In his new book, Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold describes mobile phones as heralding "the next social revolution." He opens his book with a description of roving mobs of mobile phone-toting youths in Tokyo?s Shibuya crossing, the place with the highest density of mobile phone use in the world. From street-level Tokyo, it is hard not to agree with Rheingold?s proclamations of change. When I was a teenager growing up in Tokyo in the '80s, telephone cards, pay phones, and urban landmarks were the technologies that coordinated our action on the street. We would begin with a set time and place, usually a major landmark like Hachiko Square in Shibuya crossing, or the Almond Caf? at Roppongi crossing. I remember hours spent at these teeming street corners, sweating in the heat, shivering in the cold, making forays to a pay phone to check on latecomers or for messages at home.
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"To not have a keitai (cell phone) is to be walking blind, disconnected from just-in-time information on where and when you are in the social networks of time and place." |
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Now I leave home with my tiny keitai (Japanese for mobile phone) tucked in my purse, calling out to my husband that I will call him later about where and when to meet for dinner. As I run from street to train station, I notice fewer and fewer pay phones in the urban landscape, and I realize that I don?t even carry a telephone card anymore. On the train, I punch in a quick e-mail message to my colleague telling her I am running a bit late. A few moments later my phone vibrates and I see a message saying that she will be later still, and she will phone me when she arrives at our rendezvous spot. I send her an e-mail message when I arrive at the appointed place, and run errands in the station building until my phone rings, announcing her arrival. We stay online until we converge in the same part of the station. I wave to her to catch her eye, and cut the line. No apologies are in order for the delay, as neither of us has wasted time. If either of us had left our phones at home, that would be a different story, one of frustration and recrimination and failed attempts at contact. One college student I spoke to described leaving one?s phone at home or letting the battery die as "the new taboo." Teens and twentysomethings usually do not bother to set a time and place for their meetings. They exchange as many as 5 to 15 messages throughout the day that progressively narrows in on a time and place, two points eventually converging in a coordinated dance through the urban jungle. To not have a keitai is to be walking blind, disconnected from just-in-time information on where and when you are in the social networks of time and place. The keitai has become a social necessity in Japan, particularly among the younger set. According to a survey by the Mobile Communications Research Group in November 2001, 64.6 percent of all Japanese owned a mobile phone. Among twentysomethings this number was 89.6 percent, among those enrolled in college, 97.8 percent, and among high school students, 78.8 percent. The mobile Internet is the most distinctive aspect of Japanese mobile phone use ever since NTT DoCoMo launched the i-mode keitai Internet service in 1999. Youths, again, are the heaviest users of these services, particularly keitai e-mail, where they send text, graphics and photographs between mobile phones.
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"Keitai-wired youth are in persistent but lightweight contact with a small number of intimates, with whom they are expected to be available unless they are sleeping or working. Because of this portable, virtual peer space, the city is no longer a space of urban anonymity." |
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Among college, high school and middle school girls who own keitai, keitai e-mail use is effectively 100 percent. Boys are not far behind with 88 percent in the middle school and high school group and 96 percent among college students. This contrasts to the lower numbers of adults over the age of 20, where usage hovers in the 70 and 80 percent range. The more striking contrast is in the volume of text messages, where teenage usage (averaging about 70 messages per week) is double that of the next age category -- twentysomething users. For instance, 69.9 percent or teens and 59 percent of twentysomethings use the mobile Web in contrast to only 24.7 percent of fortysomethings.The changing dynamics of meeting-making are only the tip of the iceberg in the changes that mobile media bring to how we coordinate, communicate, and share information. The older generation complains that keitai are linked to bad manners, particularly when people use them on public transportation or during meals. Parents worry that they can?t keep track of their children?s friends anymore, since the home phone is no longer a site of incidental intergenerational contact. Yet even those who complain about keitai are usually keitai users themselves, and are participating in the social negotiations defining and regulating their use. I work with a research lab at Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus, funded in part by NTT DoCoMo, exploring new uses and services