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Technology and Cultural Difference in China
Basile Zimmermann , University of Geneva
Friday, May 7, 2010 · 12:04 p.m. · 27m 06s
How one can better and faster understand what is going on with technology when it comes to cultural differences? Based on cases studies in China involving search engines and social networking sites, this talk presents a simple methodology to use when designing or analyzing new technologies. It will also provide some perspectives on the future of the Internet of things under China's tremendous progress.
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Transcriptions
Note: this content has been automatically generated.
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northwest go to china for the next uh um a dog
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and the question uh progress talk is what happens
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when technology uh intersects with very different culture
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all uh settings and surgeons uh west
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china very different culture all uh compacts the same technology
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uh what happens uh and almost be carries on to suppress organised in geneva he started things
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like chinese so change inside chinese uh so some apples chinese uh uh electronic musicians
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uh so let's see what uh what we
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wound up is welcome but remember how
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what
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um hello everyone my first time and it had a very uh or an honour and and scare
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anyway um so this basically this uh presentation is about um
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it's it's like a quick overview of my work
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university at department of the chinese studies and basically yeah a
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bit focused on the idea of technology and cultural difference
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so i think everyone here is a critique here about what is technology sorry so
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maybe it's a good thing to to start with this question uh what is
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a cultural difference what do we mean when we speak about cultural difference
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uh the easy as a example is with language uh it's a chinese
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on one side and roman after that on the other side
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so what happens when this kind of difference
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uh meets a technology our technological issue
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i think this one is maybe the most famous one you maybe you read about it in
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the newspaper and it's just the idea that a website or an email address is
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usually written in english i don't know if anyone here has ever received an email with the
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four in which means different than english language
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email address person i have ever and this difference
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related to the question of encoding in computer technology you can observe a
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new this kind of question also in various kinds of uh objects
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i like this one very much uh it actually it's the sticker of
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a bicycle i bought in china in two thousand and four
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and it's very interesting because they are four languages this to on the one side and two on the other side
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um as you can see uh if you can speak french or read french uh every
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french specific letters like the the x. m. figure for example is
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to put a display it by a small a square
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and the uh if you speak spanish you will not just that there is the same kind of problem with the spanish language
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on the other side a german and english so the german warning is
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uh has the same kind of problem uh for example the now
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being expect it's fine i'm speaking about encoding of course uh
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there are other uh syntax dramatic issues there but
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something strikes me uh in this uh sticker so what happens with
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chinese because as you so in the first slide um
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in chinese every sign is different uh firming
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this is an email i received from a chinese friend uh_huh
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so it's very easy to read actually it's yeah basil
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i'm sorry i cannot come from for the uh generate twenty two uh but i'm sure your talk will
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be fine a piece and i better get your family your friends one fake and you are not just that
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the punctuation marks are okay yeah that come up with and also the twenty seconds you can read it
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everything that is different from english is corrupt that so why is this
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um
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quite easy um if you look at
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can coatings for example you because you're not just that um so the first
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line is the text and the second one is the the encoding
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something like the french back something you think or they like this
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and uh for chinese or two chinese characters think about it like this uh_huh and english back
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uh is encoded as english text
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so um this is related to history uh
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protection history i would i would say
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simply the the idea that when this technological process started uh people were
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thinking about the english speaking users and then other uses again after
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so
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kind of um process
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is always a they're inside in the technology another example
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of this different from recordings with the the keyboard
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uh this is a keyboard in china actually at the chinese friends brace is the boy he's you think you're right
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this is another a keyboard another's chinese friend in china so
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basically is the same keyboard as the keyboard euro we
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are all using except some people with the ipod things like that so how chinese uses deal with this
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at the moment the uh the input method that most people use in china is this one
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so you have first step is are you write the pronunciation of
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the characters and then you choose among the section of characters
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it works fine very fast actually i i think that many
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chinese users can write faster than we write in english
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it's the same idea as in a text editor you write a generate twenty second it
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will suggest to seven and ten for example so it it can be really fat
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if you observe closely uh what happens when people use this system you know you will not
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is that okay it's fast it's efficient but then people have difficulties to write by hand
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uh because knowledge of the strokes is not required by the system
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so i will stop here and say a few words about
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something else i will i will use h. three different examples and then uh go back to the
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an idea of technology and culture difference i wanted to say a few words about who will
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because everybody to talks about cool all the time and uh actually due to um
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i will focus on the logo add a good logo is very interesting it's sad because today
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it's a one of those fancy logo so if you try to access will china
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it will be directed to a cool hong kong and but it today it doesn't look like this most of the time it looks like that
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and my interest for the google logo started a long time ago my first
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screenshot is the two thousand and four and the i found very interesting
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the way google was looking at chinese culture uh as you can see on the first one and
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it was just saying this is google for chinese language then later who will start it
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the company based in china google china so the change it
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with good china just just a few months i think
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and then they decided to you to have a chinese name will which means the harvesting some
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the the name is not very good and the uh and today it looks like this
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this is how it looks on the chinese web page a sign about
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combat c. and it's a portal so something like the whole
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and you can see here is a google advertisement if you click on its axis we'll try not
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why is it interesting
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um again i like to use compare isn't to try to make things more interesting more clear
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uh by do is goggles main competitor in china and by do is
