Friday, June 10, 2011

Efficiency and System

Mainichi Online kindly published a Japanese translated full text of the 2011 International Catalunya Prize speech delivered by Haruki Murakami in Barcelona, Spain. Though I tried to find an English original full text of the speech, the original one seems to be protected under some licenses.

In his speech, he concentrated on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear accident, and criticized “Efficiency” penetrating our Japanese society as a crucial origin of this nuclear accident.

I remembered another speech delivered by Haruki Murakami in Jerusalem, Israel in 2009. In this speech, he criticized a battle occurring in Gaza at that time, and generalized a root of the battle, and arrived at a metaphor “Egg and Wall”. Egg is individuals, and Wall is “System”. According to the speech, the Egg is always confronting the Wall called System.

I am an engineer, and one of the fundamental missions of engineers is to improve “Efficiency”, and other one is to establish “System”. “Efficiency” and “System” are always in my head. Inefficient events or disorganized structures imply potential needs or potential clients.

Efficiency should be improved and systematic management should be also introduced in our society. However, we should also consider a factor called timescale together with efficiency and system.

Nuclear power generation is indeed highly efficient compared with solar power or wind power generation if we focus on a short timescale. With respect to a much longer timescale, say 100 years or 1,000 years, nuclear power generation must be inefficient. Over this longer timescale, nuclear power plant accidents may occur. Once a nuclear power plant accident like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accidents occurs, the nuclear power plant happens not to be under our control. From this point – a longer timescale, nuclear power generation is not efficient and not systematic one.

--from here, wrote on June 12---
I made a mistake.
Haruki Murakami made the speech in Japanese.
Youtube contains a broadcast of the speech.

Since he made the last presentation in English in Israel and I feel that his writing style is influenced by English cultures, I thought that he had made the speech in English in Spain as well.

I think that Haruki Murakami wanted as many as Japanese to listen his speech, thus, he decided to deliver it in Japanese.

--until here, wrote on June 12---

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