Ito Readings

I've decided to tackle Trinh and Ito in separate postings, since my responses are quite lengthy.

Ito

- "Mobiles and the appropriation of place"
Ito discusses the impact that cell phones and other wireless technologies are having on Japanese youth. She argues that these technologies are changing the terms of co-presence, "augmenting the experiences and properties of physically co-located encounters rather than simply detracting from them." In contrast with pre-wireless generations, youth today rarely set fixed times or places for face-to-face meetings, but rather call or text each other shortly beforehand. This allows for quick changes of venue, and for people to run errands, check email, or do other tasks while they are waiting for their friends. Wireless technologies also shift the terms of inclusion and exclusion; people who are not present at the face-to-face encounter can be included by calling or texting them for their input, while people who are physically present can be excluded, such as students texting each other about a teacher during class. Ito postulates that "young people are in social contact even when alone," and that these technologies, rather than being isolating as some might fear, help youth to "personalize" their environment in an age of increasing co-optation of public spaces by corporations in the forms of advertisements and sponsorships.

- "Intimate Visual Co-Presence"
Ito examines the usage of photo-sharing via handheld devices, primarily cell phones, and the ways in which images are being integrated into social encounters. Ito notes that while camera phone users tend to take a large amount of pictures, they send only the "interesting" or "newsworthy" photos to their contacts; sending photos is somehow seen as more intrusive than texting, as many users text mundane messages (such as "I'm tired") to their friends, a practice that Ito calls "ambient virtual co-presence." Photo uploading sites such as photobucket allow users to upload their photos without seeming intrusive; friends can browse their photos at their convenience, which Ito describes "ambient monitoring of the visual stream of others." In a study conducted with young Japanese couples, Ito found that couples were much more likely than friends or acquaintances to participate in ambient visual virtual co-presence, sending each other more "mundane" photos; however, like in the case of photo uploading sites, they tended to send the messages at a time when they expected their partners to be unavailable, so that they could peruse the photos when they returned. They also sent photos to establish contact and make their partners feels as though they were together when they were not physically co-present.

It may be unusual for someone my age, but I don't use cellphones very much. The majority of my cellphone usage is calling friends to find out where to meet them; I fully agree with Ito in that wireless technology has changed the terms of physical co-presence by including non-physically-present members (I often phone absent friends during meetings to get their input on an event or next meeting time) and allowing for meetings to be organized quickly. The largest example I can think of is organizing the sit-in last year by creating a text-tree, which culminated in a 50-person rally being convened in less than ten minutes through the use of text trees, in which each person on the tree was designated to text or call several others, allowing communication to occur extremely rapidly. I can't comment much on the other article, having never sent a photograph with my camera phone, but it seems natural to me that couples would share more mundane aspects of their life, including photos, than others. Having had a roommate who spent hours upon hours with a long-distance boyfriend chatting on the phone about how she needed to vacuum and other such topics, and being guilty of equally inane conversations with significant others in the past, the desire to establish ambient virtual co-presence among couples seems to stem naturally from the broadening of the boundaries of co-presence.

"Technologies of the Childhood Imagination"
Ito discusses the children's media phenomenon Yugioh, which includes a card game, video games, television program, clothing, and other media. She describes its "multiple sites of consumption" as a "media mix," encouraging consumers to integrate various forms of media in their consumption experience, and providing interactive ways to customize participation in the series. She cites Arjun Appadurai in conceptualizing these phenomena as "collective social facts," which engage the imagination of consumers and bring them together in "imagined communities," such as fan communities. She also differentiates Yugioh from other similar children's media phenomena, such as Pokemon and Digimon, explaining that children relate to it in a different way because Yugi and his friends live in a reality that parallel viewers' own; like viewers, they purchase the cards and play the game with one another, rather than battling with monsters that are real in the series' own universe. Ito argues that media mixes like Yugioh encourage hypersociality rather than alienation, as children gather together to play the game, trade cards, and participate in other aspects of the series. She also discusses the various forms of "remix and revaluation" that occur in the series' fandom. Children remix the series through customizing their card decks and video game characters, choosing from hundreds of possible monsters to build a "team" that suits their playing style. Adult fans have also remixed the series through avenues such as BL (boys' love) doujinshi produced by mainly female amateur artists that depict the characters in romantic relationships, or male adult fans' obsession with collecting rare cards for the thrill of searching them out and purchasing them, rather than playing the card game.

I find it interesting that Ito makes a note that most anime media mix phenomena are geared toward boys and filter over to girls. It seems that lately this focus has been changing; I recently read several articles and interviews with manga authors from the "Shounen Jump" magazine, the most popular boys' manga magazine, that indicates that authors are catering more and more to female fanbases, especially fujoshi, or female fans of boys' love. A large percentage of doujinshi are based on series aimed at younger male audiences (often because they have large, mostly male casts of characters), but recently authors have been conceding that they include certain scenes in order to build subtexts that these female fans will enjoy. It will be interesting to see if this trend becomes large enough to shift the terms these series to the point where they are largely influenced by female fans and "trickle down" to male audiences.