Interesting: in Japan, half of the top sellers in books are written for mobile phones. The writer goes on to say: “I can’t see anyone in Western nations waking up tomorrow and seeing mobile phone composed novels on the top seller lists, but usually Japan is years ahead on many tech fronts”.

That right there is an expression of a common misunderstanding I think: that there is a technical road that all cultures follow. That technological evolution is somehow independent of the culture in which it grows. That there is a “road”, on which Japan might be “ahead”. Which is the wrong way to think about this. Japan makes different choices as a society, including different technology choices. They’re not necessarily ahead or behind; they’re on their own path.

Related: even when different cultures use the same technology, they’ll often assign different values to it. This post on Japanese bloggers illustrates that nicely: “Japan’s conformist culture has embraced a technology that Americans often use for abrasive self-promotion and refashioned it as a soothingly nonconfrontational medium for getting along.”

Now we’re talking.