hightext

You say blog, I say... (II)

When I wrote about coining words like blog, and being wary of it seeming as if you were claiming the invention and ignoring the fact that other languages and cultures may have something similar, called something else, I hadn't realised that Joi Ito had already had a lot of flak from the Japanese not-blog blogging community for exactly this, in 2002. Joi refers to this a propos of a current row between Loic Le Meur and his French blogger customers since Ublog (his company) became part of Six Apart. Touchy lot, bloggers, whatever the culture!

What Good Are Notebooks?

Also only very tenuously something to do with information and communication technologies (hell, it's the holiday season, so why not - but see the end of this post), and only cross-cultural in the sense that he's American* and has actively sought out and promoted the music of other cultures, particularly Brazil - we went to see David Byrne last Saturday at the Brighton Dome. He is one of my all time musical heroes (narrowly pipped by David Bowie), so just seeing him was a treat in itself. However I would have to say I was a teeny bit disappointed. I think he and the band were tired and/or jetlagged. They had postponed the concert from April, so they could do it directly after WOMAD. But as they were touring extensively in Europe and the US before....

Also, although it was fun to see him work with strings and two percussionists, the end effect was a bit muddy, and many of the songs could have done with a crisp horn section or an additional attacking guitar. His encore playing of 'Heaven', with just an acoustic guitar made you realise how a lot of the material sounds better sparse than lush.

It was a bit odd sitting in my seat tapping my feet to the music (as the audience was on average even older than me, anything more might have been unseemly and embarrassing-parent-like), when one of the joys was to reappreciate what truly rocking and funky songs 'Once in a Lifetime' and 'Life During Wartime' are. I also realised how their lyrics have wormed their way into my subconscious - hence the title of this post. An unexpected treat was to get my favourite all time song Desert Island Discs final selection 'Naive Melody'. I am still deeply bored by 'Road to Nowhere' and have heard 'Psychokiller' too many times too. I wish he had played 'She Only Sleeps' from his new album, which apparently he has at other concerts.

The communication technology bit - David Byrne's current favourite website, to be viewed accompanied by 'Nothing But Flowers' - deadmalls.com

PS: I've also just discovered he has a tour journal.
And that he's married to the daughter of a Japanese mother and German father, which is pretty cross-cultural. *And that he was born in Scotland but brought up in Baltimore and has never taken US citizenship.

This is a pen

Not exactly about information and communication technologies, but fascinating from an intercultural point of view - it seems that babies as young as five months old make distinctions about categories of events that their parents do not, according to researchers at Vanderbilt University in the USA. Previous studies have shown that adults categorise things differently based on what language they speak. It seems therefore that infants across all cultures are capable of making similar subtle distinctions about the world about them, which they lose or amplify depending on the language they then learn.

The example they used to explore this question was differences between how different languages describe space. For example, the distinction between a tight fit versus a loose fit is marked in Korean but not in English. A cap on a pen would be a tight fit relationship, while a pen on a table would be a loose fit relationship. English does not mark this distinction in the same way, instead emphasizing the 'containment' versus 'support' relationship, for example: the coffee is in the mug or the mug is on the table.

The Japanese language has lots of categories for counting, which never cease to amaze English speakers who just count one two three. In Japanese there are different counting words for long thin things, containers like boxes or cups, houses, people, animals, paper, books etc. This is completely second nature to me having been brought up in Japan at exactly the time when a child is taught to enunciate these distinctions. I wonder if that means I unconsciously categorise things rather differently to a completely UK brought up adult?

This research also supports the distinction interculturalists often have to make between intercultural generalisations and racism - that we are not talking about any racial, inherent differences, but learned differences - and confirms that at least in this sense, we are all born 'the same' no matter what ethnicity.

It also shows that cultural differences are real in their effect on peoples' behaviour (another charge we have to refute - that we're all the same really and have learnt to be global in this globalising world), in so far as the language we have as our native tongue has a deep seated impact on the way we relate to things around us.

