Phenomenology
I told Kiril, “I think I’m a phenomenologist now. Actually, I think I’ve always been, but didn’t realize it. I found a ton of the same things I’ve thought and said in Husserl.”
Videos
I also told Kiril, “I don’t think I’m going to make videos anymore. Takes too much work, especially to make them not-boring.”
Minutiae
Links
More Digital Youth in East Asia
There was less on this day that caught my interest.
Roland Nozomu Kelts made an interesting point about the way in which certain technologies allow for you to feel things that you did not and wouldn’t have felt before. For example, after you get an answering machine you experience lament when you return home and discover that no one has called, but this is a new feeling that you didn’t experience before you got the answering machine. Unfortunately, Kelts appears to be a little anti-tech in an unnuanced way, ending with, “Let’s not be cut off by the machine,” and, in the question and answer session, exclaiming, “I think [Twitter] reduces you to like 90 characters. It’s so childish. It robs us of our ability to participate in the public sphere.” This was ironic since I had updated Twitter the day before to say that I was at the Digital Youth in East Asia conference.
Anne Allison had a great presentation on Takimoto’s Welcome to the N.H.K.. She questioned the relationship between the appearance of the keitai and our seemingly increasing isolation from each other.
Ken Kissoker wrapped up the conference by saying, “On Facebook you can list your relationship status as ‘It’s complicated.” And I think that’s the answer to these questions about digital youth — it’s complicated.” Brilliant. ( ^ _ ^ )
Links
Digital Youth in East Asia
Just a few things that caught my interest at the Digital Youth in East Asia conference.
Joo-Young Jung said that in Tokyo 88% use mobile internet and 26% have a computer, and Wan-Ying Lin said, “Time spent on the Internet has no direct/linear relationship with civic engagement.”
Sophia T. Wu started off her presentation by saying that her daughter goes to sleep with her mobile and has said that she would die without it. She also noted that young people use the camera phone transgressively (taking pictures of teachers) and to capture transgressive moments, argued that the “photo archive becomes experience archive,” and claimed that the cell phone allows these young people to “leave without escaping.”
In other words, they can surpass spatial boundaries while still staying within their confines, much like the Internet — though the same could possibly be said for older technologies, such as the book or the letter. Note: I’m thinking this now, not then. Though, one thought that I did have then was, “How is a cell phone different from a soccer ball,” in the sense that each allows for particular games to be played and various forms of play to emerge.
Cathy N. Davidson had a great point I hadn’t thought of or heard, though it seemed obvious afterwards, about how the play that people engage in on social network sites such as Facebook are actually a form of labor, because they generate revenue for the host site. As she said, DIY (do it yourself) quickly becomes DIFT (do it for them).
At the end I remarked that something seemed to be getting lost in discovering that this form of play was actually labor, because what seems crucial is that these individuals are experiencing this labor as non-alienated labor. David Slater said, “Alienated labor? I don’t even know how you would measure that.” But others defended my critique and said there was a need to consider what I would call the users’ experience of pleasure, though they might use different terms.
This was all followed up by some wonderful pecha kucha presentations, but the only one that I am going to mention is Minerva Terrades’s on technoaffectivity and users’ experiences with their cell phones.
Minutiae
Ni-chome
This young male kept pacing around Advocates. It seemed as if he wanted to come to the bar, but was too scared to. Some friends told me he had been doing that for hours. After a while some gaijin went to go talk to him, and then they all left together. I thought I overheard one of them ask if there was a love hotel nearby.
A friend told me that people were encouraging each other to vote for Kanako Otsuji or her party on a Japanese website that gay men use to hook up. He was using this to show how gay men in Japan are politically involved, and I said that it is very different for someone to cast a vote in an election, because they don’t have to make themselves visible the same way you have to do if you are coming out or participating in a pride parade.
Ni-chome
Hung out with some people I’d met the week before. Started off at Advocate’s, tried GB but it was too empty, then ended up at Dragon.
This really drunk woman at Dragon kept on trying to get my attention. When I first got there she said, “I love you!”, and gave me a hug. Later she was arguing that we had the same nose. Much later she passed out on the street outside after she left.
The guys I was hanging out with at Dragon said I should try to do some voice-over work, so maybe that’s something I will look into at some point.
At one point the bartender at Dragon changed the subtitles on the television they had there showing the Simpsons from Japanese to English so that I could read it. It was a very odd experience. (But not so much later when I figured out that Dragon is a popular bar with gaijin.)
Jonathan’s
I read at Jonathan’s from about 2:30 a.m. until 7 a.m.
Shinjuku
I tried to go over to some shops in Shinjuku, but most didn’t open until 10 a.m.!
Groceries
Even Oozeki didn’t open until 11 a.m.! So, I ended up going to the “dollar” store (99 yen), which actually turned out to be better.
Minutiae
Links
Minutiae
Meeting with Karen
I met Karen in Ueno Park and we spent some time looking for a place to chat. We tried a Doutours coffee shop, but it was too smoky. Eventually, we ended up at the Starbucks near Okachimachi that I had gone to to read at on Wednesday.
A large portion of my conversation with Karen was about pleasure theory, and I was glad to find that she was into it. At one point, after I had scoffed at Lacan, she said, “You’re very compatible with Lacan,” in response to my diagrams.
Minutiae
Links
Minutiae
Links
Geikaiwa
At dinner a friend said that he learned to speak English by watching Full House. He also mentioned how cool he thought it was when Carrie said “absofuckinglutely” on Sex and the City. I told him he should watch Heathers and tried to explain the phrase “fuck me gently with a chainsaw” to him.
I told another friend that I am focusing on communications technologies now in my research, and I was happy to hear him say, without prompting, that the Internet is important to him as a Japanese gay man, because it makes it easier for him to find other gay men.
Ni-chome
While at Advocate’s I overheard a girl tell her friend, in English, “Why are we here? Why did we come to the gay area?” I didn’t get a chance to hear the answer or ask her why.
Josh came by with some friends from San Francisco, and then Josh and I stopped by GB and enjoyed music videos by Donna Summer, Paula Abdul, Kylie Minogue, The Pussycat Dolls, and Towa Tei. This was all while sharing my advice on interacting with strangers.
Denny’s
I had been looking forward to Denny’s, but there was no pancakes and eggs option, so I got tonkatsu instead.
Josh was a little embarrassed when I asked for a doggy bag, since it is rare, if not odd, to take home leftovers in Japan. I probably wouldn’t have done it if we had been anywhere else.
Minutiae
Links
Recent Comments