1 post tagged “japan”

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     I love it when the mainstream media, also known as the MSM on the net, finally grasps a concept that I have known in my professional, my academic research, and my professional research: convergence has not only linked the world it has transformed the world. The United States literally went wild this year with the introduction of the iPhone, the iTouch iPod, the classic iPod, Google Apps, the Wii and new marriages of Digg and Facebook with Microsoft. In fact, the iPhone was named the invention of the year by Time Magazine as the first massively adopted convergence device that has an ease of use and innovative features like touch screens, iTunes and You Tube with the Mac interface.  A report by the USA Today demonstrates the power of convergence worldwide, and how it has already conquered Japan and people are turning to handhelds like smartphones, handheld media devices like the iPod, gaming devices, and cell phones instead of personal computers.

    Experts like Tapscott & Williams, (2006); Steve Jobs, (2007); Bill Gates, (2007); Marc Prensky, (2006); Henry Jenkins (2006); James Paul Gee, (2003, 2004, 2005); and others have been predicted the convergence avalanche. The recent development of the Internet, the iPod, the personal computer, and web-based tools like You Tube and Facebook into single convergence devices that can held in one's hand is the clearly the future of entertainment, learning, government, commerce, home, and work in one device with a quality web camera and video camera with note taking and large memory capacity (Gates, 2007; Jobs, 2007; Pavlik, 2000; Tapscott & Williams, 2006).

     The personal nature of cell phones has now extended past the traditional web experience provided by the personal computer. Personal computers, like laptops, are portable, but lack the personal portability and the ability to make calls on the run. Increasingly, our cell phones are becoming portable handheld electronic extensions of our minds, our personalities and our core beliefs and values. McLuhan (1967, 1968) suggested that would occur in the 1960's that we would live in a connected electronic global village and that the medium would be the message.

    To be sure, we are moving closer to Star Trek than any of us ever could have imagined more rapidly than most people could have ever thought.

Here is the USA Today article below.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/gear/computing/2007-11-04-japanpcs_N.htm?csp=Tech