Pens are long thin things so counted ippon, nihon, sanbon, yonhon, gohon. Japanese schoolchildren used to shout 'this is a pen' in English at me when they saw me in the street in Sendai in the early 1970s.

Cultures of music piracy

I hope the US and European record industry takes note of this important article,(link is to a pdf) by MIT Assistant Professor in Japanese Cultural Studies Ian Condry. He contrasts the two approaches of the record industries in the US and Japan, respectively the world's largest and second largest music markets, to file sharing and piracy.

Whereas the US (and by association European) record industry seems bent on prosecuting its own customers, presumably with the intent of somehow creating an atmosphere where young people will come to realise that file sharing is wrong, and will stop doing it, the Japanese record industry is seeking ways to rebuild customer loyalty rather than demanding customer obedience. As Condry says, imagine the following conversation:

Student A: "I got the new KRS-1 album. It's great.'
Student B: 'Cool. Could I borrow it some time? I'd like to hear it.'
Student A: 'No, I think we need to protect the copyrights of artists, record companies and publishers. Please go and buy the CD yourself.'
Student B: 'Loser.'

As he says 'music falls into that category of things that you are normally obligated to share with your dorm mates, family and friends.' I would have to agree, as a member of the (old crock) generation that was warned that 'home taping is killing music', and nonetheless lovingly crafted and was given lovingly crafted compilation tapes as tokens of friendship and more.

He points out that sales of CDs in both countries have been falling in the past few years but that in Japan this cannot be laid at the door of p2p networks, as Japanese people are not great users of p2p. A lack of broadband connectivity, a preference for connecting to the internet via mobile phone etc all play a part in this of course but (and this is where this article gets really ground breaking for us interculturalists) "the contrast is less one of 'Japanese culture' being different from 'American culture' but that American and Japanese fans share many attitudes, while the response of the Japanese business community differs markedly from those in the US." Japanese record companies recognise that CD rental shops are here to stay, so instead they try to analyse CD rentals to understand fans better.

In other words sometimes culture is "not necessarily guided by geographical area, but rather by the ways people are positioned in social, business and technological networks." This has been noted before of course - usually in relation to the way that the type of people that attend the kind of international business school I went to have more in common with each other than they have with more deprived social classes in their own countries.

Japanese music consumers are also copying and sharing music non-commercially, but they do it by renting CDs from rental stores for the equivalent of a couple of dollars, and then ripping them. Again, oldie that I am, I remember doing this in the 1980s when I lived in Japan (with records) - I even found a record rental shop that would actually tape the record for you until they got nervous and stopped doing it.

The reasons Japanese young people give for doing this are very similar to the reasons given by American 'pirates', namely that they feel the record companies are ripping them off (prices of CDs have increased by 7.2% 1999-2001 and are even more expensive in Japan), that too many bands are 'manufactured', and too many CDs have only one or two good tracks on them.

When asked under what circumstances they would pay for music, American students interviewed by Condry said they would pay for indie artists, or artists from their hometown or major groups with a solid track record of good albums, or genres of music that have stood the test of time and are not adequately supported by major record companies (jazz, classical). And of course there is the completist, fan instinct to own everything in tangible form produced by a particular artist (David Bowie and Talking Heads for me, Robyn Hitchcock for my husband). Japanese consumers have displayed similar preferences - Condry notes the way that Okinawan band Mongol 800 became a word-of-mouth success.

So Condry's recommendation to the music industry is to find new ways of connecting with and developing fans, if they want them to part with their money (non-stop touring is not recommended for health reasons ;-)) That it is all about the love, man. If music is just a commodity, consumers will get it as cheaply as they can. And that fans worldwide are ethical too - downloading is OK, but downloading and selling is not, even if these ethics are not fully consistent nor fully represent the music business.

