Professor Merryman

One box does it all

Can they mix? Some advocates of Cyworld, the hugely popular social networking site in South Korea and now Japan, America and China, say that it is able to combine 3D and 2D worlds. I signed up today to check it out but found it only let me edit my room. The features for uploading photos and all of the other bells and whistles are very nice but it’s not a virtual world. So this got me to thinking whether we are going to run into too many choices. Just what is it that people need in order to say they are happy in their social network.

I was talking to my wife about this tonight and posed an idea to her. I asked if she would want to buy a social networking computer. 「何？」　Was her reply. I explained that it would be a small laptop computer that would open up with a browser into your virtual room, apartment or house. You would be able to navigate to four sections of your life: Friends, family, work and a club (English school was my example). All of these areas would share one main calendar (like Google calendar), one main social netwrking platform (like Mixi) and one main media library (like a YouTube/Flickr). The idea is that this 40,000 yen machine would be all you would need to share, download and send files in your social network without being bothered with Outlook, Excel or any other programs that find there way into your computer.   Hmmm.