Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.
I just spent a week in Japan, where I attended my first Japanese wedding in Tokyo. It was lovely, different and the same all at once. I've been coming here almost annually since 1998, and while most things have remained the same, I've watched Japan's pace of consumer technology innovation take a seeming nosedive in recent years. I have no solid evidence to prove this -- just some observations.
When I first visited Tokyo in 1998, Japanese mobile phones were years ahead of their American and European equivalents. Japanese mobiles were lightweight, had high-resolution -- for the time -- color screens, allowed internet access and some even had video cameras that supported real-time video chat.
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Peripherals, Software