Is the cellphone a mundane non “technology” among the elite?: From Huffington Post to Rupaul’s Drag Race
When does something stop being a “technology”? The word technology is a loaded term that is full of futuristic newness— the information age, the network society, the post-industrial era—-all the hopes and fears of “modernity.” These thoughts swirled in my mind when my friend forwarded me Karen’s Leland’s column from The Huffington Post, Does Friendship Trump Technology?
In the article, she talks about how utility technicians accidentally cut the internet line to her house just as she was trying to get online to map directions to a meeting. She gets in her car and starts considering several options to get to an internet connection and then realizes that the quickest way to find directions was to actually use her cellphone to call her friend, who could then look up the direction online from her house. With her friend’s help, Leland gets to the meeting place early enough to even get a cup of coffee. Leland’s point is that friendship is more important than technology because in the end it was her friend who helped her, not the internet: “Technology is great, but a girl’s got to have friends.”
When I read this, i thought that it didn’t make any sense. Her friend fulfilled her role as a good “friend” through the use of technology. Her friend answered the phone call at an inconvienient hour, but nevertheless did so because Leland used her cellphone to wake up her good “friend.
Essentially Leland’s whole entire story could not have taken place without technology tools. To even get to her meeting, Leland is driving in a car that has an engine powered by an internal computer. To even reach her friend, Leland has to use the cellphone. For her friend to even process images, she has to find her glasses. For her friend to even give direction, she has to turn on her computer to get to mapquest (btw tell your girlfriend to use google maps - she can tell you traffic patterns and give you street view).
We can even look at it in another way - the stoplights that are programmed to direct the traffic that Leland is driving in, the coffee machine that makes her coffee, the cellphone towers that enables the calls through the electro-magnetic spectrum, the internet router her friend uses to get online - on and on. Anything and everything can be technological. The entire story is only possible with objects that create the space for the rich interaction that she has described.
Leland’s article points to one common way that technology is defined, as a new system or set of practices that are antithetical to human interaction, alienating people from friendship, love, and human touch. Technology (for Leland the unavailable internet) is seen as the anti-connector - but the ironic part is that Leland uses technology to connect to her friend who could then connects online to connect her to the directions she needed to connect to her meeting.
Technology and human interaction are not mutually exclusive - we use tools to get things done. What if the article was titled, Does Friendship Trump Tools? Or Does Friendship Trump Cars? Or Does Friendship Trump Pencils? It just sounds ludicrous because it points to the illogical boundaries on what we define as “technological.”
Leland’s point that technology does not trump friendship also reveals an underlying fear that technology would even be in a place to trump friendship. Her statement is an affirmation that her friend was there for her when her technology failed her. Is this a new way of defining friendship? Who do we turn to when our technologies fail us in critical moments?
What I think is interesting in this article, is that it actually points to a discursive cultural change in the way that elites or let’s middle- to upper-class people think about cellphones - that it has become so integrated into their lives that it’s taken for granted now as a mundane tool - just like a car or pencil or eyeglasses. NOW That’s interesting!
So at what point is an object not a “technology” and just a mundane object? Well one way is to see how it is incorporated it into discourse. In this article, the discourse of the cellphone is dis-associated from “technology” because it referred to as a non-technology.
Another way is to notice how images of technology are incorporated into our visual culture. Look at the way visual culture in music videos and movies reenact scenes of everyday life. Do you notice when your favorite TV shows incorporates a pencil into the story - no because it is just a mundane object (unless the specific topic is about the pencil). For example, movies and music videos often show characters using cellphones as part of the interaction. I know that from a more mainstream cultural studies point of view this is usually interpreted as the selling of “coolness” - the selling of the need to consume a cellphone as part of a modern consumer. ok - point taken and yes I agree.
However, another way to think about it is that many of the interactions cannot take place without the cellphone - and that speaks to the role of this technology as an everyday object that is assumed to be part of interaction - as if only with the cellphone such interaction could be accomplished. It’s hard to imagine how Leland could’ve reached her friend from her car without the cellphone unless she did it telepathically.
The first time I actually thought that the cellphone may be a mundane technology for Americans or Westerners or middle- to upper-class users was when I was watching Rupaul’s Drag Race (part 6 episode 6) where the drag queens had to compete for the best impersonation of a female executive.
When the queens took to the runway, each of them had a different outfit with various tools to support their look - such as a briefcase of files or glasses or purse. 3 out of the 4 contestants drag queens started their “Executive Realness” impersonation with a cellphone! They pretended to be on an important business call. The one who didn’t use the cellphone chose a briefcase as the stand in for “executiveness.” (oh and just in case you are curious, Phoebe, middle, was “excutive fabulousness.” A judge said that Rebecca Glasscock, far left, looked like “Donald’s Trump next ex-wife.”)
So what’s the connection between Leland’s Huffington Post article and Rupaul’s Drag Race? The cellphone is mundane! From Leland’s post to Rupual’s drag queens - it’s just a part of the everyday - and who better than drag queens to exaggerate the everyday - the queens of impersonations are best at pulling out the mundane ways we re-enact power in a gendered way.
