this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
90 points (97.9% liked)

Technology

82992 readers
3175 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] otter@lemmy.ca 4 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Both factors are related, I couldn't find the article I was looking for but this one touches on it too. There's a section for cell phones specifically

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_syndrome

The term "Galápagos syndrome" was originally coined to refer to Japanese 3G mobile phones, which had developed a large number of specialized features that were widely adopted in the Japanese market, but were unsuccessful abroad.[6][7] While the original usage of the term was to describe highly advanced phones that were incompatible outside of Japanese networks, as the mobile phone industry underwent drastic changes globally, the term was used to emphasize the associated anxiety about how the development of Japanese mobile phones and those in the worldwide economy went along different paths.

When a technology advances quickly and gets adopted in the local region (ex. Japan), it can be difficult to change when other parts of the world move forward with a different standard.

The opposite can also happen, where a region is slow to change and then haphazardly moves forward when the benefits are proven elsewhere. American payment systems for example