Die digitale Herausforderung in Deutschland und Japan im Vergleich

Digitization poses new challenges for the international community at the beginning of the 21st century with new challenges, great opportunities and cross-border risks. To solve the many cross-border problems such as security, the economy, the environment, terrorism, organized crime, and the refugee crisis, close cooperation between all the countries involved is necessary. Japan is making significant efforts to deepen cooperation with other Asian countries, e.g., via the South East Asian Community (ASEAN) and Oceania and to promote regional cooperation, for example through APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Forum), ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum) and ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting). Germany, on the other hand, is primarily working within the framework of the EU, e.g. within the context of the European Stakeholder Forum "Digitising European Industry", for a digital European market and European-wide standards. There is also an annual summit meeting between Japan and the European Union. German-Japanese collaboration in the field of digitization hereby plays a unique role, such as the cooperation through the "Hanover Declaration" which was concluded during the CeBit 2017.

While Germany is focusing on "Industry 4.0", Japan wants to promote the development of the super-smart society "Society 5.0". The starting point here is the definition of problems and challenges, such as the aging of society, which are also of great importance for other industrialized countries. Another challenge is to anchor the moral, ethical and economic aspects of digitization in society. This raises questions about the society in which we want to live, the central values of a digital society, the inclusion of the population and the future of work and democracy. We want to address the psychological and societal impact of such technological developments, e. g., on cognitive, emotional, motivational and social phenomena.

By focusing on Germany (Europe) and Japan (East Asia), we intend to focus on the implications of the technological transformation from a culture-sensitive perspective and expect insights into country differences in digitalization strategies but also in differences of global spaces like Europe and East Asia.

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