Tech is part of everyone's life in Japan, but doesn't appear to have supplanted their livelihood.
One paradox in Japan is that despite being a high-tech country, there's very little unemployment. Just 3.5 per cent according to official statistics in fact. Clearly, machines haven't taken over, not yet at least.
Lots of people are hired to do small services everywhere. There are the old men lit up like Christmas trees who work as guards at building sites, which have noise metres installed that show everyone the deciBel levels - Tokyo is nice and quiet, and they want to keep it that way.
Every block has a Koban with one or more police officers, there's always someone to ask at any hour in the Tokyo Metro, which is laden with electronic information screens, advertising displays and LTE access. Every single person in Tokyo appears to have a smartphone, and have become experts at walking around with them without bumping into objects and other people.
Tech is part of everyone's life in Japan, but doesn't appear to have supplanted their livelihood, even for menial tasks.
There are some areas that appear to be ridiculously inefficient, like banking. I spent 45 minutes exchanging money in central Tokyo for instance.
The process involved going into the bank, explaining to a helpful person on the floor what I wanted and given forms to fill in. With the forms filled in, I was given a queue ticket (there was hardly anyone in the bank), for a specific counter.
At the counter, the clerk took my form, the foreign currency and gave it to other clerks behind her - and gave me another numbered ticket and told me to wait. Meanwhile, I was surrounded by screens, machines, all sorts of tech, but banking in Japan's not done that way.
People still have account passbooks and hand over cash and cheques, and boy, does it take a long time to do basic stuff with heaps of people involved.
I couldn't remember the exact address of my apartment and that totally threw the bank staff. Five of them hopped onto Google Maps for about half an hour to work out where I was staying (no easy feat in Tokyo where smaller streets aren't named) and I was waving my iPhone at them to show where it was with little success.
In the end I walked out of the bank with Japanese yen, after politely thanking everyone for their effort. The irony of such a painfully manual transaction while surrounded by automation was striking though.
What's more, I think I got off lightly: some days after, I bumped into some Norwegian travellers who had gone through a similar experience, but emerged cashless as the banks they'd been to didn't recognise the Norske Kroner currency.
Smartphones are to some extent a competitive threat to car makers. Buyers no longer need to tick those expensive entertainment and navigation system options at the car dealership when they have Apple or Android devices and a data plan from a telco.
Add some apps to that which cater for a driver ecosystem with say, service station loyalty schemes, advertising, special offers and more, and you can see why connected mobile devices are a worry for car makers.
BMW is trying to put the brakes on that threat by putting a SIM module into their cars that provides service without monthly bills for three years when you buy a new set of wheels from the German maker.
I was lent a 2014 X3 30d for a week, which is one of the nicest cars I've driven - and so it should be, as it costs $110,000 in the configuration my car came in, with the ConnectedDrive err, connectivity.
If you're curious about the car itself, all the automotive tech works beautifully. There's a twin-turbo three litre diesel engine with 260hp and a huge 560Nm of torque that's smooth and silent and which provides more than enough performance for New Zealand roads.
This is mated to an eight-speed Steptronic gear box and Xdrive four-wheel drive, with four different modes ranging from super economy with a fuel miser guide, to the Sport+ one for tyre chirping and hooning around.
Leaving it in the default Comfort mode in which the engine switches off at lights is a bit weird at first, but you soon stop thinking about it. Performance is great in Comfort mode and thanks to the frugal diesel engine, you're looking at a range of over 1000 kilometres with normal driving.
One tech feature that I really liked, and which BMW told me is a decade old already, is the heads-up display in the windscreen. This is brilliant for using the accurate navigation system as you can keep your eyes on the road, yet see directions.
Back to the ConnectedDrive stuff, it works pretty much as BMW said. You can get emails, and messages on the colour LCD and ConnectedDrive knows your location when required, like in an emergency situation.
BMW said if you have an accident, the system can tell that, and will automatically dial up an emergency operator in the Philippines to check if you're OK. If not, they'll get the local emergency services around, with GPS provided coordinates for your location.
Being an investigative tech journalist, I drove the 30d into a wall to test the response time of the automatic emergency service.
It was a bit difficult to speak with my face full of airbags, but the emergency operator responded in 10 to 15 seconds, which is good. (All right, I made up that bit about crashing the car - there's an SOS button in the ceiling that I was allowed to press to test the service.)
There's even a Concierge which dials up a call centre also in the Philippines where some wonderfully helpful and polite people look up things for you, and either tell you where to go or send a message with the search results.
I did feel a bit awkward using the service though, especially after an American friend who went for a drive with me said: "hey! it comes with a help desk in the Philippines".
The Internet access in 30d is... slow. I believe ConnectedDrive uses Vodafone's 3G network, but it connects via a proxy server in Germany which means enormous latency thanks to the distance from New Zealand. Handy in some situations when nothing else is available, but otherwise, the Internet access in ConnectedDrive isn't terribly useful.
In terms of privacy, ConnectedDrive is similar to driving around with a cellphone in your car. It doesn't actively transmit location data, but this can still be triangulated through cellphone towers that the car connects to. Since you can't switch off ConnectedDrive, a 30d is probably not the car Edward Snowden would pick.
As for security, I'm still waiting to hear from BMW if the ConnectedDrive network is "airgapped" or physically separate from the car's control systems. Don't know about you, but the Internet of Things is not secure so I'd rather not having anyone tamper with the car's engine or brakes over the network, thankyouverymuchly.
BMW is still developing ConnectedDrive as a concept, and is building smartphone apps for the service. I asked if there was an app for business users that would provide things like trip logging with fuel consumption and mileage and similar data which could be transmitted to your accounting package for instance.
There isn't, which is surprising - BMW told me that's a great idea, however, so I might send in an invoice to the Bavarians for consulting.
Overall, I'm not sure how much ConnectedDrive adds to the excellent driving experience of the X3 30d at this stage, but it does provide an interesting glimpse into what'll happen over the next few years.
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