for keitai. Together with professors Kenji Kohiyama and Daisuke Okabe, I have been working with a group of students conducting an ethnographic study of keitai use. Our initial findings are that keitai e-mail is replacing voice telephony as the dominant mode of telecommunications between teens and twentysomethings. High school and college students generally do not have the home phone numbers of any but their closest friends. Before initiating a call to a keitai, they will, almost without exception, begin with a text message to determine availability; the new social norm is that you should "knock before entering." By sending messages like "Can you talk on the phone now?" or "Are you awake?" text messagers spare each other the rude awakening and disruption of a sudden phone call. One teenage couple that participated in our study exchanged 30 text messages over the course of three hours as they watched television, ate dinner and did their homework, before engaging in a one-hour phone conversation. This voice contact was followed by another trail of 22 messages that kept them in contact until bedtime. Keitai-wired youth are in persistent but lightweight contact with a small number of intimates, with whom they are expected to be available unless they are sleeping or working. Because of this portable, virtual peer space, the city is no longer a space of urban anonymity; even when out shopping, solo youths will send photos to friends of a pair of shoes they just bought, or send fast-breaking news about a hot sale that is just opening. After meeting face-to-face, a trail of text messages continues the conversation as friends disperse in trains, buses and on foot, nimble thumbs touch-typing on numeric keypads. Just as Weblogs are distributing journalistic authority on the Internet, mobile media further de-centers information exchange by channeling it through networks that are persistently available to the mobile many. In his article for TheFeature.com, Justin Hall writes: "Today most Weblogs are run by people chained to their computers. When video phones are widespread, we should expect to see these Weblogs go wireless, with more up-to-date information and multimedia collected from remote locations." Hall has helped popularize the term "moblog," for a mobile phone Weblog. In Japan, the popular "Sha-mail" handset with a built-in camera has helped revive the corporate outlook of J-Phone Corporation, Japan?s third largest mobile phone operator. Over half of their 13-plus million users upgraded to the new handset in a period of less than two years. DoCoMo?s i-shot camera keitai is also growing in popularity. While the high cost of video keitai has meant a slower growth curve, the trend towards mobile multimedia communications is well underway in Japan. Hall writes, "mobile reporting is not likely to be terrifically high culture or urgent human calamity. It will probably be people sending pictures of parties from one phone to another, so friends will know where to get their boogie on." Our research, which looks at the day-to-day uses of keitai, supports Hall's speculations. The constant stream of text messages and photos over the mobile Internet is mostly about peers sharing personal news and interpretations of information that they have just encountered: their impressions of a TV show, the fact that something interesting is on the radio, a picture of an event that they are attending, or that they are skipping class because of a cold. Out of this micro-level swarm of messages, however, more systematic forms of organization are emerging. A quick Web search will bring up dozens of pages with uploaded Sha-mail photos, ranging from erotic sites to celebrity stalking sites to sites with family photos. For example, the site for the Sha-mail Diary Confederation with 29 writers sharing their diaries of Sha-mail photos. Inspired by Hall's article, Joichi Ito (my brother and an Internet entrepreneur) set up a moblog for sending photos from his camera-keitai directly to his blog. Over the next few months, the students on my research team in Tokyo will be providing another example of the growing spectrum between mass and personal communication. They will be keeping a Weblog here at Japan Media Review, keeping you up-to-date on their experiences, observations and research. Tune in weekly for our coverage of the latest developments in mobile media, including keitai, PDAs and related online services.
Mizuko Ito is a Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California, and a Visiting Associate Professor at Keio University. At Keio, she is part of a research lab, "Docomo House," that looks at new applications and uses of mobile technologies. Her specialty is anthropological study of technology use, focusing on youth and children's relationship to new media. After completing a degree in East Asian studies at Harvard University, she attended graduate school at Stanford University, where she received a master's in anthropology a doctorate in education and a doctorate in anthropology. Ito has worked at Tokyo University, Stanford University, the Institute for Research on Learning, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Apple Computer, the National Institute for Educational Policy Research of Japan, and Keio University.
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