Download Technology's Impact on Social Interactions: A US-Japanese Cell Phone Study and more Study notes Art in PDF only on Docsity! Tyler Freeman 2/20/06 DANM 202 Censoring the Real World Lisa Nakamura’s complaint that the cyberpunk genre envisions the future as Japanese is true, but not necessarily a bad thing. Fictional futures like the ones in cyberpunk are just showing the most likely future: one heavily influenced by Japan. This is because Japan does heavily influence our future by being the most technologically advanced culture in the world; we have no choice but to follow them. However, sometimes we need to follow them a bit more closely than just adapting their technology; we should adapt the proper behavior that goes with that technology. For example, in “Pop and Ma: The Landscape of Japanese Commodity Characters and Subjectivity,” Larissa Hjorth says that the Japanese consider talking on cell phones in public a faux pas. (162) Why isn’t America like this? In America, it’s almost like people try to use their phones in public, either to avoid face-to-face contact with strangers and/or try to impress them somehow with their fancy middle-class gadgetry. The Japanese take this showing off to the next level, by attaching personalized characters and trinkets to their phones, but they don’t get to use them in public so how do they show them off? Americans, however, are so anxious to bust out our shiny gadgets in front of everyone we don’t even need the personalized Hello Kitty dangling from our Osama Bin Ladin faceplate. We just need to gab loud enough so everyone around us knows we are connected (yet at the same time disconnected from our immediate surroundings). Ipods are nearly the same principle. It’s like people just want to buy the excuse to plug in, log on, and not deal with others in a public environment. Often I’ll be sitting on the bus, looking around at people. Whenever my eyes meet a stranger’s, she’ll play the shy game and try to look away. More and more I’ve noticed she will open up her cell phone, pretending to check on some late-breaking information the little device just had to tell her at that exact awkward moment. It’s like we’re just looking for an excuse to stare at those little video screens, those little windows into another reality that is much more personal, comforting and forgiving than the real world. Even if you’re surrounded by strangers, you can always read your text messages from your dearest friends, or look at pictures from that party last night, or play your favorite games: anything to replace the uncomfortable now with the soothing nostalgia of your virtual connection to the world. Cell phones are an escape from reality: escape from driving, escape from the cashier at the grocery store, escape even from eye to eye contact of people walking by. The cell phone in public says, “I’m too busy. You’re not important enough to acknowledge, dammit, I’m on the phone!” It’s like people are trying so hard to show others that they are important enough, loved enough, to be called on their phone. The very opposite thing happens to the people on the other end: the people sitting at home on their land line, trying to talk to something half-person, half-static, who was considerate enough (or not considerate enough) to call right in the middle of traffic, or while sitting in the grocery line, because he needed to converse right that second. Nothing can wait anymore. Everything must be done now, at the same time as everything else. Multitasking has shoved the personal, intimate contact out of our everyday life and replaced it with a flurry of busyness and the overwhelming necessity to get things done. No longer is just the stranger so unimportant you can completely ignore