Ok Tricia so why is it so important to understand that the cellphone could now be considered mundane? In terms of my research with new technology users, it just reminds me how careful I need to be in what kind of assumptions I bring to my research, such as my research questions, analysis and conclusions. I live in a country where a cellphone may mean one thing - which I am saying may have become a mundane everyday tool - but I do research in other countries where the cell means an entirely different thing - a non-mundane tool.
Even with technologies that are not mundane - the researcher still needs to be aware of what that the tool means to her/him - but my point is that one has to work even harder to be self-reflective about the taken for granted ideas that we bring to our fieldsites or to the design process with technology that have become ordinarialized (yes I made that word up).
I think one of the consequences of technologies becoming everyday, is that it’s hard to think about its usage in a context entirely different from our own experience. That then leads to certain assumptions and hope about the role of the technology. I find that this is most problematic in technology projects that are tried in “developing” areas of the world. You have all these “first world” or Western funded NGO’s going into these impoverished regions “bringing” or “introducing” technology with the hopes that it will jump-start economic development in the region. I find myself cringing at these projects because one, there is already lot of criticism over the failure of technology-based development projects, but also because these projects are run by people who come from the US or Europe - where technology is used in a very socially and culturally specific context. What happens then is that these people think, “well the internet is helpful for me, so it will be helpful for others who won’t have it. Life for these people will be better with internet access.” I don’t dispute that people have more choices with access to more information, but access to information is sooo socially contexual that how information is then used, processed, fulfilled, interpreted, recycled, managed and mashed - is specific to each region/community/country and I it is too often that this is not considered.
Instead, technology for development projects tend to take a linear approach where the goal is to bring the community “up” and out of poverty. There are assumptions that quality of life is a uni-directional march towards modernity and the tools that come with it.
One way to get out of this trap is that I think researchers of technology use need to spend more time understanding the mundane among new users. This takes time. This it one of the roles of ethnography. The mundane is the everyday - the take for granted. If we can better understand the everyday, then we can better understand the role and meaning of new technologies, which then leads to the greater possibility of more relevant designs for new users in new-to-us markets.
Cloud Computing for Researchers - Mendeley Your Life!
Occasionally on Cultural Bytes I will review tools that help my ethnographer-self stay sane, organized and useful to society. I am confident to say that every researcher I know IS CURRENTLY dealing with what I am addressing below - citation and PDF nightmares. Today is the first day you can take a step towards freedom, organization, and access.
In Russian, Mendeley means comforter of the mind. What better name for a product that is a comforter for researchers! (here’s the founders’ explanation for the name, which I found out has nothing to do with the Russian meaning)
This software will change your researching-intellectual, academiky life forever! Sick of dealing with all those pdf’s on your computer, entering in citations by hand, looking for citations in your old documents, dealing with endnotes, and not being able to access your citations remotely? Most of us are dealing with this issue. Olivia Judson recently wrote about her academic organizing woes with managing PDF’s in NY Times,
“…it became easier to re-research a subject each time I wanted to think about it, and to download the papers again. My hard drive has filled up with duplicates; my office, with stalagmites of paper…In short, access to information is easier and faster than ever before but there’s been no obvious way to manage it once you’ve got it.”
Well Julia there’s a solution, MENDELEY SOLVES ALL THESE PROBLEMS! We all share similar citation nightmares! It’s time to get ride of endnotes, refworks, zotero and whatever other wannabe hawt citation software manager you use - and get yourself Mendeley! And they don’t discriminate - they love MAC and PC users!
This is cloud computing for researchers. How would you feel if you could access your PDF’s and citations anywhere in the world? if you could share citation lists with colleagues in just one click? If you never had to re-download your PDF’s again? If you could search for books on Amazon.com and click one button to cite the book you are buying? If you could just drop citations into Word or whatever document without having to shell out a couple hundred of dollars for Endnotes? If you could network with other researchers and see their citation lists? If you could just add whatever books you see in Google Book search to your citation list with one click?
Imaginations for researchers come true also - with Mendeley you have can have all these desires fulfilled!
Think of this as an itunes for your pdf’s + Linkedin + facebook + doppler + updated CV + Papers (for macs)+ all the features of every single citation manager out there + love + intellect + seamlessness. Welcome to the world of Mendeley - Loveeee!
If you’re like me - traveling in different cities every week and working between 3 different computers (MACs and PCs) - then this is truly your dream come true. Or if you just work between your office and home computer this is a dream! And even if you are just on 1 computer - this could just be as good as the invention of rss!
I suggest you take out a few hours to play with it and then set aside a week to import all your citations and get your academik life together! It’s worth it! They are still in beta, so there are little quirks here and there - but the Mendeley team is REALLY awesome and you can just write to them about your issues or post it online and they actually respond!
Below, I list my favorite features of Mendeley and some recommendations for how to use Mendeley.
