A recent Washington Post article, distributed on the telecom-cities mailing list, reports on a number of interesting aspects of mobile phone use in Japan that we don’t see here in the USA. Among the highlights:
The article reports that “Restaurants advertise immediate discounts on Web sites when they have a slow night, offering price cuts of as much as 15 percent to fill seats with keitai bargain hunters.” It does not, however, say whether the recipients of such advertisements find them intrusive or welcome. I’m somewhat dubious about the claim that “Japanese have grown so skilled at writing e-mails on cell phones that many now find it simpler than using computer keyboards.”
After reading the article, a quick google of “keitai” (Japanese word for mobile phone) reveals that much of this, and more (including pictures), is extremely well-documented in a November post on Chris Heathcote’s fabulous blog (I must really visit there more often).
Comments
3 responses to “Japanese Embrace of Mobile Internet”
there are just soooo many things in here . . .
When I was in the UK, indeed, I saw people text msg as fast as I can type, or at least really fast. two important lesssons: Americans are uncoordinated and have two left thumbs
AND Americans trial the planet when it comes to the use of hand held computing devices and innovation
Then there is the whole question about a campus experiment vs a real world deployment. Here it becomes a matter of your research/engineering question. If you are interested in research around technology in society, and classrooms in particular, that is your focus is on people, then cell phones, 802.xx, UWBand or smoke signals it really on some level doesn’t matter. if on the other hand you are asking an engineering question, what do i need to do to enable students to ask questions using this x technology, then it is really important to struggle with whatever technology it is (ultra wide band, 802.xx, cell, smoke signals, etc)
So this reminds me of evaluation that then reminds me of public proofs
http://www.congres-scientifiques.com/4S-EASST/
science and technical expertise is everywhere needed but everywhere under suspicion. The divide between, on the one hand, experts who could be trusted for their access to indisputable matters of fact and, on the other, the general public waiting for enlightenment and defining societal values, has been erased.
of course, there has been some fantastic work done on people’s practices and values around cell phones in Japan by Mimi Ito.
http://itofisher.com/mito/publications.html