Open source, collectivism, and Japanese society

Abstract

This paper is about collectivism in the Network Society. Many\ud researches about the Network Society evaluate collectivism, citing Japanese\ud culture and Hacker culture as good models of such collectivism. However, some\ud researchers, such as K. Abe in his analysis of “Seken,” criticize Japanese\ud collectivism. Abe’s study pointed out the negative effect of Japanese collectivism\ud on scientific progress. This paper will criticize Abe’s study and offer a new model\ud for evaluating collectivism, which has previously been evaluated in earlier studies\ud about the Network Society. First this paper introduces the previous studies and\ud considers a model of communication in the Network Society. Then this paper\ud considers the results of a survey of Japanese engineers in order to test the validity\ud and shortcomings of this model