1.) Mendeley works. It really works!!! that is a good enough reason to try it ou. In this picture of my Mendeley Desktop, I walk you through how to start it out! STEP 1.) create a group - you don’t have to do this but I like to organize my citations by topics, 2.) add a document - you can drag a PDF or do it this way below by clicking on the “add document” icon on top. STEP 3.) admire your pretty citations! update the info, make sure it’s correct, STEP 4.) check out their great search features!
2.) use it with dropbox if you switch between several computers- keep your PDF’s in your dropbox, and rename the file with the author’s last name and year. Dropbox is a virtual file folder that physically sits on each of your computers. It’s magic - you just have to install it and start moving your files there. You can access them online anytime!
store all your PDF’s in one folder - and never look at them again. Just like how you drop music in your itunes app without having to interact with the actual file itself, same thing here (this only works for people who are on 1 computer)! In this picture below you can see how my dropbox is on the far left, then I look for Victor Gonzalez’s work in my dropbox by his last name and just in case if I have to manually pull the file, (which I have to because I have I use dropbox on 3 different computers so once you switch it loses the directory path), you can then find it very easily in your folder. When I type in Gonzalez’s name in Mendeley, all his citations show up as linked to the files!
3.) Automatic recognition of a PDF’s meta-data when you drag and drop it into Mendeley. In the picture below, I show you how to just drag a PDF into Mendeley and it automatically recognizes the author, journal, pub date and etc. Think of this like itunes- when you drag a song over it copies a verion over to it’s own itunes folder.To activate this, you have to turn on File Organizer (they spell it “organiser” cuz they’re all british about it). The Mendeley Muz man says that “if you enable the File Organiser, this will make Mendeley create a copy of these files in their own folder, which it then links against. This means you’re then free to edit the original file names, or to move them about as need be without breaking the file links. To do this, open up Mendeley Desktop, go to the Preferences panel and select the “File Organiser” tab. From here, you can enable the file organiser, and also choose how it should store the files in this folder by enabling the rename or sorting into subfolders as you see fit.
Then I like to go to the tag-notes tab in Mendeley desktop and paste in the abstract and type in some tags. Make sure to SAVE it because pressing save in the meta-data tabs it doesn’t save the information for the entire file - you have to save in each tab. I hope they fix it next time update (update - they have said that this is fixed in the newest version).
4.) Access your PDF’s online anywhere! After you have dragged in a PDF sync your library and watch everything duplicate itself to your online library. THIS IS BIGG! That means just as long as Mendeley is not blocked where you are trying to access it, then you won’t ever have problems getting to the physical PDF online! And it’s not blocked in China so I am so confident about getting to all my files at any internet cafe!
5.) Seamless Syncing with your Mendeley Desktop and your online library! In this picture below I have side by side my desktop and my online Mendeley Library - you can see here that the citations match, and so do the grouping. completely identical! that means you could leave the country and then use a computer at an internet cafe or at a friend’s house and have access to all your citations and any synced pdf’s. And Last time I checked, Mendeley is NOT blocked in China!! (Drop box is blocked though which really sucks)
6.) import books from Amazon or Google Books! In this picture, I am looking at Go Away Dog in Google books - this is a very important book for academic researchers. with one click this book shows up in your Mendeley reference list. STEP 1.) read about the functions here, STEP 2.) install the bookmarklet by dragging it to your toolbar in firefox STEP 3.) start looking for books in AMazon or Google books! you can import multiple books at one time or just a single book like in the picture below.
7.) Produces beautiful ways of visualizing information. I love that Mendeley shows you stats about the most cited authors and the research fields that have the most Mendeley users.
I liked that in the Social Sciences tag cloud, technology and nude, were next to each other - kinda much us look like an exciting field huh?
Below you can see that bourdieu is the most cited, with Bruno Latour coming in second, then Manuel Castells, then Michele badass Foucault, and lastly WTF SAMUEL annOYING Huffington who wrote the Clash of Civilizations. We have to get Samuel off the top 5 and put someone - anyone - up there!
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HOW IT COMPARES TO ZOTERO -ok so now that I’ve raved about Mendeley - I feel that I need to explain why I prefer Mendeley over Zotero since I wrote about how much I loved Zotero a few months ago on my old blog (I switched to tumblr for my personal blog!)
- Mendeley support team is wayy better than zotero. - For Mendeley, within 24 hours a staff (the co-founder!) responded to my questions. I have yet to hear back from Zotero staff about any of my problems that I posted in their help forum. I think that after I complained to some people who know some people at Zotero, eventually, one of the Zotero creators was sweet enough to write a personal email to me about my original zotero love post on my personal blog- he even offered to send me a t-shirt! So that was really nice of them, but I’m sorry Zotero staff - me firefox quits on me every time on zotero and i zpent a whole day trouble-shooting with no succezz!
- Mendeley staff actually write back to you! now I know that programmers, developers, and founders are busy and that they can’t write back to everyone - but after posting two problems on zotero i didn’t get any responses - still haven’t yet. In Mendeley land - I heard something back from the programmers within 8 hours!
