I'm a big fan of Doug Kaye's
IT Conversations. If you haven't checked it out, then please do. I'm half way through listening to
Halley Suitt interview Joi Ito and I have a couple of notes for the virtual margin.
1. As a recording of a telephone conversation rather than a professional studio audio quality interview, the listener feels as though he or she is listening into a private telephone conversation - OK, so the listener
is listening to a telephone conversation - but the nature of the medium makes it sound more interesting in a CIA sort of way. By listening you can also detect that Halley and Joi have to rely exclusively upon verbal communications skills to communicate clearly with each other and, as a by-product this benefits the audience. It seems to sound more interesting than would a taping of two people sitting in a studio together, where the only communication the listener gets is the verbal, the two involved parties keeping all the non-verbal communication to themselves. This acute communication dynamic, combined with the telephone conversation quality audio gives the listener a greater sense of intimacy.
In short, you shold listen to it, I'm sure that you'll enjoy the act of listening, nevermind the conversation, more than you expect.
2. Joi also articulates a very profund difference in the way in which people inside and outside the US engage with and live within and outwith the Web. In short, US Web users step in and out of the Web (giving fuel to the concept of Cyber Space being a fundamentally different place to the offline world) due to the fact that their primary means of getting online is the personal computer, whereas thanks to their predominantly more cellphone oriented cultures, Japanese & Europeans experience a more permanent and pervasive form of interaction with the Web.
Rather than US webizens moving in and out of Cyberspace, Japansese and Europeans experience the Web moving in and out of their lives. I suppose this poses the question of the validity of Cyberspace as a concept, or at least as strong a concept, outside of the USA.
I recall Halley being bemused by how much I used my cellphone in my car when she visited the UK last year, when I instinctively used it to look up telephone numbers by SMS, checked out flight times for various airports and then booked a flight for her all within the duration of a single engagement whilst driving along the motorway. It seemed less funky to me than it did to Halley.
Stark but subtle cultural differences.