Inspire

Cultural differences between the West and East

I wonder what this article from Wired means for digital media in general. For user generated media from different cultures, for the emerging MMORPGs and virtual 3D worlds, for the emerging trend of visualization of the Web (and its data), for Google Earth long term etc.  My personal experience in China back in 1996 was the younger generation in China still is focused on family ties and harmony, albeit less than the older generations. Culture is quite inert.

"Asians and North Americans really do see the world differently. Shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene, according to University of Michigan researchers. The key thing in Chinese culture is harmony, Nisbett said, while in the West the key is finding ways to get things done, paying less attention to others. And that, he said, goes back to the ecology and economy of times thousands of years ago."

Second-hand and new durable goods

For me this is an eye-opener. The advantages of digital media relating to used and new goods. Traffic still rules it seems...

"New durables compete with their used counterparts, the most common example is books, especially textbooks. On Amazon these days you can typically buy a used version of any book. Does this availability hurt Amazon's profits? An article (available free for a limited time) in the July 28 NYT says no. Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago, in a new study: Are Durable Goods Consumers Forward Looking?, suggests that a new/used durable market is of value to Amazon and eBay because it obviously attracts different kinds of buyers, and increases the frequency of visit to online locations. A very interesting view of markets ... as the web continues to provide these transparent markets, durable good manufacturers will have to better understand how they interact. Jeff Bezos of Amazon agrees in the article.  An interesting and insightful view of consumer markets."

Mobile phones as detection devices

Wired shows us in this article that mobile phone usage can be extended.

"As cell phones evolve to include souped-up games, streaming video and MP3 players, some University of California at Berkeley professors and graduate students want to slip a pollution detector into the mix. They are working to develop cheap wireless sensors that, once fitted inside cell phones, could sniff out anything from biological weapons to traffic patterns. While the sensors might not be a typical cell-phone add-on, those involved in the research claim the sheer number of mobile phones in use could make such a system a boon for worldwide data collection and problem solving."