Fast-forwarding present: The rise of personalisation and customisation in mobile technologies in Japan

As we migrate towards the so-called paradigm shift of 3G (third-generation) mobile technologies commonly known as mobile with broadband how much (if at all) will the user's relationship change to the increasingly convergent and remediated mobile device? To explore the history of mobile telephony is to tell not just a biography of a technology but of a technoculture; like all domesticated technologies (i.e. TV, radio), the mobile phone is as much a cultural and social artefact as it is a technology. One of the key indicators of the mobile's social and cultural dimensions is the role of customisation whereby users adapt, interpret and personalise the technology into everyday life. With the move into 3G mobile media we see the industry focusing on customising features and modes of profiling that seem to suggest that the tailoring of the device will be much more in the hands of the producers and designers rather than users. In order to explore some of the modes of user activity and their often-subversive relationship to producers this paper will explore the growth of the 'user as producer' model in the context of a location already immersed in 3G mobility, Tokyo.