NTT DoCoMo To Study The Social Impact Of Mobile Phones
from the just-how-annoying-are-those-ringtones? dept
Japanese mobile phone company NTT DoCoMo has set up an entire research institute to study the social impact of mobile phone usage. Specifically, they're going to look at "impact on society and culture, legal systems, industry impact and mobile phones as a social infrastructure." Despite being funded by a mobile phone carrier, they claim that the institute will look for both positive and negative impacts of the technology, but the goal will be on using those results to help promote the upside and minimize the downside. At last, we might find out just how annoyed the average person is by those people chatting away around them.
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I don't miss the old days
Or the old days of Japan, where installing a new phone line took a few months and cost $800? Each household was only "allowed" to have one telephone (issued by the phone company), so people wrapped it in cloth like a holy relic.
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impacts
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