I remember ten years ago being sandwiched between employees from Mitsubishi Corporation's Tehran and Baghdad offices, with staff from the Istanbul and Athens offices also on our table at a dinner for the Global Leadership Programme we were running and feeling worried that rows would break out. The charming and gentle man from the Tehran office reassured me that they all had more in common than they had differences, and said 'you know we like to have friends round for dinner where we drink wine, eat French food and our women wear Western clothing - just like in Europe - so long as it is within the safety of our own houses.' And indeed we had a great time.
There's been plenty of coverage in blogs and official media of the use of text messaging in the Iranian elections. The Reuters article has the edge over AFP one I think, in terms of detail and colour. Obviously with less than 10% of the Iranian population owning a mobile phone, texting is being used among the affluent middle classes, of whom my former colleague was a representative. Anyway, it's a nice reminder, as Britain's funniest Iranian stand-up comedian and actor is good at pointing out to us Brits, that Iranians are by no means all humourless fundamentalists.
I can't link to this article by Kobashi Naohiko in the Nikkei Business Express on Japanese blogs because it's subscription only, plus it's in Japanese, so I will paraphrase/translate.
Apparently the Japanese Ministry for Internal Affairs and Communications has just issued a report from its Study Group on Information Frontier (sic) on blogs. According to the report, there are around 3.35 million cumulative blog users in Japan as of the end of March 2005, of which 950,000 add a new entry at least once a month. They estimate there will be 7.82 million bloggers and 2.96 million regular updaters by the end of March 2007.
Apparently the rate of updating of a blog is closely related to how strong the element of 'community' is in the 'service' the blog provides. Kobashi comments that just as in the US some bloggers have become recognised as journalists in the last election, so the number of Japanese blogs that are more than just a diary and have some kind of strategy behind them is increasing. However he thinks there might be a difference between the community orientation of Japanese blogs and the journalistic orientation of American blogs - although he also says this might be just a question of stages of development and adoption. He suspects there is a cultural difference at the heart of this.
Kobashi refers to a psychological study where people are asked to finish a sentence which begins 'I am...'. Appparently Asians tend to finish it with a statement about their role in society, such as 'I am a mother' whereas Westerners tend to finish the sentence with a statement about their personality such as 'I am kind'. He thinks this kind of tendency in Asia explains why Japanese bloggers are spurred on to post new entries by comments left by readers or trackbacks. Western blogs are a place to present yourself, whereas Japanese blogs are about building relations to their surroundings, and by doing so, the blogger finds his or her own identity. He finished up by stating that 'finding yourself' is much needed in today's Japan. I suppose by that he is referring to the younger generation in Japan, who do not have the certainty of lifetime employment in a major company. There is a high and hidden level of unemployment in the under 30s, and many are getting by as freeters - doing temporary work, without much idea of what they might do in the long term.
I agree to some extent with his thesis, but I also think Western bloggers are just as motivated by getting comments and trackbacks (for myself, I would welcome comments, but unfortunately have had to disable my comment function due to spam and then the spam remover I had installed now not working due to some sort of technical problem with my host, sigh.). But maybe for Westerners it might be more about status and a need to be admired rather than wanting to feel part of a community.
I've blogged before about the misuse of PowerPoint but I'm coming to realise that PowerPoint is sometimes used in a positive way in cross cultural business contexts. Twice now I have come across a situation where two teams from different countries, both non-native speakers of English, have used PowerPoint as a way of drafting proposals for mutual discussion. PowerPoint works in this context because it is OK for the English to be ungrammatical and short, and it is easier for non-native speakers to get to grips with than a long memo or e-mail.