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very interesting a company because it is much more successful than google
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uh in terms of market share i think we will has about thirty something percent
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and by do that sixty something percent can check this on an exam
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so let's have a look at the at the logo
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i don't know how you feel when you look at this for me it's really
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is striking this difference of the size between a chinese language content and english
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what about by do is very successful company if we imagine and
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i do is cool it's very successful works the same way
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and we apply
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properties of the ball the logo to uh buy do ago becomes like this
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and then by do is so successful they go to united states and they
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want also to put advertisement on the big portal and becomes like this
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so i don't know how you feel at this point when you look at yeah obeyed
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with chinese characters on it i think this is interesting because it can get hapless
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i think what the chinese speaking percent feel when it looks at the page in chinese with
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roman after that content and um this is a very important question perception uh
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other cultures
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um in china
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if you work with china if you plan to worked with china in the future
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um i would advise you to have a close look at the wiki
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be that we keep it up h. uh about the unequal treaties
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you can also check the the other one which is called the about the option war
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it's something every chinese knows about and almost no
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one knows about in the west it's about
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something that happened at the middle of the nineteenth century when the germans
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the french british went to china attacked china could mediated china
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and uh uh actually uh it's for some of these people it
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was in order to localise a option traits of rocks
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so um this is something we need to know and we need to ponder to think about when
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a company such as google goes to china and tries to say we don't do evil
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um what is evil what is your definition of evil at that time the west's was
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the evil i think it's a or at least it's a complicated question so
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don't expect chinese people just to believe that you want to help them
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everybody will agree on the idea that most probably you want to making big money
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you want freedom are kept people that this
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needs a little more
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stop here for go go if you have a question about this uh we can talk about it
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in question
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i wanted to give another example so the first one was about keyboard so technology
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and cultural difference second one an american company weston company going to china
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and this one is the chinese company in china it's very successful one what happened
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casing long is actually the extremely successful um social networking sites uh
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that's the address wanna check it out it's chinese only
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and
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yeah that's that's
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um
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i was very lucky because in a kind seen one started in chapter of two thousand and eight
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and i started to take screen shots in july two thousand
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eight because i nazis people my friends are talking
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about this and i thought okay let's have a look and what's amazing progression and uh so successful
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at that time phase book was not a blocked now if you are in china you
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want to access if it would doesn't work but at that time it work
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no one around me used faith but they were were going
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national so again uh this is my page on uh
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catching on july two thousand eight i tried to use this tool of compare
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isn't to try to figure out what where the main differences between
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a phase book in catching well of course there are many others sell thousands of social networking sites in china
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um
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alright so
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actually what i thought was special was that face book had
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is these are always been shot from july two
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thousand it's it's interesting 'cause it's the moment where i when the two sides were uh active in different
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fixable kept to a pages to zone one was the user profile
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user page second one is you see friends and for me
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i someone had only one page information about yourself on top
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information about your friends uh on the lower part
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second difference phase book had a very strict policy in
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very clear information about privacy be protected private
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we will never tell uh other people about who's page you views of who's
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photos you you checked and so on pressing one big exactly the opposite
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everywhere you go we can follow you people you don't know they visit your
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page you will know what time when it happened and so on so
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there was a if if i try to summarise this would be faced would start by closing everything and then you can
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open it if you want try someone thought it by opening everything and then you can close it if you want
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this this feature is sometimes called footprints actually
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you can find it easily in a job
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another difference with advertisements face book used posters
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many other ways also but posters were visible on the main pages to the the arts three at the time
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they were only one casing one never had posters on the bank main page but the design um
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many teens not by external companies by pressing on themselves
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and inside the games that was also but always advertisement coming after some time the first time
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i so advertisement pressing on with one year off to the start of the company
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you have an example here with the some game like parking wars were advertisement is on the
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wall behind the cars and the second one i love that one is with virtual gifts
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this is something i i think fascinating every time someone has
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a birthday or whatever you can send gifts it's free
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somehow the gifts are advertisement this one is the f. false they're playing
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and uh sometimes it's more applications um i wanted to show this one
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some movie
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doesn't work
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when you move to the next slide or your doesn't react
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she that the computer froze okay i can do without that um
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july do without that yeah okay so basically it's so smarts car you have this little smart parent
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and when you can you can give it to someone and you have a play button
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and when you click on it's the card grows bigger and ah flowers roses
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and then the car uh by the skin of the car would change becomes a tiger
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with the you this year the europa tiger in china then you have something like happy year of the
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tiger something like this a works fine people just keep sending adds a to each other so
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that's it for catching one so what um what's the point about this i think one
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the most important thing for me is the idea that technology is culture
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anything that is technological is also something that is
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cultural you chart new charity does not exist
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uh thank you with technology and the second thing we need to relate to this first a point is
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the fact that's a comment big china uh uh the
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economy of china is growing really really fast
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if you look at the stats of course there's not only economy but
