Using the Internet for Building a Global Community

同志社大学文学部２年

Would the Facebook save the world?

山本全翻

Would the Google mailplay a vital role on an international level? I am sure almost everyone
would say “no” to these questions.

Those are just internet things.

Internet communication is for fun but not for real.

It’s not real.

People, especially older generations, would laugh at me if I said
FacebookorGoogle

might

beessentialforbuildingaglobalcommunity.
It is not just Facebook or Google.

It is the global connectionof people that will be important for the world, and we can use theinternet to make it easy.

I came to think this way during thesummer program at Stanford University this year. During that period,
my perspective changed significantly because I met many people fromvarious countries and because I had an opportunity to visit Facebook
Visiting the Company Facebook was one of the biggest things
during the trip.

By meeting its employees and seeing what thecompany was like, I was impressed with the program they wereworking on--connecting everyone.

It really looked like a company

that was creating the need for the future.

The internet is becoming

the next ground for the social connection.

Also, Facebook is creating

the key stone of the Social Networking Service, and I can understandwhy.

Keeping in contact is the key to so many things, and it used

to be hard to stay in touch with friends.

A student could have had

a similar to me, and make friends from different nations, but it musthave been hard to keep contact with letters that take such a longtime.

With the internet so advanced and the SNS becoming so

helpful, it makes it extremely easy to keep the connection that can beso important.

I am blessed with such a great environment, and I

know SNS companies like Facebook will continue to have a crucialrole in the future world.
Another thing that changed my view in an important way wasmeeting students from various Asian countries.

The American

Language and Culture (ALC) program had more than 100 students
coming from Korea, China, Taiwan, Macau, and Japan.

EvenJapanese students came from various schools, such as Waseda andKeio, besides Doshisha.

We were there for one month, studying

together, living in the same dorms, eating together and making field
trips together.

I also met wonderful faculty and some Stanford

students who were helping us.
The people from the various Asian counties actually had
similar things in common.

One person from Taiwan I got to know

had a similar personal problem of being shy.

Even in counties that

seemed so different there was a pattern where some people weremore open, friendly and some a little shy.

To me this was funny;even though the people are so different in location, culture, andbackground, we shared the same personality problem.
many interesting people on the program.

Yet I meet soThe Chinese students werea lot of fun to be around, they were cool, very smart, and loved toshop.

Hearing how the Koreans thought about their countries

conscription system was fresh and interesting. Taiwanese, and people

from Macao too were fun to be with, and I found them to be
especially nice.
I felt the summer program to be too short.

When it ended

after four weeks, I felt sad that we students had to be all separated
and return to our usual life as students back home.

However, goinghome does not have to be the end of our relations.

While we wereat Stanford, we were already using the internet to communicate witheach other and share information.

After my return to Japan, I havebeen using the Skype, Facebook, and other internet programs to stay
in touch with those summer program alumni.

Skype allows us totalk to each other while looking at their faces on the computer
monitor.

Meeting those people at Stanford face-to-face was just thebeginning of our relations.

By using the internet, we can continue

exchanging ideas and developing friendship.
There is one good example that shows how the internet hashelped me stay in touch with the people I had made friends with thissummer.

When someone we had met in California (who happened towork for an internet communication company) was coming to Tokyo,
we shared the information through the Facebook and got together
with him in Tokyo.

It was like having a reunion within a few weeks

after we left Stanford campus.

Internet reinforces the friendship westarted in a brief period this summer and leads to interactions amongpeople that are now spread geographically.

I believe we can do thesame with other Asian students in China, Korea, Taiwan, and Macau.
Come to think of it, I can now see why Silicon Valley is so
close to Stanford and other leading universities. Companies in Silicon
Valley probably develop connections with good students and keeping

them connected no matter where they go.
One big surprise was that the companies that are rivals today
actually have workers going back and forward.

This too was thepower of friendship made at the school; a worker in Apple will invitea friend from Google to work, simply because he wanted to try
somethingnew.

Companies

thatmayseem

competitor are really friendly at the human level.

tohateanother

The moral of thestory is that the successful Silicon Valley was done truly byconnections: friends trying to help each other out.
applied to the world today.

This can be

The world is and will become more andmore global, and if the world is to solve problems like poverty andthe environment, every country must work together, as a friend.
I believe that connections also have the potential of preventing
wars from happening; I had the opportunity to talk with a student
from China, who gave a new view to the problems we face.

I wasable to find out that the people in each country think very hard of
topics, and they know what they speak of.

These talks and debates

I thought were one of the most important things to continue if theworld is to become more global.

Younger people must throw away

the stereotype the hold of others, and see the truth.
prevent any misleading ideas.

This can help

The most effective power that will

prevent the war I think is that just by having a friend on the otherside people will not want have a war.
The interesting phenomenon I saw in the program was thatpeople would show video clips from YouTube, which lead the student
to leaning more new songs.

The American songs lead many of thepeople to like songs that were big over in the states, but not thecountries they come from.

The song they heard apparently was soliked, that they would even play it at the prom we had.

The way

this simple video from an internet would make people connect wasimpressive; also, this was a great way for people to learn the cultureof America.
In this way cultural connections now can be achieved by theinternet.

YouTube videos will provide so much more of the “raw”

culture than learning from a book.

These videos make people toconnect more, the example of watching music videos.

Music itself isa great for this task, but by adding the visual, and making it avideo.

It makes it more fun to watch and understand, with a friend

from a different county.
One of the most popular are funny videos and animal videos
that can be watched without the wall of language.

We can laugh toa cat cashing a laser point no matter which country you are from.
This kind of small fun is a great help to breaking the ice for talking
with a friend.

I too showed my roommate a funny video, and it was

great for getting to know what interests he had for these things.
These simple videos helped me greatly in becoming close to him.
Doushisha’s Motto of Internationalism is valuable for the futureof Japan and it should play an important role.

Founder Jo Niijima

started the tradition of global networking at the time when Japan
closed its door to the world.

We Doshisha students should be proudof Niijima’s foresight and legacy of global networking.

Doushisha isexpanding Japan’s global network through international exchange andacademic work.

I was lucky to get an opportunity to study at

Stanford as a Doshisha student this summer.