Blog backlog. First up, FT magazine's mobility issue from November 12 2005. No link.
A graduate student from the Philippines was surprised at the lack of texting among his American friends in the Philippines he was accustomed to getting and sending dozens of messages a day. "If I've been to sleep and don't have at least four messages when I wake up, I feel no one loves me". Teens in the UK are similar I think.
According to Glenn Woroch, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, most technologies become less widely used as they reach a bigger sphere of people, but this has not been the case with mobile phones. The amount of time the average person spends with his or her mobile is going up.
Another difference in the spread of mobile communications is that many of the technologies associated with it were not created for business use first. Looking at how most Japanese teenagers use their mobiles suggests to the journalist that pervasive communications are strengthening social bonds, not breaking them down. Japanese teenagers expect messages to be returned immediately or at least within 30 minutes, or a social convention has been violated. Forgetting to take your mobile with your or letting the battery die are also social misdemeanours. Messages are also used to pave the way from virtual to real communication, for example phoning or meeting someone.
The journalist wonders whether business executives are as happy to be permanently connected. Leaving your BlackBerry behind or letting the battery die would be their social faux pas. I've certainly noticed in the past year that there is less need to warn people about switching off their mobiles, but a lot more surreptitious BlackBerry checking in my seminars. But it is very industry specific, and does not seem to be culturally related. Middle managers in IT/electronics or sales/purchasing roles are particularly prone to leaving their phones or BlackBerries on and checking them or letting them ring and checking the names, even when in face to face meetings. Japanese, Germans and British all lament this tendency.
Woroch says that leaving all communication channels open and checking them is setting too low a price on a scarce resource - access to a worker's time. Polychronic people don't have quite such a strong sense that there is a time scarcity of course so may feel less like there should be a high price. Interestingly it is an academic from polychronic Italy who laments the way that time is socially perceived as something that must be filled up to the very last folds, and that we are eliminating the positive aspects of lost time.
This is a useful historical overview of the uses of IT for political activism from Today Online from Singapore.
An article from Reuters puts some factual flesh on my previous posting about Filipino texting:
"The country's 22 million mobile users, more than a quarter of the population, send an average of seven messages each every day."
"Some say Filipinos are shy and appreciate the relative anonymity of texting. Others say conventions such as inquiring after the health of one another's families before starting to chat verbally has made SMS an attractive time-saver.
Certainly, money is a factor. Sending a message can cost as little as half a peso (0.9 U.S. cents), an affordable option in a country where the minimum wage in the capital is just $5 a day. "
I don't think 'shy' is quite the word I would use to describe this kind of behaviour. It's a preference for being indirect.
I've just had an interesting e-mail exchange with aMia, who is a Filipino student and blogger. She left a comment on my entry about using LiveJournal as a cultural adjustment tool because she's writing a paper on blogs as an adjustment tool and came across my post while researching it on the web.
I took the opportunity to ask her more about Filipino use of mobiles for texting and also blogs, as I'd noticed in the past that young Filipinos are avid users of texting and blogging - right up there with Koreans and Japanese even though, as she points out herself "our country is still under the category of 'third world'." Of course this partly explains the popularity of mobile phones - they're a lot cheaper than a PC.
But aMia also made the interesting comment that "u should see the way we text, people come up with lotsa things like quotes, jokes, political stands, prayers, etc just to connect or share with other people. i think it's an indirect approach in wanting to be heard." Which ties in nicely with her thoughts on why young Filipinos blog - because "most people are afraid to be judged by people they know" so a blog lets them express themselves semi-anonymously.
Both mobiles and blogs offer a way to express yourself boldly, without being completely direct. I'm guessing this is useful both if you're younger and still not sure of your social circle, but also, to make a huge cultural generalisation, when people are influenced by 'Asian' considerations of not offending and maintaining group harmony.
aMia also pointed me at this blog entry and comments by another Filipino blogger, talking about her worries that she is blogging to please people and her blog now owns her, when she thought she owned it - a concern which strikes a chord with bloggers from any culture I would think.