Keitai Kids: Youth, Culture and Social Media in the USA and Japan

Cell phones (keitai), mobile media, and social media have transformed the lives of youth in Japan and the United States in extraordinary but very different ways. How does this impact education and youth culture in each country today, and what are the possibilities for the future? Do these issues look different in other parts of the world? Shin Mizukoshi, Professor of Media Studies at the University of Tokyo and a leading authority on digital culture in Japan, and Tomi Ahonen, one of the world’s leading experts on business implications for mobile technology and author of The Insider’s Guide to Mobile, discuss youth, education and social media. Moderated by R. Trebor Scholz, writer, artist, professor and director of the Politics of Digital Culture conference series at The New School.

Part of The New School’s MobilityShifts: An International Future of Learning Summit.

ADMISSION
Free for registered participants in the MobilityShifts Summit.
$12/$8 for Japan Society corporate and individual members, seniors and students.

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EXTENDED PARTICIPANT BIOS
Mr. Shin Mizukoshi is a professor of media studies, the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies (iii) at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Mr. Mizukoshi advocates “socio-media studies” based on historical and social perspectives, rather than focused on information technologies. One of his primary research activities, undertaken with his nationwide colleagues, was the MELL Project (Media Expression, Learning and Literacy Project), a practical studies on citizen’s media expression and media literacy, and its successive organization: the MELL Platz. From 2004, Mizukoshi has launched the Mobiling & Designing Project (MoDe Project for short): the socio-media studies on designing mobile media culture and literacy.

His Japanese publications include "Formation of Media: A Dynamic History of American Broadcasting", "Digital Media Society", "Telephone as a Medium", “Media Biotope: Designing Media Ecosystem”, “Media Literacy Workshop: Learning, Playing and Expressing in the Information Society”, “Communal Keitai: Reweaving Mobile Media Society”, “Media Studies for the 21st Century”.

Mr. Tomi T. Ahonen is an author, consultant and motivational speaker with expertise in the mobile industry. A former Nokia executive, Mr. Ahonen currently runs a boutique consulting company that provides strategic consulting services to clients needing support in the digital convergence, ranging from small start-ups to Global 500-sized companies around the world including Axiata, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BBC, BT, China Mobile, CNN, Ericsson, HP, HSBC, IBM, Intel, LG, Motorola, MTV, MTS, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Ogilvy, Orange, BNP Paribas, RIM, SK Telecom, Telenor, TeliaSonera and Vodafone. Mr. Ahonen is also a prolific author. His latest book, The Insider’s Guide to Mobile, was released in 2011.