discussion

From Ghana: a coffin shaped like a Nokia Phone

A friend has told me that only old people (like me) still use email. Twitter and texting are the current ways of keeping in touch. There’s a good program from the BBC on the effects of mobile technology on daily life.

I’ve transcribed a few quotes (didn’t get all the names… listen to the whole program here on BBC World Service):

Sunita Singh:
“People sleep with their mobile phones switched on.” She later discusses a scandal in India that occurred when a 17 year-old boy, angry that his girlfriend had broken up with him, distributed video he took when they were having sex. (I know that this has also been a problem in Iran where young men secretly film young women having sex with them and then distribute it. Kamangir writes about this in Persian.)

Narrator:
“The MTV generation that’s wedded to the mobile phone also wants instant gratification …They zap boredom or loneliness wherever they may be.”

Sadie Plant:
“The mobile phone is the first technology that you need to sort of do some kind of public performance with.” (pdf link here)

Genevieve Bell talks about the way that the mobile phone is used as “a kind of social prompt” in S. Korea. People assign rings according to social status thus ensuring that they answer appropriately and preventing social missteps.

Nina Weerakkody talks about the fear that mobiles will allow “upper class women to have affairs with lower class men.”

We also here about mobiles in some parts of the Islamic world that, among other features, bring you the entire Koran in English and Arabic and a live call to prayer from Mecca.

The pope sends out daily sms messages! He got 3 million subscribers in just two months. “A photo of the pope inside the phone may be a holy religious icon.”

At funerals in Ghana, people send streaming video/sound to family that cannot make it in to the country. They also have coffins shaped like mobiles.

(not the latest news, I know. For that go here)

Reposting my response to Tori’s message, since for some reason my reply doesn’t show up….

As I was saying, reading the earlier post, the phrase ‘being moved by a language not understood’ somehow immediately made me think of one of my all time favorite films, Orson Welle’s interpretation of Kafka’s novel, The Trial - in my opinion a great masterpiece which puts in pictures the unexplainable and some of the absurdities of reality …

For some reason this is not liking my youtube embed link? :

You might remember that Dirk Sijmons mentioned that they use the Martijntje Smits analysis of the impact of new tech on society when they consider solutions to tech issues. Here’s an excerpt from an explanation of that theory:

From Ton’s Interdependent thoughts:

Smits monster theory starts with the notion that a monster is a two-sided being, that within itself unites aspects that seem impossible to unite. (e.g. Frankenstein, with human traits and aspects, but also an artefact built from inanimate parts)

Monsters in this way challenge cultural boundaries. (e.g. genetic modification challenges the distinction between man and animal, cloning challenges the boundaries of natural progenation) At the same time because of that challenge it cannot be dealt with in terms of existing norms within those cultural boundaries, it’s sort of outside the system, which is likely to frustrate debate and discussion. This also creates the space for both fantasies of doom, as well as of imminent paradise, without being constrained by reality.

Smits then goes on to define four forms of dealing with monsters:

killing the monster

adapting the monster

assimilating the monster

embracing the monster

Read more here and in dutch here.