- Mendeley’s help forums are better. l had to search through lots of support forums on Zotero to find out if others had similar problems in firefox as I did - and it wasn’t always clear if Zotero staff were aware of these problems. There was no clear mechanism for processing user-identified problems. In Mendeley, it’s clear that their staff are on top of the forum convos. It’s easier to navigate and they have a clear rating system that let’s you see how other users have prioritized proposed features or fixes to Mendeley staff.
- not firefox dependent. - THIS IS BIGGGGGG - You’re not dependent on firefox with mendeley. I love firefox - but my firefox started freaking out after a few hours of Zotero courtship. Out of desparation to make Zotero work (because I thought it was the best thing out there at the time), I actually spent 4 hours troubleshooting my firefox after I installed zotero - it messed with my extensions and eventually I had to perform a clean reinstall. Encountering the firefox crash again, I tested out zotero in flock but flock 2.0 is still wayyyy tooo slow and there was no way that I was even going near netscape - that’s when I resorted to the clean reinstall of firefox. But still Zotero was buggy. so the problem with having a browser dependent citation manager is that you’re dependent on that browser - and on that computer’s browsers.
- Mendeley has $$ - they just recieved $2million in VC money. Zotero is a non-profit model. While I work for non-profits and do see them as useful at times, I believe in the scalability of Mendeley more than Zotero. Now I am curious to find out Mendeley’s business model. right now I can upload ALL my PDf’s to Mendeley But good services are worth it when the rates are reasonable and your entire life depends on it. Maybe they will start charging all of us once we all fall in love with Mendeley - or offer some kind of tiered service. *but please don’t start charging me in the future since I am one of your beta fans!
- Mendeley has $$ from realllly smart people - did I mention the investors behind the $2million are founders of last.fm and skype? that’s all that needs to be said.
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If you will notice that in my comments, the human side of the service is just as important as the software application itself. Especially when a program is in beta, you have to be super keen to talking to your users. I always think that companies have a lot more at stake when they are starting out and the period after they’ve hit critical mass. Becasse when you’re popular - everyone want to use you and they will be forgiving about mishaps, slow-downs and etc. But once you have your customers and you become lazy in your product/service, eventually something better will replace you. Mendeley and Jan Reichelt, you have been wonderful during this courtship. So far your actions tell me that we will have a great relationship…so don’t mess it up.
For now, I will take on the responsibility of evangelizing Mendely around the world. Last time I checked on Mendeley user map, there were 3 users in San Diego, 1 in Mexico City and 1 in China. I think I can help increase those numbers. Just watch them go up! And right now there are only 280 Social Science users - we need to change that also!
I love being a beta-user and I love getting excited about great products like Mendelye! The last time I was this excited is when I discovered rss, flickr, gmail, movable type, Jetblue, crack (just checkin!), Dunkin Donuts, Shakor’s, and Obama. So get yourself on it!
UPDATE - May 30, 2010:
I’m still using Mendeley and loving it! which each new release they are improving their product. There are still a few bugs that are really annoying and a few features that have yet to be introduced (like checking for double citations or customizable citations boxes), but hey there is nothing else like this!.
I want to share some tips after a year of using it.
Make sure that you back-up your files A LOT! I backup everytime I add tons of citations. Just go to to HELP-> Backup. I backup to a folder on my Dropbox labeled Mendeley backups that way if your computer ever crashes or is stolen, you will always have an online backup! It takes no more than 30 seconds. I urge you to be fanatical about backing up because you don’t want to end up like me where one day my Mendeley panicked and shut down. I had just finished 2 days of intensive Mendeley citation work - so I lost about a few hundred citations and had to go back and re-add each one. Sadness.
2.) I prefer to import books using the Mendeley bookmarklet from Google books than Amazon books. Citations from Google will have the summary/abstract imported in with the meta-data. This makes book searching a lot easier!
3.) fyi - Mendeley still classifies most pdf’s as journal submissions. This is flustering for me because I download a lot of stuff from CHI and more techy journals where the presentation and publication format is a conference proceeding.
4.) I use the notes section as a way to annotate my citings.
5.) I love Mendeley’s customer support! Jan and Mustaquli you guys rock!
UPDATE - JUNE 2, 2010:
Someone asked me to clarify what I meant my setting up a folder just for PDFs on my dropbox. So let me explain how I do this. I pay $99 a year for 50 gigs of Dropbox storage space. If you just want to use it for free, you get 5 gigs free! and if you refer people you can get up to 5 more gigs! That’s a lot of space for free. I use Dropbox because I live in the moment of crashing and file loss. Dropbox is an online cloud computing file storage system - so that means where ever I go, my files are always accessible online. You install Dropbox as a folder on your computer. You can put the folder anywhere and on the surface it functions just like any other folder on your computer. The most important part is that is done real-time syncing. So the nano-second I drop a file into my dropbox or even make a change, that change is updated to the my online dropbox
So by storing all my PDF’s in my Dropbox, that means I always have a backup online of all my PDFs. This is awesome. So in my computer crashes or is stolen, I don’t risk losing any of my PDFs or any of the material that I have in my Dropbox. I also do a third back-up on my mobile tiny 500gig Lacie drive and I do 4th backup on my stationary back-up located in a remote place that has the least chances of getting stolen.
