Jöran Roslund (EMW) wrote:
> Sweden is very different from Japan: Most people here don't have
> much money to spend after paying the world's highest taxes, and our
> Lutheran culture teaches us to regard pleasure and amusements as
> shameful.
>
I didn't mention that lutheran backgroud because i thought it may go too
far, but i totally agree. The contradiction of "tradition and modernity"
(a term often used when describing the non-western world) seems to be
much deeper in europe than in japan for example.
> Of course people want to have fun, but they have to convince their
> conscience--or their boss--that they really need that WAP phone!
>
I also agree, but i wonder who is then buying millions of expensive but
obviously useless melodies and logos.
To me it seemed like society's relation to entertainment technology
became a little more relaxed in the late 90's and WAP could have been
carefully more fun-orientated.
On the other hand i just saw a report about i-mode on german TV which
really said: "In japan, many german parent's FEAR comes true: Cell
phones are more and more replacing real human contact.".." Life in such
a phoney world may seem like hell to us - but for them it's heaven."
( http://www.zdf.de/wissen/auslandsjournal/41602/index.html )
I btw guess this was the very first report, most people here still think
europe leads in mobile technology and are proud on siemens making "the
world's best cell phone".
In germany, SMS is especially popular for dating and chat amongst young
female turkish who often live with their family and are "protected" by
their brothers. And it's probably mainly those (non-lutheran) brothers
who spend their money for tiny phone accessoires - rather than a new
generation of technophile uprooted proforma christians :-)
> A similar thing happened in the early 1980s when computers like Commodore 64
> and Atari came. The sales people were saying things like, "You can use this
> computer to organize your record collection," but all people ended up doing
> was playing games!
"I need this to learn english for school" was the favorite in my youth.
> I don't know how much this kind of "self deception" is typically Swedish.
I thought it was a typically german phenomenon..
greetings
oliver wittchow
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Received on Fri Nov 3 16:52:44 2000