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you can look at uh what's happening happening in a university is
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uh how many license they are the the the those people are uh registering and so on
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it's it's completely obvious china will be a member of the top three the very soon
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so that means these two point together that one
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day this little diagram will change into
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and this is going to be a big question for us
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how will technology look on the day it was re invented by the chinese defeats their own needs
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so
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i wanted to stop here but speaking with my leafed colleagues they said you need to give
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some examples you need to answer this question so i would like to try um
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my feeling is that there are three things that should happen one is already a happening is
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issues related to the language if you go to channel you're not is
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that the government has been working for a very long time to
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have its own technologies its own operating system and a different system for web
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addresses that can uh uh that allow the use of chinese characters
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computers have some kind of a graphic tab that's for sure they will get rid
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of the keyboard uh interface things like that so things related to the language
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and the the after that
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second one is um
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more abstract
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my feeling is that computer technology has inside it uh something we could call weston logic
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it's something you can see if you look at a software that plays chess
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computers are very good at chess and they are so bad at go again logo and the logic
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inside these two games are different i asked a specialist about this and they told me and
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the thing is they don't know how to write a good software to play go and a very clever people
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my feeling is that it may be that the internal logic of the computer is something
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western and that this very special asian logic of the go gain doesn't fit
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this is the second one the third one is things related to
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the legal system and how how we want to live with technology
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china is the number one country in the world for um
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the internet the number of internet users is much more than the united
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states the number of pages in chinese is huge is growing so
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good chinese government wants this bait put billions and billions in
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the uh in these new technologies because they want
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they believe this will help the economy at the same time but also put a
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lot of money to find out what is dangerous and what is not
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uh uh an example of something that is dangerous is in china there's something that is a phenomenon that is called
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a general source or it means human flesh search
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it's about people uh hunting other people
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for example a guy who cheated on his wife and his wife killed herself
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and then people start to try to find where these guy you is destroyed his life
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something really scary and the government is working on this it may be that so many things happen
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in china have that at the moment it happens here they have already find the solution
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so maybe we'll be worth a look
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my time is over thank you for attention ha
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has also questions for for you it's only got some remarks remarks where something like uh
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to use a least one that that's the same input of the colleges same there
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and here is that we also don't know how to write by hand anymore
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uh i said when he is now we know replace who goes and takes
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his spiritual stripping all the privacy waveform it's used a good china uh
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but the first question is is it time to learn chinese for us
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definitely yes
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uh i'm sorry ah visible to know about the way chaining is it's what users use
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the from that that uh what are the one or two kind of uh
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applications that may harm soon the shorter the real answer
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the specific needs a little bit different from our
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you mean in application that are very different from the yeah
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that yeah what what what middle what kind of need
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the internet service starts right right now and this too
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but everybody can ah apples replication seven same functionalities
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but given the difference in in the body aside from the product that's uh and the um quarter what what what what
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i don't need up there but you can read into five that are not get sort of like the existing says
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um there are many issues of course there are many really to the to the language so it
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said these um that things like a very obvious one and well known is the fact that
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chinese internet users light
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very long in full of texts that web pages there's
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a different way of looking at web pages in
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china so this means the web designers and you have to to work different thing on the web
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another one is uh about fun it seems that chinese uses go on
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the internet to have fun and we go on the internet
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to work of course it's not that simple but casing want means in chinese happy network
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thanks and yeah that's the main concept is you go there to have fun
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and the games they they um so many things happening with games this this this
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is another one the third one would be about email and instant amidst messaging
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it's changing but for a very long time
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we use email a lot and instant messaging a little less
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any china most people rely on instant messaging and human
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is not that important uh_huh so the the the company called q. q. and a focus on this instant messaging
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idea and they they are so successful it's a huge market and different logic
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does just what one give us a sense of uh the way changes
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in from users look at uh the issue of uh uh censorship
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seen from here feels like the the biggest issue of the more uh_huh scene from there
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i i don't think we care much about censorship um i know
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in the west's most people believe that uh try nice a
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dictatorship and other media i have a very simple way to
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speak about this issue basically the chinese government is bad
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and the chinese people are good and everything is black and whites are
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it's not like that um of course there there are censorship in china and
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everything that is related to religion politics pornography is is monitored very closely
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we also have this in the west for example uh out of philly or censorship is
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not something that happens on in china happens everywhere and the chinese government is
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my feeling is that the really wants to make sure nothing
00:25:54
bad happens they want to make sure they can um
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keep things under control but it doesn't mean they want to control everything it's it's a big difference
00:26:04
it a bit like parents and children relationship so you maybe old fashion style and of
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course down menu real problems but basically the idea still to help people and do good things
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and the there are so many people in china it's not easy with the system works
00:26:21
basically space on chinese lo oh it's a if your your internet company you have to make sure that
00:26:27
this kind of content is not available on your servers and if it is uh
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you you can be punished or you will lose your licence things like that
00:26:36
uh it works it works but at the same time there are so many
00:26:42
things happening on the chinese web and people speaking about democracy speaking about
00:26:47
corruption speaking about very sensitive issues and sometimes quite often the government
00:26:53
pay attention to these movements especially if they are a lot of people discussing about it and
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