[gacba]

My favorite quote in that article:

I found an interesting culture full of contradictions and struggling to combine its past with its future and desperately wanted to learn about them. Don saw an SUV and thought he knew some shit.

True, considering' Zed's experience (1.5 years as soldier stationed there, spending lots of time integrating and studying the culture.

[cdavid]

OTOH, I have lived for more than 6 years in Japan, which also have a culture of having things which look complex, and I think the OP is closer to what I have seen than Zed Shaw on that particular aspect.

I still don't understand why, but Japanese in general love that everything is written on magazines and advertisements, that UI are mind-blowing complex. In general, slides with as much stuff crammed into it are well regarded as well - academic conferences in Japan were scary in that aspect, compared to more internal ones. That's where Zed has a point I think, that is it is not that the culture value complexity as much as valuing a lot of data and information.

If you want to get scared, look into the big EC shops in Japan (e.g. rakuten: http://www.rakuten.co.jp/). I find it almost offensive. The main page also gives a good feeling of what it is like to be inside the subway in a big Japanese city during rush hours - you have advertisements in every location which is not occupied by human flesh.

On a side note, while the snarky comment of Zed Shaw is well, snarky, I would note than Don Norman used to teach 2 months/year in Korea, so he most likely did more than buy a SUV from there.