Keiko Satoh

Changing the Channels of Communication

The Tokyo office is paperless, the furnishings spare by design. Ten young people tucked around a floor-level table sip coffee and espresso. The talk is of "digital shoots" and "multimedia hypertext form" - the jargon of the new global digerati. There is a graphic designer, the editor of a computer magazine, a young manager from a semiconductor company, a high-tech public relations consultant. They are American and they are Japanese. And they are not happy.

At the center is Keiko Satoh, a smartly dressed management consultant who has convened this small group to plan a big conference. These days, on both sides of the Pacific, the computer world is a never-ending collection of trade shows, exhibitions, and confabs. But this gathering is meant to be special. TED - the acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design - will bring together some of the smartest, richest, hippest innovators from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and, this time, the Japanese manufacturing establishment - from old-guard Matsushita to new-wave Nintendo. TED likes to think of itself as an Idea Summit, a gathering that one (continued page 100) reporter/participant calls "smart, overstimulated, and uncoordinated; the nutty professor in its own world of ideas."

In other words, if anyone could bridge the massive "culture gap" that separates the United States and Japan, it would be this group of communications strategists. That they can't even come close speaks to the magnitude of the gap - and the challenge of Satoh's mission to deescalate the trans-Pacific war of words.

The Americans in the room poke and probe and verbally joust. They want a freewheeling sensibility at the conference, to lay differences on the table. Their Japanese counterparts turn ashen at the thought. "We appreciate the differences, but we don't need to discuss them,'' says one, almost pleadingly. The magazine editor explains that most of his country's 450 participants will come to listen, not to talk. They will attend as representatives of their companies and file written reports when they return.

"You mean we're not talking to individuals, we're talking to companies?" one American asks in mock disbelief.

Fed up with such arrogant digs, the editor lobs back his own, more subtle retort - this one aimed at the touchy-feely ambiance the Americans want to create at TED.

"Maybe you Americans are looking for a lost community," he says. "We Japanese already have a community.''

Through it all, with a mix of den-mother understanding and hardheaded perseverance, Keiko Satoh keeps the conversation moving forward. Everyone agrees TED will be a big deal. No one said it would be easy.

Keiko Satoh is in the business of communication. Not fiber optics and packet switching, but the simple art of talking and understanding. It is Satoh's conviction that somewhere in the passing lane of the information superhighway, the drivers have lost their sense of direction. High-speed modems and personal digital assistants have made communication more mobile, accessible, and global. But they haven't made it any easier for people to understand what their counterparts in other countries are saying. The lines are clear; the meanings are not.

"My country is considered the most difficult in the world to enter," says Satoh, who speaks nearly fluent English, more than a bit of Italian, and moves comfortably between the cultures of Japan, Europe, and the United States. "As a Japanese, I don't want it to be thought that we are the most difficult race. I don't think I'm a hard person to access. But even we in Japan like to think that our country is somehow weird and inaccessible.''

That said, it's difficult for Satoh to describe exactly what she does. Public relations isn't quite accurate. The generic term "consulting'' works sometimes. "But then, people say to me, `Keiko, you're not doing consulting, you're doing counseling.' They call me `Keiko Hospital.'''

From that perspective, Satoh is carving out a business niche with an idea that's so old it's new: teaching frustrated executives how to talk across boundaries. Taking a lesson from Satoh means setting aside the personal computer and tossing out the etiquette books. She aims not to teach rules, but to change attitudes. "We've come,'' she says wistfully, "to view communication just as a form of transaction, not as a form of meaning.''

Perhaps the best way to think of Satoh is as an information theorist - a change agent who propagates new ideas about how to communicate more effectively. She is part of an emerging class of humanists on both sides of the Pacific - artists, writers, cultural trendsetters - who are struggling with language and expression, cultural assumptions and misunderstandings, and whose views need to be heard if the global economy is to function smoothly into the next century.