On 26 Mar 2007, at 12:06, Philip Sugai wrote:
> And while
> these speculations make for fun reading, they typically fall apart
> when
> market research is conducted on them. At least that's been my
> experience with them.
Have you found that fear of theft / vandalism has any significant
bearing?
At first blush, one would expect the (for example) UK's comparatively
high crime rates against property, compared to Japan, and what I
assume is a higher rate of vandalism, to militate against the
ubiquity of (expensive) computer devices in public places.
Japanese FEAR of crime, as a ratio of actual crime is notoriously
high - but it tends to be fear of crime against the person. By and
large Japanese people don't expect to be at risk of being mugged in
the street for their possessions/gadgets in the way one does, for
example, in London.
<soto id="voce">And nor do foreigners who live here. Unless, one is
amongst a large number of other foreigners, in which case "London
rules" apply...< /soto>
A question for Brits living in Blighty: do Brits now generally expect
their gadgets to work? 15 years ago, that generation brought up on
Uncle Clive (Sinclair)'s marvels generally expected gadgets of any
form to be buggy, to overheat, to chew batteries and to fail.
Is that still a pervasive social expectation of gadgets in Britain?
If so, it would militate against ubicomp (gosh what a horrid word!)
when compared to Japan - where the general expectation is for things
to keep working and not be nicked.
Nick
#voce{
vol:Shhhh!;
}
Received on Mon Mar 26 15:55:45 2007