The Big Bumpy Shift: Digital Music via Mobile Internet (originally published in December 2000)

First Monday ◽  
2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Dolan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
File Sharing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mobile Internet ◽  
Mobile Telephone ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Internet Technologies ◽  
Mobile Telephones ◽  
Music File

This paper is included in the First Monday Special Issue: Music and the Internet, published in July 2005. Special Issue editor David Beer asked authors to submit additional comments regarding their articles. When I wrote this essay in late 2000, mobile Internet services via mobile telephone in Japan were booming. Meanwhile, young music lovers in the United States were enjoying a frenzy of music file sharing via personal computer. My central question was this: Would these two trans-pacific trends morph into a huge global mobile music phenomenon? I predicted in my essay that digital music over mobile telephones would indeed be very big, but that due to potholes and blind corners this inevitable ride would be difficult: the big bumpy shift. Looking back five years later, for Japan the shift to mobile Internet music has been big, but for the United States it has been bumpy. The key differences are (1) Japan’s 84 million mobile Internet users; (2) Japan’s lead in mobile telephone technology; and (3) Japan’s telecoms, music labels and third party developers quickly agreed to cooperate on ring tone services. But ring tones are yesterday. The future is full-song file downloads to mobile telephones. Already in Japan, one million full-song (AAC+) files per month have been downloaded since November 2004—and that is only for KDDI, one of Japan’s three major carriers. Now that is big. The promise and rise of mobile Internet technologies and markets will be remembered as one of the most profound global information technology developments of the next few years. Mobile Internet technologies and practical applications necessary for widespread public use are advancing rapidly in Japan and are likely to catch on quickly in other countries. The remarkable adoption of mobile Internet in Japan and the popularity of digital music file sharing services such as Napster in the United States create a situation in which powerful synergies are possible between these two fundamental forces. Digital music via mobile Internet creates attractive opportunities for music artists, music consumers, entrepreneurs, and major music labels facing an uncertain future for music industry distribution practices. The realization of such opportunities depends not only on technological and business innovations, but also on the willingness among all parties involved to collaborate in equitable and valuable ways.

EDITORIAL: Migration and competitiveness: Japan and the United States

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-124
Author(s):  
Philip L. Martin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Variable Cost ◽  
Fixed Cost ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Key Sectors ◽  
Past Half

Japan and the United States, the world’s largest economies for most of the past half century, have very different immigration policies. Japan is the G7 economy most closed to immigrants, while the United States is the large economy most open to immigrants. Both Japan and the United States are debating how immigrants are and can con-tribute to the competitiveness of their economies in the 21st centuries. The papers in this special issue review the employment of and impacts of immigrants in some of the key sectors of the Japanese and US economies, including agriculture, health care, science and engineering, and construction and manufacturing. For example, in Japanese agriculture migrant trainees are a fixed cost to farmers during the three years they are in Japan, while US farmers who hire mostly unauthorized migrants hire and lay off workers as needed, making labour a variable cost.

Magic and Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Sabina Magliocco
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Spirit World

This essay introduces a special issue of Nova Religio on magic and politics in the United States in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. The articles in this issue address a gap in the literature examining intersections of religion, magic, and politics in contemporary North America. They approach political magic as an essentially religious phenomenon, in that it deals with the spirit world and attempts to motivate human behavior through the use of symbols. Covering a range of practices from the far right to the far left, the articles argue against prevailing scholarly treatments of the use of esoteric technologies as a predominantly right-wing phenomenon, showing how they have also been operationalized by the left in recent history. They showcase the creativity of magic as a form of human cultural expression, and demonstrate how magic coexists with rationality in contemporary western settings.

scholarly journals Environmental justice, settler colonialism, and more-than-humans in the occupied West Bank: An introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Irus Braverman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
West Bank ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The West ◽  
The Core ◽  
Waste Concrete

Our special issue provides a first-of-its kind attempt to examine environmental injustices in the occupied West Bank through interdisciplinary perspectives, pointing to the broader settler colonial and neoliberal contexts within which they occur and to their more-than-human implications. Specifically, we seek to understand what environmental justice—a movement originating from, and rooted in, the United States—means in the context of Palestine/Israel. Moving beyond the settler-native dialectic, we draw attention to the more-than-human flows that occur in the region—which include water, air, waste, cement, trees, donkeys, watermelons, and insects—to consider the dynamic, and often gradational, meanings of frontier, enclosure, and Indigeneity in the West Bank, challenging the all-too-binary assumptions at the core of settler colonialism. Against the backdrop of the settler colonial project of territorial dispossession and elimination, we illuminate the infrastructural connections and disruptions among lives and matter in the West Bank, interpreting these through the lens of environmental justice. We finally ask what forms of ecological decolonization might emerge from this landscape of accumulating waste, concrete, and ruin. Such alternative visions that move beyond the single axis of settler-native enable the emergence of more nuanced, and even hopeful, ecological imaginaries that focus on sumud, dignity, and recognition.