(Thanks to Smartmobs who in turn got it from The MIT Technology Review)

Cultural determinants of search behaviour on websites

Useful academic paper(note - link is to a pdf) entitled "Cultural Determinants of Search Behaviour on Websites" from Anett Kralisch and Bettina Berendt, of the Humboldt University Berlin, for the IWIPS 2004 Conference on Culture, Trust and Design Innovation 8-10 July 2004, Vancouver Canada.

Their research confirms their hypotheses that people from high context cultures prefer to use the links and hierarchies provided by the website to access information, whereas people from low context cultures prefer to use a search engine. In other words, high context people want to know what the context is for the information they are looking for and low context people think it is enough just to get the information.

Similarly, they confirm that people from high Power Distance cultures have a stronger preference for following links in a deep hyperstructure than people low Power Distance cultures (who don't care about hierarchies) and that long-term orientation people are happier to follow links than short term orientation people (just give me what I want!).

Interestingly, their hypothesis that people from high Uncertainty Avoidance cultures (people who don't like taking risks) would prefer to follow links than use a search engine was not confirmed. They suggest that perhaps this is because people from high Uncertainty Avoidance cultures want to get a lot of information, for fear of missing something, so a search engine is more likely to provide this than one link.

Toxic mobile conversations

Normally I find articles about people finding mobile phones annoying a bit ho-hum and predictable, but using this recent survey of Americans' attitudes to overhearing mobile phone conversations as an excuse, I cannot resist describing my train journey home last night, where the effect of overhearing one man's mobile phone conversations was the most toxic I have witnessed yet.

He was on the phone before we even left the station, and had a penetrating voice that carried through the noise of the train in motion. Phrases that bored into my brain included 'I'm into buying property now. So if you know anyone with a flat or small house, not already on the market, let me know...', 'I've got to make an important call in five minutes, so I can't talk for long...'
At this point a very grumpy looking lecturer type who was trying to annotate an article got up from the seat opposite Toxic and moved further down the carriage.

Toxic continued 'I've thought about it and you've got to buy (inaudible).... You should buy Rich Dad Poor Dad. If you don't like it or don't read it, I'll buy it back from you at the price you paid for it......no I don't know how long it is, I didn't count the pages...... A day and a half. Normally it takes me a year to read a book........"

At this point a man reading Tom Clancy opposite me caught my eye and started rolling his eyes and grimacing, finally getting up and moving into the next carriage.

Toxic continued. 'It was my birthday on Sunday. Yeh, 39. I'm officially an old bastard. A dirty old bastard heh heh heh.'

I then realised I had read the same page of my book four times and it still wasn't registering. So I got up and moved, at which point another man behind Toxic said to me as I passed him 'I've just come back from living in Brussels. And the first thing I get is this!" pointing at Toxic's back. 'Yes, sorry' I said. 'Maybe some people really do deserve to die a slow and painful death.'

Showoff, voice like nails on a blackboard - had a nice blue linen shirt on though.

Nubile, mobile and criminal

Following on from yesterday's posting on teenage use of mobile phones because they derive their identities from being part of a group, it turns out that criminal teens are even more avid mobile phone users than average teenagers - in Japan. Needing to keep the gang up-to-date on criminal plans?

And in Norway those teens who use their mobile phones the most lose their virginity the earliest and have sex more frequently than teenagers who use their phones less.

And American teens still prefer instant messaging to SMS - from their PCs at home. Another indicator of a major cause of obesity across the pond I would say. At least European teens are out and about (or having sex) while they text, thus burning off calories.

(Thanks to Techdirt)

I network therefore I am

An interesting discussion following an article by Douglas Rushkoff on The Feature, as to whether communication technologies are making people less 'individual' in the Western, Renaissance sense and more defined by who they network with. One comment points out that this would explain the high adoption rates of mobile phones and data services in societies where the group is more important than the individual. It would also explain why teenagers and people in their twenties (East or West) are such avid mobile phone users - they are still defining themselves by their group of friends - a group which is still quite fluid and therefore high maintenance.