Book Review: Personal, Portable, Pedestrian

Personal, Portable, Pedestrian compiles multiple essays on mobile phone use in Japan into a variety of categories corresponding to different methodological and disciplinary frameworks. This covers infrastructure considerations which relates to our discussion of the “political economy” approach, historical cultural and social contexts which influence a technology’s adoption, and also includes a broad range of “virtual ethnographies” that indicate, (as our discussions have also) that the separation between on-line and off-line strategies for research purposes are no longer relevant (and perhaps never were).

The transparency with which mobile communications are embedded in everyday life has become seen as an opposite trajectory of the accepted notion of a colonization of cyberspace by constructed identities. Rather, everyday life seems populated by identities that move fluidly in and out of “comm-space”, structuring real-life through a simultaneous engagement in multi-threaded social psychogeographies.

I felt there were a variety of approaches used in the collection of data, especially in the ethnographic studies, which included discourse analysis, textual analysis (chapter 13), and in chapter 10, which looked at the use of keitai on public transportation.

I like the discussion of the digital divide conversation and the apparent reduction of that argument to a presumed universal need or implementation of “neutral” technologies. The ability of the authors to explore the notion of this “divide” as being more of a set of varying trajectories through a complicated terrain of sociocultural diversity reveals what seems like more of a globally co-created expansion and refinement of features and practices, that is akin to an emergent social phenomenon, with technological artifacts, rather than a top-down imposition of structured uses, based on a universalized technology.

What is unique about the practices surrounding mobile technologies in Japan? We discussed in class this idea of Techno-nationalism, or this sense that a universal technology (a cell-phone) ends up being adopted or its use modified due to the unique characteristics of the culture in which its use occurs. It seems after closer inspection however that this is not necessarily the case. Through the articles it becomes clearer that many shared components of keitai use in Japan are tied to quite disparate cultural and social behaviors.

I found it interesting that the chapter on cell-phone cameras seems so outdated. My own personal use of cell phones has included image messaging since 2004 or so, when I was traveling quite extensively and exchanged playful images from my workday with my wife and kids. I also produced and performed a collaborative live cinema show based on images and video captured via my cell-phone during these travels.

In the September 2000 survey among school-aged children, I was surprised to see such low penetration, given that my kids have had their own cell phones since 6^th and 7^th grade (1999 or 2000). I have always been under the impression that this penetration into younger populations was much earlier and more prevalent in Japan. I recall being in Tokyo for an internet music conference when NTT DoCoMo announced their new texting and internet access service, called I-mode, and realizing that the cell phone would ultimately become the vehicle for personal services via the internet. Shortly thereafter I had actually struck a deal with an emerging music service provider in the US to deliver the content of our fledgling internet radio business. While the initial adoption of cell-phones was apparently slower in Japan than the US, their rate of penetration and the profusion of services has quickly outpaced our own.

To satisfy my curiosity about the current use of keitai, and to counter the time lag inherent in the publishing process, I wanted to get some “on the ground” input from my friend who lives in Tokyo, to see how some of the behaviors on public transportation may have changed since the publication of the book, and since my last visit there. He indicates that a much more structured social contract has emerged with regards to keitai use in trains, particularly with regards to voice calls. It is almost non-existent, although texting continues “madly”. He also indicates that keitai use in other public places such as coffee shops has taken on a different character and that people, even the very young, are much more well-mannered and almost invariably take their calls outside. Many are now also able to use their keitai like a credit card for the trains and the coffee shops. I wonder if this will be a service that will catch on in the US?

In summary I felt the collection of essays was well-rounded in terms of the balance of methodological approaches, although the broad scope of the work was distracting (I found I wanted more of the kind of material in the Practice and Place section). Seeing the emergence of this “relevancing” of a technology, via my own use, my children’s, and through my proximity to an even younger generation’s continued refinement and collective re-structuring and ongoing re-defining of services and features is fascinating and exciting, both as an observer and participant in cultural production, and as an entrepreneur.