A few months ago, I had the chance to visit Tokyo to work with the DDB office there. Similar to my trip to Australia last year, it was a chance to return to place I'd once lived, visit some old friends and meet some new colleagues. Below are a few pictures from my trip.
If you want to see some more pictures from my trip, check out my Instagram page (I'm ParkerNow there), starting with this image.
If you're like me, chances are you've got a big list of blogs in your RSS reader and don't venture out beyond that to regularly read other blogs as much as you should. You get comfortable with the same authors and the same ideas. We've done posts here before where the BlogCampaigning authors update their blog rolls and write about why they're reading what they are. Similarly, Over the next few weeks I'm going to highlight a few of my favorite blogs that fall a bit outside the regular ol' social media and PR frame. One of those blogs is Future Perfect, written by the amusingly-named Jan Chipchase.
Jan works for Nokia Design to develop new applications that if he does his job right, "you'll be using in the 3 to 15 years from now." From what I can tell, a great deal of his work involves travelling around the world and looking at the way people in different societies use objects. Fortunately for us, Jan shares his insights via photos and short observations on his blog. I like reading it because he is based in Tokyo, and a lot of his posts focus on that city (I lived in the Tokyo suburbs from 2004-2005).
On the about page of Future Perfect, Jan writes:
"Pushing technologies on society without thinking through their consequences is at least naive, at worst dangerous, though typically it, and IMHO the people that do it are just boring. Future perfect is a pause for reflection in our planet's seemingly headlong rush to churn out more, faster, smaller and cheaper.
Somewhere along the way we get to shape what the future looks like."
I highly recomend that you have a look at his blog and subscribe to it, even for just a few weeks, to see if he challenges your idea of how we use objects in the everyday world.
Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect
-Parker