technology advancements by other countries to rearrange its IT strategies. He said, “It is called the Japan digital Garden City initiative and it covers the entire nation of Japan and not only centralized big cities like Tokyo and Osaka.”
Adding further he says,“We are doing what India has done much ahead of time in terms of facilitating small towns and villages with internet net access.” During the three pandemic years, Murai said that the internet and broadband implementation was accelerated, which led to fast growth in tech adoption in the world, especially in Japan.
He said that in the year 2000 the internet was only accessible to 6% of people in the world but at present 70% of people around the globe have access to the internet when talking about the speed of internet adaptation and its boom in the world.
He says, “In the last two decades, internet availability and adoption have rapidly grown, as the internet and connectivity have become the core energy and core environment for all activities. However, the acceleration brought by the pandemic changed the pace all together.”
Murai explains that while at past energy or electricity was the only critical infrastructure in the world but at present internet and digital technologies have become equally important along with energy, water, food supply chain and transportation.
According to Murai,“In Ukraine we found that electricity is key for digital infrastructure. Energy and communication must exist together to realize what we might today consider as “core infrastructure” which are digital data, computers and networks. As humanity progress in the world with their creativity and ingenuity they would need various tools and devices supported with digital infrastructure, he stressed. Adding,“Today, almost everybody is equipped with a supercomputer called a smartphone and everyone is connected and they have a lot of computing power attached to their body.” He was hopeful about different innovations in education, health and sustainability sector in the upcoming years.