scholarly journals Return Migration after Natural Disasters

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikiyasu Nakayama ◽  
Nicholas Nicholas Bryner ◽  
Satoru Mimura
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Return Migration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hurricane Sandy ◽  
Indian Ocean Tsunami ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Post Disaster

This special issue features policy priorities, public perceptions, and policy options for addressing post-disaster return migration in the United States, Japan, and a couple of Asian countries. It includes a series of case studies in these countries, which are based on a sustained dialogue among scholars and policymakers about whether and how to incentivize the return of displaced persons, considering social, economic, and environmental concerns. The research team, composed of researchers from Indonesia, Japan, Sri Lanka, and the United States, undertook a collaborative and interdisciplinary research process to improve understanding about how to respond to the needs of those displaced by natural disasters and to develop policy approaches for addressing post-disaster return. The research focused on the following three key issues: objectives of return migration (whether to return, in what configuration, etc.), priorities and perceptions that influence evacuees’ decision-making regarding return, and policies and practices that are used to pursue return objectives. This special issue includes ten articles on the following disaster cases: the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Great Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, and the Great Sumatra Island Earthquake in 2009. Important lessons for the future were secured out of these case studies, covering the entire phase of return, namely planning, implementation, and monitoring.

scholarly journals Introduction to the Special Issue: Soft Power of Civil Society in International Relations

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-476
Author(s):  
TAKASHI INOGUCHI
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Policy Makers

This special issue focuses on the role of civil society in international relations. It highlights the dynamics and impacts of public opinion on international relations (Zaller, 1992). Until recently, it was usual to consider public opinion in terms of its influence on policy makers and in terms of moulding public opinion in the broad frame of the policy makers in one's country. Given that public opinion in the United States was assessed and judged so frequently and diffused so globally, it was natural to frame questions guided by those concepts which pertained to the global and domestic context of the United States.

Afterword: The Need to Re-Balance Our Portfolio of Education Means and Ends

2020 ◽  
Vol 122 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Margaret Smith Crocco
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Teacher Education ◽  
Teacher Preparation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Means And Ends ◽  
Historical Moment

The author responds to several themes that emerge across the articles in the special issue, considering them in light of contexts of schooling, teacher education, and the contemporary historical moment in the United States. The articles raise salient concerns about what the reform movements of the last twenty or so years have meant for scholars, practitioners, and students who are involved in schooling and teacher preparation.

scholarly journals Introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-327
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Pierce ◽  
María Amelia Viteri ◽  
Diego Falconí Trávez ◽  
Salvador Vidal-Ortiz ◽  
Lourdes Martínez-Echazábal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Working Group ◽  
American Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Gender And Sexuality Studies ◽  
Hemispheric American Studies

Abstract This special issue questions translation and its politics of (in)visibilizing certain bodies and geographies, and sheds light on queer and cuir histories that have confronted the imperial gaze, or that remain untranslatable. Part of a larger scholarly and activist project of the Feminist and Cuir/Queer Américas Working Group, the special issue situates the relationships across linguistic and cultural differences as central to a hemispheric queer/cuir dialogue. We have assembled contributions with activists, scholars, and artists working through queer and cuir studies, gender and sexuality studies, intersectional feminisms, decolonial approaches, migration studies, and hemispheric American studies. Published across three journals, GLQ in the United States, Periódicus in Brazil, and El lugar sin límites in Argentina, this special issue homes in on the production, circulation, and transformation of knowledge, and on how knowledge production relates to cultural, disciplinary, or market-based logics.

#Playrevolution: Engaging Equity through the Power of Play

2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Jaye Johnson Thiel ◽  
Karen Wohlwend
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Teacher Education ◽  
High Schools ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Educational Equity ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Education Courses

This special issue continues a two-year conversation about a #playrevolution in literacies research, theory, and practice. The juxtaposition of play and revolution is intentional, highlighting the tension between play's prosocial benefits and collaborative production and the rapid change, uncertainty, and violence in today's schools, where we desperately need more humanizing elements that build people's connections to one another. The #playrevolution calls educators and researchers to explore the (un)predictable, (un)expected knots emerging through the coalescence of play and literacies, while also considering the possibilities play holds for educational equity in contemporary times. Bringing together twelve educational researchers across the United States, Canada, and Australia, this #playrevolution special issue explores the lively ecology of play-literacies in a variety of spaces—traditional writing and storytelling workshops, digital dialogues, video games, teacher-education courses, makerspaces, and playgrounds—with learners from preschools and kindergartens to high schools and universities.

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