So here’s a screenshot of how you set it up to backup to a self-designated folder on Dropbox.
1.) install Dropbox.
2.) create a folder for all your PDFs and name it. I’ved named mine ALL PDFs. From now on this will be the folder where all your PDFs will be stored. However, you will NEVER have to change any of the files names in this folder. Mendeley will automatically do this for you.
3.) go to your Mendeley Desktop, click on the top left MENDELEY DESKTOP —> PREFERENCES —> FILE ORGANIZER (3rd tab).
4.) check the box ORGANIZE MY FILES
5.) click on browse and chose your PDF folder. So notice that the directory will show that this ALL PDF folder sits within your Dropbox.
6.) check the box RENAME DOCUMENT FILES.
7.) chose how you want your files to be named. I chose the order, AUTHOR-YEAR - TITLE. I prefer author first because this is the easiest way for me to find the file by name in my folder if you were to click on it and look for it. For now I have it on Hypon-separate, but I should’ve chosen underscore.
8.) download a journal article or use an existing journal article. Physically DRAG the file over with your mouse into your mendeley. Mendeley will automatically download the meta-data AND it will be create a copy in your ALL PDF folder AND it will rename the file according to your instructions.
9.) you can double check for yourself - go look in your ALL PDFs and you will see your file there renamed!
10.) delete your downloaded file or wherever the file was located. Now all your PDFs will sit in your ALL PDF folder, Mendeley will handle everything!
11.) here is something important to know - Mendeley automatically REANMES all pdfs! so if you make a change to the author or title of a document in Mendeley, that file will automatically be renamed in your ALL PDFs folder. you can test it out and see for yourself! This feature is awesome because I will often put PDFs into MEndeley that it doesn’t properly recognize the meta-data - so I will have to manually copy and paste in the author’s name and correct title. Whatever changes I’ve made in Mendeley are updated in the ALL PDFs!
UPDATE - JUNE 15, 2010:
OMG I just discovered a new feature! Mendeley allows you to set a “watched folder” where it automatically imports all PDF’s and if you followed my instructions above for how to tell Mendeley to automatically rename your files, after automatically importing your PDFs it will rename your files also! That means I NEVER have to drag and drop a downloaded PDF into Mendeley again! this saves me sooooo much time! I don’t know when this feature became available but I can’t believe that I misssssssed it! Let’s explore this awesome new function.
Let’s try this out with an excellent piece of scholarship: Jonathan Coopersmith’s article, Does Your Mother Know What You Really Do? The Changing Nature and Image of Computer-Based Pornography, History and Technology, Volume 22, Issue 1 March 2006 , pages 1 - 25.
ok so I assume you’ve already read my June 2nd update that explains how to set Mendeley to automatically rename your files in a new folder for all your pdfs.
1.) go to Mendeley Preferences (top left corner), click on “WATCHED FOLDERS” tab, select the folder where you download your academic files (I call mine downloads for chrome), click on “OK”
2.) download Coopersmith’s article.
3.) your file will then show up in the download folder, right now the file downloaded as “741530078.pdf”
4. watch the file AUTOMATICALLY Show up in your Mendeley! OMG NO MORE DRAGGING! before I had to drag every downloaded file into my Mendeley! this saves sooooo much time! THIS IS AWESOME!
5.) then see the file magically appear in your designated ALL PDFs folder!
Some things to be aware of:
1.) delete downloaded file: you still have to delete the downloaded file from your downloads folder. This is because Mendeley automatically creates a copy of the pdf when it renames it and puts it in the ALL PDF’s folder (or whatever you call yours).
Hey Mendeley team- can you guys create the option to DELETE a file after it is automatically renamed and copies to a new folder?
2.) all pdfs will be imported! Warning - if you set MEndeley to watch your DOWNLOADS folder for automatic PDF import, it will import every single PDF that you download! This can become annoying cuz it doesn’t discrminate beween academic articles vs some PDF that you download from your email or from Google Docs. I realized this after I tried to print from my Google Docs cuz it creates a PDF to print and downloads it to your computer - these PDFs then started showing up in my Mendeley. I suggest that you only use one browser for downloading academic folders and designate a folder JUST for that browser and then set that to be the special downloads folder that Mendeley watches. So for example, I use 3 browsers, firefox, chrome and safari. I have created 3 separate downloads folder for EACH browser. Mendeley only watches my CHROME downloads folder.
Another option is for you to use a firefox downloads manager plugin where you can create separate folders. But my firefox crashes a lot when I add too many plugins and it was laborious to manage the folders - so that’s why I just use 3 separate browsers.
