Posts Tagged: culture

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2
Mar 09

Not big in Japan

“And then there’s the matter of compartmentalization. A large portion of Japanese citizens live with only a cellphone as their computing device — not a personal computer, said Hideshi Hamaguchi, a concept creator and chief operating officer of LUNARR. And the problem with the iPhone is it depends on a computer for syncing media and running software updates via iTunes.”

Link: Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone (wired.com)

Update: Nobuyuki Hayashi argues he was misquoted in the article (thanks Bruce)

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6
Jun 08

Complexity in Japanese Phones

“Indeed, Japanese handsets have become prime examples of feature creep gone mad. In many cases, phones in Japan are far too complex for users to master. “There are tons of buttons, and different combinations or lengths of time yield different results,’” says Koh Aoki, an engineer who lives in Tokyo. “Experimenting with different key combinations in search of new features is “good for killing time during a long commute,” Aoki says, “but it’s definitely not elegant.”

Link: In Japan, Cellphones Have Become Too Complex to Use (wired.com, thanks Dano)

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31
May 08

Mobile Technology and Society Book

The recently published Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies looks like it has a lot of interesting pieces in it.

Digital Divides and Social Mobility

  • The Mobile Makes Its Mark – Lara Srivastava
  • Shrinking Fourth World? Mobiles, Development, and Inclusion – Jonathan Donner
  • Mobile Traders and Mobile Phones in Ghana – Ragnhild Overå
  • Mobile Networks: Migrant Workers in Southern China – Pui-lam Law and Yinni Peng
  • Mobile Communication in Mexico: Policy and Popular Dimensions – Judith Mariscal and Carla Marisa Bonina
  • Reducing Illiteracy as a Barrier to Mobile Communication – Jan Chipchase
  • Health Services and Mobiles: A Case from Egypt – Patricia Mechael
  • How the Urban Poor Acquire and Give Meaning to the Mobile Phone – Lourdes M. Portus

    Sociality and Co-presence

  • Always-On/Always-On-You: The Tethered Self – Sherry Turkle
  • The Mobile Phone’s Ring – Christian Licoppe
  • Mobile Technology and the Body: Apparatgeist, Fashion, and Function – Scott Campbell
  • The Mediation of Ritual Interaction via the Mobile Telephone – Rich Ling
  • Adjusting the Volume: Technology and Multitasking in Discourse Control – Naomi S. Baron
  • Maintaining Co-presence: Tourists and Mobile Communication in New Zealand – Peter B. White and Naomi Rosh White
  • The Social Effects of Keitai and Personal Computer E-mail in Japan – Kakuko Miyata, Jeffrey Boase and Barry Wellman

    Politics and Social Change

  • Mobile Media and Political Collective Action – Howard Rheingold
  • Mobile Multimedia: Uses and Social Consequences – Ilpo Koskinen
  • Mobile Communication and Sociopolitical Change in the Arab World – Mohammad Ibahrine
  • Locating the Missing Links of Mobile Communication in Japan: Sociocultural Influences on Usage by Children and the Elderly – On-Kwok Lai
  • The Effects of Mobile Telephony on Singaporean Society – Shahiraa Sahul Hameed
  • Mobile Communication and the Transformation of the Democratic Process – Kenneth Gergen

    Culture and Imagination

  • Cultural Differences in Communication Technology Use: Adolescent Jews and Arabs in Israel – Gustavo Mesch and Ilan Talmud
  • “Express Yourself” and “Stay Together”: The Middle-Class Indian Family – Jonathan Donner, Nimmi Rangaswamy, Molly Wright Steenson and Carolyn Y. Wei
  • Nondevelopmental Uses of Mobile Communication in Tanzania – Thomas Molony
  • Cultural Studies of Mobile Communication – Gerard Goggin
  • Mobile Music as Environmental Control and Prosocial Entertainment – James E. Katz, Katie M. Lever and Yi-Fan Chen
  • Supernatural Mobile Communication in the Philippines and Indonesia – Bart Barendregt and Raul Pertierra
  • Boom in India: Mobile Media and Social Consequences – Madanmohan Rao and Mira Desai
  • Mobile Games and Entertainment – James E. Katz and Sophia Krzys Acord
  • Online Communities on the Move: Mobile Play in Korea – Youn-ah Kang

    Conclusions and Future Prospects

  • Mainstreamed Mobiles in Daily Life: Perspectives and Prospects – James E. Katz

    Link: Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies (mit.edu)

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12
Nov 07

Use of mobiles in Asia

There’s an interesting collection of research papers about the use of mobile phones in Asia from a conference held in Beijing two years ago. Papers include ‘Mobile Cultures of Migrant Workers in Southern China’, ‘How the University Students in East Asia Utilize Mobile Phones’, and ‘News circulation by means of mobile phones in China’.

Link: Mobile Communication and Asian Modernities II (parishine.com)

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6
Aug 07

Nokia Trends Lab

Nokia’s launched a “lab” that facilitates experimental creativity using mobile devices.

“Nokia Trends Lab is a physical and virtual hub of mobility experiences. Nokia wants to enable creative thinkers to push the boundaries of how to use mobility as part of the creative process.”

Link: Nokia Trends Lab (nokiatrendslab.com)

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24
Apr 07

The technology that makes us mobile

The design of mobile technology is influenced by the technologies of mobility. That is, the way we’re mobile has an impact on the tools we use (kind of obvious, of course).

How are the changes in the technologies and culture of mobility going to affect people’s needs? How are cultural norms going to adapt to changes in the ways we get around?

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22
Nov 05

Phones in Japanese life

The book “Personal, Portable, Pedestrian : Mobile Phones in Japanese Life” has just been released. Following is an excerpt from an Amazon review:

“In Japan and Europe, cellphone usage is higher than in the United States. Thus to an American reader, this book can be interesting on several levels. Perhaps as a sociological commentary on how Japanese society has accepted and accomodated the pervasive use of the phones. To an extent not currently seen in much of the US, except possibly amongst teenagers in large cities. The book is a fascinating read of how quickly an technological item has become part of the fabric in Japan. The passages on phone etiquette also suggest what might also eventuate here.

“On a business level, the book can be used for ideas into future usages, in Japan or elsewhere. If you are trying to find a novel business involving cellphones, it helps to study a society that has taken them further.”

Links: Personal, Portable, Pedestrian : Mobile Phones in Japanese Life (Amazon), PDF draft of the book’s introduction

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25
May 05

Culture and interaction design

An interesting summary of some of the cross-cultural considerations for design.

“The researchers differentiated between three different cultures by rating them across four cultural dimensions: “uncertainty avoidance” (the amount of effort someone expends to maintain predictability and minimize risk), “individualism vs. collectivism” (the degree to which someone focuses on the welfare of the group at the expense of the individual), “context” (the amount of “background information” needed to feel confident that a message is fully understood and “time perception” (“monochronic” people prefer to perform one task at a time, while “polychronics” are multitaskers who focus more on relationships than sticking to a hard and fast to-do list).”

Link: The Sociology of Interfaces