Yosuke Kurita × Yasuhiro Tsuchiya: Part 1 "I want to walk the internet as if strolling through the city using my own senses"

While Dentsu Inc. News has mostly covered business-oriented topics related to the internet theme, this "One-Click Radius" corner will introduce more culture-focused information. That said, covering all internet culture is, of course, impossible. Therefore, planner Yasuhiro Tsuchiya, active in projects like neurowear, will interview individuals he interacts with closely through online activities – those within his "one-click radius" – to sketch a cross-section of the culture currently unfolding on the internet.

For our first installment, we spoke with Yosuke Kurita of Grand Base Inc., who runs CBCNET ( http://www.cbc-net.com/ ), a website disseminating information on art, design, technology, and the surrounding culture.

Facebook feels like Times Square these days

Tsuchiya: How did CBCNET get started?

Kurita: I started making my own websites back in college. While doing that, I realized it would be more interesting to create a design portal site instead of just my own site. It was right around when Flash was starting to get popular. There were lots of cool portal sites overseas showcasing great designers' work, but nothing like that existed in Japan, so I made CBCNET. I did the interviews, wrote the articles, and built the website myself.

Tsuchiya: All by yourself?

Kurita: Yes, just me. It was before blogs and such, so there was a real joy in creating and publishing everything by myself. At first, I interviewed people from my university club or just people within a one-click radius, but it gradually expanded. I started introducing edgy designers I found online. The community was still small back then, so it felt like we were constantly connecting with each other.

Then came the global boom in design conferences—these offline meetups where designers and artists from around the world gathered. I started attending these conferences overseas and thought, "This is really interesting." So in 2005, I launched a conference called APMT ( http://www.apmt.jp/). I had zero event management experience, but luckily, a lot of people came, which made me incredibly happy. Also, Kazuma Ieiri came as a regular attendee, and he ended up investing in us, saying "Let's do something together," which led to us founding the company Grandbase.

Tsuchiya: So CBCNET has quite a history then.

Kurita: We started CBCNET in 2002, so this year marks our 13th year. People call us an old-timer now (laughs). Lately, though, I feel like web information is becoming fragmented, or meta-like. For instance, topics about new technologies like AR or drones—I think we should leave those to other media. If CBCNET tried to cover that, it would just become a war of attrition. Now, I'm in a state where I write when I have something I want to write about; it's become more stoic. That's partly why it's still going.

Tsuchiya: What aspects of the internet do you find interesting right now, Mr. Kurita?

Kurita: Honestly, I still use the internet, but I don't check social media as much as I used to. Of course, I still dig into information that interests me, but I often think, "Enough already" about topics trending on social media. Since I'm surrounded by people who are really knowledgeable, I sometimes get asked, "Huh? You don't know about this?" But I can just learn about it then and there. It's like a real-life RSS reader (laughs). Maybe by taking a step back, I'm trying to find the current appeal of the internet.

Tsuchiya: I get that feeling. Actually, I've been thinking about trying information fasting this year. I haven't managed to do it yet, though (laughs). Right now, I'm still mindlessly browsing the net, bookmarking stuff, consuming way too much information... but I'm not producing anything commensurate with that intake. So I wonder what would happen if I cut back on information, like not checking social media for a week and unsubscribing from all feeds.

Kurita: I think more people have started feeling like "there's too much information" since around last year. It's like wanting to walk the internet the same way you walk the streets based on your own senses.

Tsuchiya: Walking through the city and walking through the internet.

Kurita: Thinking of the internet as a city metaphor, there are parallels. For instance, big shopping sites feel like massive complex buildings, right? The analogy of ad campaigns being like staging festivals fits that feeling perfectly.

But in reality, exploring backstreet shops or club culture can be more interesting than following a guidebook to tourist spots. Take New York: Times Square is fine to visit once, but the clubs tucked away in Brooklyn's back alleys, where tourists don't go, are often more exciting. So, where are those back alleys on the internet? That's what I wonder. Recent platforms like Facebook and Twitter might be like Times Square.

Tsuchiya: Remember that magazine MASSAGE ( http://www.themassage.jp/) that came out? Its preface had this line: 'The internet has become our street corner.' I thought that was really interesting. Culture used to emerge from street corners, but now the internet is that street corner, and culture springs from there. That feeling really resonates. For this series, I'd love to create something like a sightseeing tour where we peek into these street corners bit by bit.

Kurita: That's exactly it—just clicking over to take a look. You might even find completely different street corners. Sounds great.

 

Now we're in an era where creators and consumers are one and the same.