Design Thinking as a Creative Process: Technology, Business, & Human Values
I just discovered this whole field called “DESIGN THINKING.” It’s a process for designing practical and creative resolutions for an end action/product/program that brings about improvement for a group of people. What I like about this process is that it defines itself against ANALYTICAL THINKING - because design thinking is a “creative process based around the ‘building up’ of ideas. There are no judgments early on in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation in the ideation and prototype phases.”
NO JUDGEMENTS!!! This is big! So much of “analytical thinking” is about coming up with ideas that don’t look or sound stupid and ideas with minimum chances of failure. But that prevents people from thinking creatively and working as a team because everyone is too invested in their ego or their discipline or their theory.
EVERYDAY KNOWLEDGE! What I like about this philosophy is that it mirrors how people think about solutions in everyday life before they are socialized into institutionalized forms of thinking that require theoretical considerations or busines models. All around the world people are engaging in design thinking! India has been really good at tracking innovations by ordinary people who don’t have “design degrees” or have elite business social networks. Check out the National Innovation Foundation and Honeybee Network.
MULTIDISCIPLINARY THINKING!!! Yah I love things that promote multidisciplinary in a genuine way that values the role of professionals who work on understaning human values - so lookie I know where I fit in! There’s me - ethnographer/sociologist/anthopologist! I have a place in this world - this is so exciting :) I love learning about new business models and technologies - but at the end of the day i’m not a technologist or a hard-core business person - but my entry into both of those worlds is from the perspective of understanding the cultural practices and beliefs of new users who are consuming new technologies. Companies, like Google and P&G, are using this process to understand new markets. This makes me excited that I am employable in non-academic sectors! (thanks Tania Menendez! for the link)
IT’s ABOUT PEOPLE! Design thinking brings it all back to the humans - humans are the ones who use and interface with products - so this process is all about putting humans in all their capacities in the center. So much of design in the past focused on creating “sexy” products - I think that’s why people associate design with “aesthetic” - while I appreciate that aspect for I am just as enamored in beautiful packaging as anyone else - design thinking as a process beings the process back to the people and the people who use the products. GOOD DESIGN THINKING around a product CREATES SEXY PRODUCTS - designing for aesthetics only gets you so far - designing for people takes you a lot farther.
The three approaches to Design Thinking are (cited from here):
1. Proactively understand customer needs and cultural norms unique to each country.
2. Use those insights to run low-fidelity, strategic experiments.
3. Use the resulting assumptions to drive the development of local business models, including product development, marketing and branding, sales and distribution, and manufacturing.
Stanford has a whole institute dedicated to Design Thinking- The Hasso Plattner School of Design at STandford, started by David Kelly, the founder of IDEO. The whole philosophy at IDEO is Design Thinking:
Because design is messy and non-linear, each project we do is bespoke. We customize it for the challenge at hand. The scoping of the project plan is when our approach starts to take shape, and where our partnership with you begins…An inherently shared approach, design thinking brings together people from different disciplines to effectively explore new ideas—ideas that are more human-centered, that are better able to be executed, and that generate valuable new outcomes.
And I love Tom Brown’s (CEO of IDEO) blog on Design Thinking.
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I would like to think through the Design Thinking process for my work in Mexico with Barry Brown, Gloria Mark, Jesus Favela and Tanya Mendendez. We are working with a village in Oaxaca on designing appropriate technology for the people of this village. All along we’ve approached it from the circle that would be called “Human Values” according to DEsign Thinking. After two years of ethnography fieldwork in Oaxaca, we are finally in the phase where we are bringing in the technologists of CICESE and the people of the village to brainstorm ideas that would be useful for THEIR lives - not ours! We are hosting the design workshop in 2 weeks so I will post about that later.
Thanks Al Abut for pointing out some critiques of DEsign Thinking here and here - that essentially say this process nurtures the designer’s ego instead of removing it. Perhaps I am not clear about this process since my entry point isn’t as a designer nor as a corporation - but I would think that a more genuine implementation of Design Thinking requires an equal level of respect given to all the team-members that come from the all the other disciplines and the users. For me Design Thinking is exciting because it’s discusses a formal way to equally valorize the role of ethnographers/sociologists/anthropologists alongside the technologists and business heads. For too long psychologists were the only “people”-centered research folks allowed at the table.
Livescribe Pulse SmartPen: An Ethnographer’s dream tool?
Livescribe just announced the next iteration of their beautiful Pulse Pen, a new 4gig model in titanium and black. The Livescribe pen is a digital pen that writes on digital paper, records your writing, records audio, and does many other cool stuff. Essentially you dont’ ever have to scan in what you write anymore! With their special paper and pen, you can have everything digitally recorded foreeeeever! Here’s a good review from Berry Review comparing scanned notebook with livescribe paper and a demo from the Livescribe website.
I bought this pen for several reasons.
- I like to write on paper still. And I’ve stopped because I was always losing my paper. So now Livescribe solves that problem!
- I want to record audio while I write - this is awesome for doing fieldwork! As I am interviewing people I can write down my notes while recording their voice! OMG
- I want to doodle again. I love doodling, drawing graphs, mapping ideas out - livescribe allows me to upload all my doodles easily!
