Many of the countries that censor the internet are among those with the highest text messaging participation. With text messaging’s recent role in inciting Australian race riots and galvanizing Chinese peasants, is it any less potent a resource? Perhaps the countries that interpret it as benign view it as their own communication tool, unlike the internet, often perceived as a tool of Western cultural imperialism.

I recently read an article that suggests that text messaging challenges cultural and social norms by inspiring problematic relationships between the sexes. Arab Mobile Communication Studies noted that Bluetooth increased interaction between the sexes in Saudi Arabia. Text messaging enabled relationships to develop in a repressive environment in which they may have not otherwise formed. While this may have thrilled the men and women involved, it undermined social and cultural values. The Saudi woman interviewed for the article added, “This form of advanced technology has deprived us of the concept of traditional romance.”

While this crushed a traditional Saudi woman’s romantic ideals, it unleashed new forms of intimacy. The cultural and social challenges stem from people’s abilities to communicate with one another. While fundamentalists perceive this as a threat to their way of life, perhaps it’s apart of the evolution. Have new technologies changed both how we engage and the rules of engagement? Does the channel through which we deliver our messages change their meaning? Does a traditional message become less so when delivered by text message?

Yes. It can become more personal and interactive. It can even change ones experience with religious experience. Let’s take religion and text messaging as our example case study. Consider Rabbi Lawrence of Sydney’s Great Synagogue’s SMS and Power Point in his presentations; Hindus offering their prayers to Ganesh by SMS; Jews SMS’s to the great wall; Catholics in the Philippines Text Mary; Muslims relying on SMS for prayer and fast times. Rabbi Lawrence explains the value proposition of this new technology: “People want religious leadership that isn’t too remote from them.”

It’s ironic that technology, typically viewed as impersonal, has created such intimate connections.

How dependant are text messaging campaigns on the cultures that support them? Will the same Asian and European campaigns work in the United States? Over 1 million Koreans bank by phone . UK Coke declared the mobile channel potentially more viable than TV. Yet with over 66 million people text messaging in the United States, why hasn’t it had a greater impact on our culture?

The Ipod revolution had to occur first. With song and video ipods portable and pervasive, we’re expecting more from our mobile devices. Ringtones and mobile jewelry providing the 12-24 demographic with new ways to personalize their cell. Stock quotes and weather alerts are introducing SMS to a new demographic.
We’re due for the cultural shift.

We’ve seen it in some respects with text message advocacy. U2’s mobile fundraising, Hurricane Katrina’s sms relief, and a text campaign to save former gang member Tookie Williams are recent examples. However, text messaging is not yet nearly as essential to the average American as it is to the rest of the world.

A Boston based company is challenging that assumption by incorporating text messaging with virtual community building in real spaces. LocaModa Inc’s is launching Wiffiti, virtual bulletin boards in public spaces like coffee shops and bars. The Someday Café one of my local spots, is their first worldwide launch next week. I went there today and observed several things that might just make this idea work. College students. Nonverbal communication. Bulletin boards and collaborative art books. I look forward to seeing how this flesh and blood community translates into a virtual one and wonder if the technology will have an impact on the demographics in Someday Cafe.

Culture shifts start local; I’ll keep you informed when they launch.

*Picture taken with my citizen journalist weapon of choice
Of: Someday Cafe Bulletin Board before change

See also:
Mobile Activism
Mobile Community

Munk on the Yangzte River
Originally uploaded by mortsan.

Unmediated blog posted this exceptional blurb about tele-praying over the internet. It raises many questions. On the one hand, I can see this leading toward online marketing schemes, unleashing a new breed of religious ‘fundraising.’

This also raised a more interesting question about the nature of the online space. Can there be a ‘holy’ space online? In what ways can that space be created: through typing rituals and chants in virtual rooms? Perhaps the confession will take place in a private chat space with a religious official? Read along sacred texts with annotations. Email favorite passages to friends and share in the pure light of the computer screen.

*Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mortsan/46475821/

Los Angeles mural
Originally uploaded by cjanebuy.

Samuel Huntington’s “The Hispanic Challenge,”
raises many heated questions about assimilation and immigration in the United States. The essay is well worth the read, and contains exceptional graphs about the Hispanics in the United States and outrageous quotes like the one below:

“Sosa ends his book, The Americano Dream, with encouragement for aspiring Hispanic entrepreneurs. “The Americano dream?” he asks. “It exists, it is realistic, and it is there for all of us to share.” Sosa is wrong. There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans
will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English.”

Huntington’s arguments are based on a vision for the United States that regards immigrants as a threat to the National identity. However, this identity no longer exists. What we have in its place is not a fixed concept, but fluid one. Our communities aren’t defined by gates, but have transcended them to include local, national, real and virtual. As we spend more of our time connecting online, we have more freedom to associate with the terms that define us.

Take the phenomena of tagging for example. We select the words that save files on del.icio.us, identify pictures in flickr and define our interests in Myspace. Our culture has become a fluid concept, exchanged as easily as you download a file, self-identified as readily as you upload.

Will the tendencies toward an online global culture have any real impact on the daily life of a recent U.S. Hispanic immigrant? Will the ideas of ethnic enclaves, which apply in large cities like New York and Los Angeles, also take hold in the virtual communities we create? Yes. We will have more choice about with whom we associate and more ability to participate in the cultures we define.

Not only is American society openly supporting the dreams of immigrants, even in other cultures and languages, it is also incorporating them into narratives supported both on and offline. We can identify as distinctly American, still, only because our voice possesses the qualities that Huntington criticizes: diversity, multicultural energy and global participation.

*Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cjanebuy/61498779/

addicted
Originally uploaded by GodsMoon.

I. I just returned from Target with my girlfriend. We parted ways to divide and conquer the store. As I roamed, I saw many of the same guys over and over again. Our pacing gave us away, and we connected the way guys do when they have to hold their girlfriend’s purse.

Then something happened. It was as if all the guys were drawn to the same some place at the same time. Crying six year old boys and bored 30 year olds hovered around the X-Box 360 aisle display. Suddenly, age didn’t matter and boredom was no longer a factor.

I patiently waited my turn to play and observed as the six year old champion demolished me with the same ease as he did the rest of his challengers. When his parents returned, he went back to acting like the bratty screaming kid observed only minutes earlier in the aisles. And when our girlfriends and wives returned, we went back to our mature selves – disinterested in video games – and of course, unwilling to admit defeat to a 6 year old.

II. We played “Call of Duty 2.” It’s a traditional war game providing players with realistic graphics and a controller that vibrates when shots are fired. When your character dies , the screen fades to black. A meaningful quote appears, as if to provide your imaginary life with significance. Here’s an example of three such quotes:

1. “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” –Joseph Stalin
2. “Old men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.” – Herbert Hoover
3. “So long as they don’t get violent, I want to let everyone say what they wish, for I myself have always said exactly what pleased me.” — Albert Einstein

Their meaning is quickly rendered absurd by how quickly it is bypassed by players far more interested in rejuvenating their characters than lamenting their life or pondering the meaning of sacrifice. Reading the quotes in this context is like opening a fortune cookie to find wisdom about the Rwandan genocide.

III. When we left the store, I shared the experience of the game and Xbox 360 with friends. They all swapped stories about the quick money they made purchasing and selling the systems on Ebay. They were surprised I hadn’t done the same.

IV. Earlier this week, I spoke with one of the big three online advertising agencies and learned first hand how lucrative and popular video game advertising is. This agency represents more than 1 billion impressions within video games and is selling them on a CPM basis. They explained that generation y spends more time with their video games than with any other media they represent.

V. Anyone up for a game of Super Mario Cart? As long as you’re older than 7, you’re on.

*Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/godsmoon/4445456/