ABSTRACT
Introduction Given the fact that Japan will face an ageing society and labour shortages in the near future, argumentation about its future agenda is basically confined to the socalled ‘cyclists’, that is, believers in the cyclical rise and fall of a nation. It is in this connection that technology becomes an important issue in Japan’s future agenda setting. Technology raises a nation but, paradoxically, it also ruins a nation. Technology increases the wealth of a nation through economic realization. Technology thus plays a part in the rise of a nation. This is nothing more than conventional wisdom. Unconventional, however, is the fact that it often triggers the decline of a nation. The reason is fourfold.