After I bought it I found even some more cool features that I didn’t know of!
- you can play the piano! this was soooo cool! you can add beats and change the instrument. Here’s a video of me making my piano and composing a masterpiece - THIS IS too fun
- you can have it translate basic words in several languages - Mandarin, Swedish, ARabic, and Spanish - probably more but I didn’t look into. Here’s a video of me translating “beer” into all the available languages on the demo card.
- they sell small notebooks that you can carry around with you the size of a book for only $13 for a pack of two. So that means you’re not stuck with the big 8x11 notebook that they include in the box when you buy the pen.
After I started using the Livescribe, I was faced with some new questions from an ethnographer’s perspective.
While the pen is useful for the ethnographer, what does it communicate to the interviewee? Is it ethical to use a tool that doesn’t look like a traditional audio recorder to audio record an interview or interaction? With note-taking for ethnographer moving beyond the traditional pen/pencil paper to a digital process, the benefits for the ethnographer are clear but does this effect the interview process?
The site of an audio recorder can sometimes prevent people from being as free to share information and personal thoughts. So I thought this is cool - the livescribe pen can help ME ease my anxiety about taping! But then I thought from the participant’s perspective - what do they think when I tell them in the beginning of the interview that I would like their permission to tape this interview and that I will be taping it with this “pen”?
In many of the places that I am working, communication technology such as cellphones is relatively new and people don’t have spending money for creative gadgets. I think this pen might freak people out! Ok Maybe they wouldn’t be freaked out, but I can imagine them being a bit weirded out and curious at the same time - and then I wonder if their processing of the “pen” as an audio recorder would get in the way of the interview goals at hand.
I wonder if they would think well if this thing *looks* like a pen but is an audio recorder but also is a pen because she’s writing with it - what else could she have on her that is not really what it appears to be? Or what if this also doubled as a video camera (which would be totally awesome! Livescribe designers build a video cam into this!) Would people start thinking what other conspicuous looking devices are recording the interaction?
There’s something very clear when you take out a separate tool that functions as an audio recorder or camera to document an interaction. It sends a clear message about the intention of the interaction: this process, your actions, the surrounding - is being recorded. The tools can makes the “ethnographic moment” explicit. Whereas if are using tools that look like pens to do all those things - perhaps that takes some of the power away from the participants. In the Human Subjects Review Process, the assumption in the application is that when you say you’re going to ask a subject for permission to tape an interview, the researcher is going to audio record with a traditional digital audio recorder.
I was even thinking that if I had the chance to take this pen into my fieldsite, when I ask for permission to tape an interview, I could take out my audio recorder and place it on the table. But then I would actually tape with it with my pen
Now I hope that my relationship with my participants are always based first and foremost on trust. So I don’t think they would be suspicious of my intentions or of my “tools” But I am just imagining for general research purposes and situations where maybe it’s not deep ethnography - maybe it’s just one time or 2 week project where you don’t get the chance to establish a close relationship.
Well either way, the Livescribe pen I believe is an ethnographer’s dream come true.
Here’s where this post becomes very personal and sad and also why I don’t have any stories of me taking my pen into my field sites. Please do not proceed if you do not want to hear heart-wrenching news….
I bought my dream pen in March of 2009.
and here comes the horrific news…
I LOST MY LIVESCRIBE PEN 33 DAYS AFTER I PURCHASED IT.
Only 5 months later am I able to admit this without pain. I’ve only told 4 people in the world before this post - a close friend, two of my phd advisors, and a stranger I saw in the airport with the pen. Weeks after I lost it I had high hopes of finding it again - so I wasn’t ready to admit that it really gone.
I lost it on a my flight from DC to JFK on Delta. I have NEVER had a pleasant experience flying on Delta Airlines. So losing my precious Livescribe pen on one of their flights is one more reason to avoid flying Delta. I called and called their lost and found. I even went back to the Delta lost and found office at their JFK terminal in person - but it was never to be found.
I have to blame someone, and certainly I cannot blame the loss of the Livescribe on myself. So I would like to officialy transfer the blame from myself to Delta Airlines.
Delta, you suck. You lost my pen. One of your morally deficient customers took my pen and they never returned it to the Delta Lost and Found. Your airline and your customers suck.Your Lost and Found customer service agents were always rude and they didn’t take me seriously when I told them that I had lost a very special pen. They laughed at me. you suck.
Ok now that I’ve finished transferring the blame to Delta, I would love to expound on why I was so in love my Livescribe. My feelings are still raw, full of passion and pain - but I am in a state where I’ve moved beyond anger and am able to talk about my pen without tears.
Ode to Livescribe
Livescribe, you were always good to me when we were together. you never left my purse. you never walked out on me for another notebook. Although then you only worked on a PC - I comprised and took you to my netbook. I see now that you operate on OSX. Well if we were together still I would introduce you to my Mac Air. I love you still. you are committed to excellence. I filled up your 2 gig capacity so quickly, but now I see you’ve grown up to a 4 gig adult. I wanted to take you everywhere with me to all my research sites around the world we could’ve seen the mountains in Mexico, the <polluted> Rivers in china, the stars in the Appalachia - but…alas, we were separated…but only in this lifetime.
