PPP Review - Josh

Joshua Lawton
DMST 4850: Digital Research Methods
Book Review of “Personal, Portable, Pedestrian”
edited by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe and Misa Matsuda



The complete integration of which mobile technology became a standardized extension of Japanese culture can be represented by which the term keitai is adopted rather than the grammatically correct term of keitai denwa (cellular phone) or idou denwa (mobile phone)(p. 20). As a society, the Japanese modified language to represent the acceptance of this technology of personal connection and space as commonplace as streetlights.

Originally used as a tool for businessmen, keitai was embraced by young Japanese girls after becoming accustomed to the alphanumeric pagers of the early 1990s. The book explains how the progression of the keitai came to be integrated into everyday life through an arc of admonishment and moral threat to a popular niche culture of teens to the connected lives of families and selective social groups to the near-present day saturation of keitai in Japan. As Ito explains in the introduction, keitai is “an intimate technosocial tethering, a personal device supporting communications that are constant, lightweight, and mundane presence in everyday life.” (p.1)

To get to the understanding of how integral keitai is to the culture, several forms of research were performed and complied with different approaches to the people of Japan. Some research was simply interviewing people in specific parts of the country, some was done as a simple written survey to be returned by a sample set, whereas some ethnography studies of observation were conducted. Many data sets were the function of companies and organizations reviewing internal numbers of keitai usage and statistics to determine market share of certain devices or application. Though there were also instances of combined research methods conducted to get a better understanding of how the keitai functioned in the lives of the subjects.

One example of utilizing ethnography methods was in studying mobile service technicians who they found had utilized keitai to become more efficient in completing tasks and restructuring the organization of the technology repair business as explained in chapter 12, “Design of Keitai Technology.” Researchers shadowed repair technicians in the field doing repair work to document the use of keitai for the various applications of use. The researchers studied three different areas of service with varying characteristics to get a wider range of potential use and structure. Following the shadowing in the field, researchers interviewed the service technicians to extrapolate better details of field use to garner a better understanding of keitai applications. The research group wanted to investigate a notion that technology and social constructs were co-joined in the case of keitai rather than as perceived by many other researchers and academics arguing that sociology influences technology or technology alters sociology. The keitai researchers wanted to oppose the idea that technology and society were separate.

There most likely were some questions they might have had in while developing and performing the research to help better reach their findings. In reading the chapter, some may have been: How does the keitai make their job easier? Is the keitai more of a personal tool or a tool that helps the entire team? Or does the tool aid smaller portions of the team? What effect do standard social norms or company policies have on the workers with regard to freedom to improvise? What systems or constructs do the company have in place to cultivate or limit the integration of keitai into the service technicians’ workflow? Has the company trained the technicians to use their keitai for work or has the phenomenon of integration been derived from the servicemen themselves?

The ease of which keitai has been integrated into the average workplace and utilized highlights the notion that the keitai has become nearly an expectation of life in Japan. The workers were able to become self-sufficient and self-regulated and redraw the organization of the repair company to be more effective. The researchers must have learned through their shadowing and interviewing the level of engagement the workers had with keitai even after learning of the system designed for the technicians to use via their keitai. By researchers shadowing the technicians and doing the follow up interviews, the data might have better context from which to understand the use of the keitai.

In order to generate a clearer understanding of the findings, the researchers must also have a complete understanding of the social systems in Japan, in the particular region of research as well as the company. For if the keitai is merely an extension of culture, the research would not necessarily just be on the keitai, it would have to be on the social system of the workers. The instance that the workers are immersed in technology – repairing copiers, fax machines, information networks, etc. – may have implications as to their technological literacy. Thus forcing the researchers to examine more instances of keitai use than just the service technicians to have a better window in which to examine the notion of keitai as an extension of Japanese life.

This chapter would have a difficult time as a stand-alone case of keitai culture, but as part of the larger context of the “Personal, Portable, Pedestrian” book it helps to elevate the overall notion of acceptance and utilization of keitai.