Area of Effect - Joi Ito's Web

The Live Door thing is dragging the whole Tokyo Stock Exchange down, but there is particularly high impact on IT companies. I'm sitting in a cab right now talking to the cab driver and he's now convinced that all Internet and IT companies are run by scoundrels. "I knew all of this new economy stuff was bullshit," he says. It will be interesting to see what the long term repercussions will be on our industry. On the other hand, we recovered from the Hikari Tsushin collapse so I'm sure we'll recover from this.

5 Comments

01. cam c. - Jan 24, 2006 - 11:54

Joi, give it a year or two; the Japanese tourists forgot SARS and are coming back to Canada in droves... I'm sure they'll forget this stuff in a year or two.

I do think that the Japanese government needs to re-think how they enforce these laws, though; how many people in tech companies totally unrelated to Livedoor are going to lose jobs because of what would be a relatively minor fraud issue in any other country?

02. Joi Ito - Jan 24, 2006 - 12:59

IT stocks seem to be rebounding at the moment now that they've caught the "witch"...

03. Chris_B - Jan 24, 2006 - 16:32

so sad. Livedoor isnt even an IT company to begin with.

Interesting side effect is that the TSE has used the heavy trading volumes as a way to try and deflect public attention from their overall incompetance.

As for it all blowing over, a friend from Hungary told me an interesting saying "People remember a miracle for three days".

04. Adam - Jan 25, 2006 - 21:43

I am sure the after effects are only short term and maybe it is a good thing. Hopefully this incident will make people more careful in the future.