Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

First my little story/rant.  I had a package from the post office I had to pick up and after messing around with this little guy at the Akasaka branch, I came home to look for my package.  My apartment complex (or Mansion for those of you who don't know better) is one of these "high tech" kinda flashy places in Tokyo.  You know, autolocking front door, intercom speaker for the guy at the door downstairs, electronic locker to really annoy people like me.

Yes, that locker PISSED me off!

The guy gave me an almost unreadable piece of paper instructing me which locker to look for and the number to look at.  Great, so when I tried using that number to open the lock.  *DING!*  No go!  I tried several more times in futility, only realizing that I ended up locking myself out (fortunately, the failed attempts thing resets, otherwise I'd have to wait until the little manager dude gets up in the morning).   I didn't even realize that you had a little code to go with that thing.  So I got a bit consternated knowing that trying to locate the code in my messed up apartment would be nearly impossible.  Fortunately, all my information is pretty housed in this folder in my closet so I wasn't as screwed as I had thought.

Overall though, the fact that this annoyed the hell out of me gave natural rise to a great idea (which is where all my great ideas come from).  First, I think it's absolutely idiotic for these real estate agencies to hand people a booklet and expect them to remember all these details about things like fire insurance, locker combos, etc.  We're talking about PAPER!  In 2008!  Japan always talks a great story about conservation, but they waste so many trees with their love of packaging, documents and other tree detrimental artifacts.

So instead, why not have something like an online profile containing all of your information?

It makes far more sense to store this information in an organized manner online.  It'll eliminate the need for space consumption (these folders are HUGE at times) and there will be little confusion as to where to find your information, compared to having to scrounge through folders, boxes and cabinets of junk.  And for these real estate agents who need to maintain their info on their users, it makes plenty of sense.  I mean, I'm certain many of these agents are not computer savvy and probably end up storing boatloads of documents in non-portable Excel and Word files. 

Naturally, people living here would probably find my ideas both great and ludicrous for logistics reasons.  One, if all your information is stored online then the rising concerns would be privacy, initial accessibility (as being able to retrieve it prior to moving into your new place; I mean, you will be in transit at that point), and older people who probably thought turning on a computer meant sticking their finger in a light socket.  The way I address each issue is the following:

1. Privacy concerns.  Any online application ought to be secure.  So if there was a trustworthy system established that has good security and was proven to be near unhackable, then this should not be a problem.  If a person can access their bank account information online and even perform transactions, then housing should not be an issue either.
2. Initial accessibility.  In other words, what happens when you don't have access to a computer to grab that information?  Well, in my theory, each mansion setup to handle this type of system would have a kiosk installed onsite to specifically handle incidents at any time of the day.  Additionally, the system would have mobile access.  This will provide multiple ways of being able to access your account information.
3. Old people.  Well, to be honest, many of the places that have sophisticated home systems are sprouting up in the major urban areas, places where young kids and hot business people are residing.  I see the old people in Japan as a residual that needs to move on and allow progress to happen at a more rapid pace.  In other words, either they figure out how to use such a system or simply not live at those places.

Now, to resolve the last part about that crappy locker, well, I think they should simply supplied some USB key containing an encrypted code.  My stupid apartment complex has two keys.  One for my door and the lobby entrance and one for this crummy locker that has enough room for a single suitcase.  Why not consolidate them into one electronic key?  You always forge keys so that itself is a potential security violation.  But the chances for replicating an electronic key for a specific complex would, in my opinion, be a hundred times more difficult.  Also, the USB key would allow access to the kiosk machine so you might not even need a username/password combination to try to access your information.