Here in Japan most people feel no desire to immortalize themselves
outside of their small circle. Maybe it's a vestige of Buddhist fatalism.

Take my wife (please!): she has leadership qualities that I feel
acutely (ouch!), but no desire to further her agenda as a politician
or public figure. She's camera shy despite having been gorgeous.

I asked my students in Computer Communication class about my assumptions
that liberalizing education in the past decade or so would have led to
students more thinking for themselves (or just less studying), which
in Maslovian reasoning would spawn more desire for self-expression
(unless there were a cultural inhibition), then through current technologies
a flowering of blogging and so forth on the open Web. But the students
only confirmed the cultural inhibition. They mentioned repercussions of
standing out, such as jealousies or resentments that could be aroused.
One said self-expression could hurt others, sort of confusing it with
frankness or openness (which is alien to Japanese culture), when
I was thinking more of creative self-expression. You also see in
social networking with the huge poularity of Mixi that it is clubby,
requiring an invitation, and not on the searchable open Web but
accessible (with a choice of protocols) only to fellow members.
Obviously nothing will work unless it makes sense to the culture
of that country or region. MySpace and their ilk, take heed.

My view is that the technology is changing so fast that much content
of our lives will only be of historical interest. Future people will
be enraptured by more fully sensual experiences as predicted by
Aldous Huxley where the distinction between virtual and real
all but loses its meaning.

And yet, at the cutting edge, each creative action sets the future
off on a trajectory, as all the past is alive in us, through us.

Collegially, (Prof.) Steve McCarty
President (1998-2007), World Association for Online Education (WAOE)
Online library -> http://www.waoe.org/steve/epublist.html
Spoken library -> Japancasting: http://stevemc.blogmatrix.com
Nascent video blog -> http://japancasting.blip.tv