Are Cell Phones Our Last Hope for Literacy?
Half of Japan's top 10 best-selling books last year -- half! -- started out as cell phone-based books, according to the New York Times.
The books-on-phones genre started when a home-page-making Web site company realized that people in Japan were writing serialized novels on their blogs, and figured out how to autocreate cell phone-based novels from the blog entries.
The popularity of these blog novels on cell phones sparked huge interest among readers in writing such novels. Last month, the site passed the 1 million novel mark.
Some of these amateur writers become so famous on the cell phone medium that the big publishing houses seek them out and offer lucrative deals for print versions. The No. 5 best-selling print book in Japan last year, according to the Times, was written first on a cell phone by a girl during her senior year in high school.
One of the apparent reasons that cell phone literature has taken off in Japan is that so many Japanese people, including students, have long daily commutes in trains too crowded for open books. The size and portability of cell phones have made them the most important source for all media, including "printed" media.
Which raises the question: Can the English-speaking world REPLICATE JAPAN'S CELL PHONE BOOK CRAZE?
6:13 PM * PERMALINK * 3 comments
Comments:
In a word, YES. It's pretty obvious that everything is converging into the phone. I used to carry a laptop, pre-phone palm pilot, and cell phone. Then it was just the laptop and Treo. Now it's just a Treo (most of the time) and I'm eyeing an iPhone. Seems like my road warrior peers are doing the same. I can even do Powerpoint and surf the web off a Treo.
At the other end of the spectrum, everyone starts with a phone, and most people just want more from their phone and don't want anything else. Especially young people.
At this point, I have no more interest in carrying around a book than I do another laptop, Kindle, second phone, etc. That would be going backwards. I do like to read from my phone- mostly the net, but also ebooks. Yes, the screen sucks, but I'm doing it for relatively brief periods between other activities. I know the experience will improve with technology.
And hey, we've learned again and again that content and convienence trump quality as technology evolves, and phones are winning in both.
Perhaps instead of giving every kid in Africa a $100 laptop, we should give them an iphone...
These are very true observations. Especially those in the end of the article.
Because of the recent rise of the multimedia that made it an extremely wining business, more and more money is invested in it. Youtube is new, and it's cool and today the written word is somewhat forgotten, but I'm positive this is just a period which will pass. After all, writing has been around for centuries.
The means of receiving the written word will change, but if you think about it, books are important not because of their physical appearance or their way of distribution, but in the messages they deliver, if i can put it this way. We already saw the rice of the blogs.
And if Kindle isn't successful this is because it isn't in the right time and place. By the way, will they distribute it in Japan?
I hope that america can create program similar to the one found in Japan. I am very much interested in writing a short story in a cellphone. It's compact size and the feeling of privacy helps people like me feel comfortable spending sometime looking at the screen and writing without worrying about other people looking. Especially when on the train or setting in a cafe.
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