William Gibson states in Pattern Recognition something to the effect that most [common household] goods sold in Japan or England are indeed manufactured there (IIRC, the example he uses is “if someone buys scissors in London, they’ll be made in England, not Taiwan”).
Is this true? I figured that the US was the main market for these cheap “foreign” goods, not the only one.
No; it’s not true. Although we do have a fairly healthy manufacturing inductry, lots of household items are imported from the the east or Europe; a randome sampling of items in my immediate vicinity:
Marker pen - Germany
Scissors - Finland
Soup spoons - Korea
Light bulb - Germany
Calendar - China
Clock - England
If I went to the trouble and was prepared to pay a premium, I’m sure I could buy British for just about any regular household item; most people don’t, or can’t afford to, so there’s a very international mix of items in most homes.
Continuing the list
Camera - China
Stuffed toy (don’t ask) - China
Mouse - China
In fact, there’s an ongoing embarassment for the EU, who slapped a protectionist quota on imports of clothing from China, which was somehow supposed to be a boost to non-existent European manufacturers. Instead, it’s just led to shortages of supply. http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-09-06T180920Z_01_EIC665300_RTRUKOC_0_UK-TRADE-EU-CHINA.xml
I read the OP last night just before retiring to my Chinese (really!) bed and expected to see a lot more replies this morning.
Looking around my home office I can see…
[ul]
[li]Bookcase; Italy[/li][li]Pachinko machine; Japan[/li][li]Juke Box; USA[/li][li]Panasonic Phone; Malaysia[/li][li]Swivel Chair; Sweden[/li][li]Canon Digital Camera; China[/li][li]Fujitsu Siemens PC; Germany[/li][li]Hole Punch; Spain[/li][li]Scotch Tape Dispenser; France[/li][li]Paper Shredder; China[/li][li]Coffee Mug; England 
[/li][li]GPS thingy; Thailand[/li][/ul] Well, you get the picture.
I just flipped over my office fan and checked : China.
Damn, my Sharp (Japanese brand) calculator : China
Zebra (Japanese brand) pen : China
Sanyo (Japanese brand) CD player : China
Plus (Japanese brand) scissors : Stainless steel (country unknown)
clock (Japanese brand) : Taiwan
Casio (Japanese brand) Exilim digital camera : JAPAN!!!
Casio digital camera recharger : China
This is kind of fun. I have no idea where he came up with that statement, but it’s dated. Up to a few years ago, “Made in China” was a kiss of death. Now, whole industries are moving there.
Chairman Pow writes:
> William Gibson states in Pattern Recognition something to the effect that most
> [common household] goods sold in Japan or England are indeed manufactured
> there (IIRC, the example he uses is “if someone buys scissors in London, they’ll
> be made in England, not Taiwan”).
Could you give us the precise quotation and where it’s located in the book (i.e., chapter and how far into the chapter)?
Could it be that this book is about 20 years out of date?
Really. I daresay the copyright date would be more useful than a page number in this case.
A quick check on Amazon shows the copyright date to be 2003.
Well he is still 20 years out of date with his views.
That’s quite a bra-haha you’re in then.
I think his dedication was 2002, but copyright is 2003 (soon to be a Peter Weir film!). Not that dates him much more.
Page 105-6:
“I see what you mean, but I dont’ think it’s going to be that way much longer. Not if the world’s Bigends keep at it: no borders, pretty soon there’s no mirror to be on the other side of. Not in terms of the bits and pieces anyway.” His eyes meet hers.
Whoops. I suppose “was” is the operative word.
A few newspapers here have tried for puns on ‘Boxer Rebellion’, but struggled. “Bra wars” has sadly become the almost-uniform title for the whole episode.
I actually like “Boxer Rebellion” better, no pun even needed. But I can see the problem.
The above groaner is original to me so far as I know — although, the sopping wet blanket of life experience has shown repeatedly that pretty much every thought I’ve ever had has been duplicated, a million-fold, in the minds of other people.
What this means is, the royalty fees for using my pun (henceforth known as “the Pun”) in public forums is going to be quite high I’m afraid, up until I get the first few cease & desist letters. I have to get me some while the gettin’ is good, you understand.
Seriously though, if you can get The London Times to use bra-haha in a headline, I’ll buy you a beer. Or even a bra, if you’re going to insist on it. (However, if you break into their file servers to achieve this, I don’t want to know about it.)
Pattern Recognition is a fictional book, so it’s hardly fair to lambast Gibson for something that his characters say. Having read some of Gibson’s magazine columns, it’s clear that he’s quite aware that a lot of what his characters say about Japan (for instance) ain’t true.
As there is no such paper as The London Times you’re on a save bet over that beer !
Wouldn’t surprise me if The Times had already made a few puns out of it. Although this is the best I’ve seen so far.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/09/01/textile.fallout.reut/
Ooooo! Yesssssss. A beautiful, evil pun. Why can’t I be that evil?
(And apologies for calling it “The London Times” when it’s really just “The Times”.)