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Comment by caudicus | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much of this is sort of self-feeding behavior: e.g. in America we use email a lot at work, so emails are answered quickly, which reinforces its use. But in China, they don't use email so much, so email isn't answered quickly, which discourages its use. Maybe it's more initial conditions and less culture.

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I think it has a lot to do with culture. Russians are very much like Chinese in this regard: voice mail has never gained any traction there, and email is considered somewhat 2nd grade.

Email is for things that weren't important enough to deserve a phone call. Phone calls are getting replaced by SMS messages, especially among younger crowd, but email/voicemail are nowhere close to importance they have among Americans.

A typical example: my neighbours sent me an evite for a party next weekend, in Russia that would be a bit insulting: my parents would think "nah, it's not a real invitation, otherwise they would have called"

Americans value their "personal space" too much, and email/voicemail allows you to do just that: communicate with people without getting out of this bubble of comfort. Eastern cultures reject that: if you want to talk to me, - then TALK to me. That's the attitude. (exaggerated a bit, but delivers the message)

Well that's no fun. With IM or email you can talk to 50 people at once.

Or are you referring to business communications? I'm sure that no one in the US undervalues the effectiveness and persuasiveness of voice communication for critical negotiations.

On second reading, I think you're just referring to the resistance of old people to new technology?

This is not about technology at all, it's about ways to communicate. As I said, differences are larger than most people realize.

Here is another example not related to tech or "old people". A co-worker had a birthday party few weeks ago. The next Monday I had a "Thank you" card on my desk, even though he's sitting next door. You see, a card like this will only freak a Russian out: a card? why? couldn't he have said something instead?

This is why IM and SMS picked off very quickly over there. I've met people with ICQ numbers on their business cards as early as mid 90s: these media fit their culture better. Email is just like a birthday card: too detached, too impersonal, not real-time, etc. The only email I ever get from my parents always contains short and usual "Call us", everything else is too important to be shared "indirectly".

It's all changing, of course. And my views and memories may be getting a little rusty (haven't been there since '02), but culture does play a major role in everything we do, including preferences for technologies.

My parents are Taiwanese. I was raised in America for most of my childhood. I got to see how my Americans friends hanged out both as a teenager and as a professional. I got to see how my parents friends interact with each other.

As tx wrote, this isn't a technology thing, it is a cultural thing.

Back in 1992, the author Neal Stephenson went over to China to do research for his book, Diamond Age. He wrote a whole essay on that trip in Wired Magazine. One story he shared was about the cell phones. Powerful, influential men had were early adopters of those cell phones -- big, huge, klunky, mildly phallic. These men would go to restaurants with their entourage and would stand The Cell Phone in the middle of the table to show off the depth and breadth of their social network.

Stephenson had talked to one such guy about it, who complained that it was hard to lug this around. So Stephenson told him how people in Hong Kong and the southern portions were handling it -- by getting a flunky in their entourage to carry it.

If that sounds absurd, there are lots of technologies that have a decidedly American cultural slant to them. Back in George Washington's time, the lawn of the White House was kept short with grazing sheep. In those days, if you had a huge lawn that was not for grazing animals, that was a sign of wealth. Look at this huge lawn! I'm so wealthy, I can afford not to put the animals out there to pasture!

After WWII, with rising population, massive increases in manufacturing capabilities, and financing, owning a house in the suburbs became a foundational symbol of the American Dream.

And guess what? Each of those houses have a lawn. Which a whole set of technologies were invented for the caring and feeding of the lawn: lawnmowers, leaf-blowers, high-tech fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides. People didn't have sheep anymore, and it isn't as if the kids went out there to play (not with video games beckoning in the house). So why do you keep seeing people watering their lawns, fertilizing it until it becomes absurdly green, all just to trim it to the perfect height? If you kept it unkempt, your neighbors start snubbing you, because they are angry at you for lowering their property value.

You can take any technology and you can see uses that are always tied to some cultural context. As a culture with a lot of gadgets, we'd like to think that we're using technology in an objective, rational, optimized way. But we're not. People are people.

All of the programmers I know in China use MSN. When you're seated 4-6 to a table the environment is more conducive to peer learning and there's less need for email to communicate.

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