Tsuchiya: Lately, news sites seem to focus on reposting content that might go viral. But you, Kurita-san, are really just picking and introducing only the things that genuinely interest you, right?

Kurita: Yeah, I'm not good at orchestrating viral hits. A friend once mentioned the "prosumer era" – a blend of producer and consumer – saying we've entered a time where creators and consumers are one and the same. Everyone creates content, everyone consumes it, and you just can't predict what will go viral anymore.

In that sense, rather than being pulled by trends, I just keep going steadily. Maybe I'm getting a bit old-fashioned (laughs), but instead of dashing through the city, I prefer walking slowly and valuing communication with the people around me.

Tsuchiya: As someone running media, has the rise of prosumers changed anything for you?

Kurita: These days, hardly anyone goes to a website's homepage and navigates to the second page. Most come from social media, see one page, and leave. If you're chasing page views, getting retweeted by someone famous on Twitter makes your PVs skyrocket. If someone with tens of thousands of followers retweets you, the article's value on social media completely changes.

But about 30% of CBCNET's readers probably aren't constant social media users, and from our perspective, they're important too. So we don't really focus on whether something is gimmicky or likely to go viral. Websites that provide content, get it retweeted massively, and earn ad revenue—that's certainly a sound business model. But continuing to ride that model is difficult for us.

Tsuchiya: So currently, people just see the viral articles and bounce right off? Don't you consider changing your approach based on that?

Kurita: Including CBCNET BLOG ( http://www.cbc-net.com/blog/ ), where various contributors write, we occasionally get buzz too. But what defines "buzz" isn't consistently evaluated across communities, and it will keep changing. Our site isn't a massive service, so improving the system isn't something we're considering right now.

 

I think it's necessary to preserve things to pass on to the next generation.

Tsuchiya: I've been noticing that people who used to write really interesting blogs haven't updated in ages. I wonder if it's because they're sharing everything in detail on Twitter and Facebook now, so they don't bother writing blog posts anymore.

Kurita: Twitter is fundamentally built on the premise that everything flows by constantly. Even a line written in great excitement is basically seen as unimportant and gets swept away. Conversely, a seemingly trivial comment can get thousands of retweets or even go viral. With blogs, on the other hand, there might be that sense of leaving something behind, like putting it on paper.

Tsuchiya: True, articles posted on blogs definitely have more presence than tweets. What criteria does CBCNET use for publishing articles?

Kurita: Our stance is that we want to deepen our own knowledge and share themes we find interesting with everyone. Rather than focusing on what sells or becomes a hot topic, we want to curate and publish information we think people should know. By doing that, we can broaden our own knowledge, discover new interests, and keep going. Thinking about it that way, maybe we're not really a typical web magazine kind of medium (laughs).

Tsuchiya: So you're essentially accumulating things that catch your attention at the moment. What does the future hold for this?

Kurita: After over ten years of pursuing what I find interesting, that desire has changed... Continuing can be quite challenging at times. But in this era where new media constantly reshapes values—take "net art," for example—its nature has shifted dramatically between the 90s and the post-social media era. Witnessing these shifts in real time is exciting. I want to maintain that perspective while also exploring events and other media platforms.

Tsuchiya: Earlier you mentioned how things flow away on Twitter but remain on blogs. But blogs will eventually disappear too, right? Does expanding into events and other media mean you now have a desire to preserve things?

Kurita: Even paper eventually disappears, though. When I was cleaning out my room at my parents' house over New Year's, I found tons of nostalgic stuff like pagers and Game Boys. I agonized over what to throw away and what to keep. Modern life also generates massive amounts of digital trash, and concepts like "what's necessary," "what's unnecessary," or even "ownership" have changed, right?

Also, how to preserve things to pass on to the next generation is a tough problem. Technology changes, internet architecture changes, how information circulates changes, and the next generation emerges. For example, how do you even convey something like, "Back in the day, there was this thing called a pager"?

Back in the pager era, you'd type messages in phone booths, right? There was this hierarchy—like being able to type your name fast, or for some reason, the popular kids were always the fastest typers (laughs). When a new medium emerges, it gives birth to new forms of communication and new hierarchies. That might be true for pagers and just as true for Twitter.

Tsuchiya: You want to preserve it to pass it on.

Kurita: For creators and artists, archiving and sharing their work has become essential. Members of Graffiti Research Lab ( http://www.graffitiresearchlab.com/ ), whom we invited to Japan before, excelled at this. Many artists are also skilled at using SNS.

On the other hand, how and what to archive is quite difficult. Format and device dependency are often cited as practical problems. Sometimes I think what really matters is oral tradition or direct communication (laughs).

( To be continued)

Location: Grand Base