To my Japanese Friend: retweeting means rebroadcasting a message to your followers; not copyright infringement.

Japanese friend of mine won't understand retweet function of Twitter. Finds it shocking, like copyright infringement. Cultural #Bias? #Japan
— CATHERINE COSTE (@cathcoste) March 11, 2014

Japanese and American culture can be worlds apart. Got yet another illustration of this the other day, when I tried to get my Japanese friend from Tokyo -- a professional musician and Geisha -- acquainted with Twitter. Big deal! She gave me a hard time as she was very reluctant to follow people...
"But... I don't know them enough to follow them!?" And... big question: "Are they trustworthy???" Looming threat of creepy avatars... "-What if people who follow me make me nervous because they do it aggressively? There was this guy following me on the street. He would always follow me after class at high school. Sick creepy guy..."
"Well, cupcake, you don't want to follow them in the first place, sooo..."
"-What if they steal my ideas?"
It took me some time to understand what she really meant to say here. At first, I thought about stealing like when someone else takes credit, that kind of thing. Sure, not a nice thing to do.
"-Well then don't put private stuff on Twitter cuz that's not the right place for it. I suggest you use Google Drive instead... Great tool, I use it as a writer on a daily basis... Can share my work with my co-writers, safe place and nice functionalities... Still, people are not allowed to take credit for your work, neither on Twitter nor everywhere else..."
"Ooooh, but look!! He did it again! He stole my idea! I will unfollow him... What a drag!"
Her "idea" was a link to a post from her blog. Is a blog something like your private diary? Or is it meant to be read by a broad public? The broader the better, well not necessarily in my opinion. Anyway... To that "hard time" thing, now. It finally dawned on me that in my friend's eyes, retweeting does not mean "taking a twitter message someone else has posted, and rebroadcasting that same message to your followers." The way she sees it, it means... copyright infringement.

.@BataKappa Must be stg else, then. Like she got vexed because a colleague of her she doesn't value has more followers on Twitter than her.
— CATHERINE COSTE (@cathcoste) March 12, 2014

http://globalmindshift.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/software-of-the-mind/

Reaction of a Japanese e-friend of mine on Twitter: "Really? There're lot of Japanese people on twitter. I actually don't really know rules about retweet function though...."

.@BataKappa Interesting book: "Software of the mind" http://t.co/ESECNF8zIM "Intercultural Cooperation and its Importance for Survival" ;-)
— CATHERINE COSTE (@cathcoste) March 12, 2014