SO i’ve thought long and hard about this - about why I lost it.
- is it because I treated it (in my tired state) as just any other pen? I don’t keep track of my regular pens and I never have invested in those $100 pens or received any expensive White gold-plated pens.
- Is it because my brain hadn’t switched to thinking - this pen is FREAKING expensive and special - don’t let it leave your hands?
- it is because I am not mature enough for creative gadgets that look conspicuous yet have multiple functions?
While those are all possible answers, I have another theory. I think I lost it because I didn’t have it strapped around my neck. I should’ve used the neck strap that came with the Livescribe pen.
Now Livescribe designers - this is where you have to listen to me - I didn’t use the strap because it was reallllly ugly! I don’t think I am the only customer retarded enough to lose their pen (ok it’s quite possible I am the only one so far) - so I think you should make it easier for people to fashionably hang their pen around their neck. I suggest moving away from the rounded string to a flatter shoe-lace like strong. Also the thinner the better - and something that is adjustable would be great. like a slide knot. i can definitely tell you that the black string will not look good with your new beautiful titanium pen.
Also Livescribe you HAVE to design a better looking case! the black case that was included in the box was disappointing - I couldn’t even get my pen out of the case half the time! it was to tight and it was just plane ugly. You’ve designed such a beautiful pen so there’s not excuse for failure with the pen’s case. The case itself (if used) can become a reminder to someone who’s lost-prone like me to take special care of the pen - so the case has to be beautiful ok? I didn’t use the case after the first day when I realized that it would take me at least 5 sec to struggle to get the pen out of the case.
while I am at it - is there any way to make a tiny indent for the fingers? my fingers would ache after writing because the pen is so thick.
(btw now I know that if you buy something with your American Express card they have a protection plan that will give you your money back if you lose or have something stolen within 90 days. I know this 6 months too late.)
The first moment of Livescribe love - Setting up the pen (all the photos of my pen)
flash ethnography: observations of a doctor’s use of mobile tech with a patient
I took my grandma to the doctors for her annual today. The doctor that we have been with for the last 5 years moved to another office. So today we had a new doctor. I gave the new doctor a brief overview of the last 5 years of my grandma’s medical history. Our new doctor was wonderful, personable, and attentive.
During the entire updating process, the doctor was primarily talking to me because I was translating and I have been the primary overseer of my grandma’s health for the last few years.
I noticed that she was carrying around a new netbook. She was typing my notes in the netbook while constantly referring back to my grandmother’s file that contained her entire medical history being various doctors.
I noticed that the entire time we talked, it was very hard for her to have any direct interaction with my grandma. Her back was faced towards her as the netbook was placed on a stationary built in counter. As she typed the notes, she looked at me and then would periodically turn her entire body around 360 around to smile at my grandma and then immediately turn back to her netbook.
When we were done with the exam, I chatted with the doctor for a few minutes about the netbooks. She said that the office was trialing these netbooks out and had rented them for 6 months. She seemed ambivalent about the netbook, as if it was forced upon her. She said,
“Well I can take it with me everywhere and look up notes on each patient, but the file of the patient’s history still isn’t on the laptop so we still have to pull up files and deal with a lot of papework. It just feels like another thing to carry around and keep track of.”
When I asked her how it affected her interaction with her patients, she said that this was her primary reason for not liking these laptops. She showed me that using the netbook meant that she had to spend more time with her back towards her patients. I asked her if she had tried sitting down and putting it in her lap so that she could face the patient, but she said that was also inconvenient because of all patient history paper file. She then want on to explain that she preferred the stationary big screen desktops on carts at her old office because it was on a table that could face the patient or be moved around within the room.
Post observation thoughts?
spatial layout of material objects matters
I think a big fix in the problem would be the way rooms are designed. Spatial layout of an office/room matters for the introduction of a new technology. Therefore, the reception and usage of a new technology, such as this netbook, will vary across different offices. And it’s cool to think about how even minute furniture and room layouts can make a difference.
In this instance, the only place for the doctor to place her netbook in such way that her physical paper files could also be accessed meant that her face-to-face time with her patient was compromised. Imagine if there was an extra cart in this room with a big computer screen and each doctor could plug in their own netbooks. Or imagine if all the stationary computers in each were networked so doctors didn’t have to keep track of their netbooks. This was a such a great learning moment for me in terms of witnessing how the consideration of spatial layout is especially salient for conducting comparisons in technology usage for a new tool across communities.
This reminds me of the time I spent working in the projects of the South Bronx. I had noticed that the layout of a small apartment that housed 4-8 people would’ve made it impossible for a student to use a desktop computer with broadband the same way as a student in larger apartment or home of middle-high income families.
the extent of digitization of info matters
the mobility of laptops were useful for accessing only recent notes because most of the files had yet to be scanned into computers. For all the promises that mobile tools deliver to professionals in service industries, it’s difficult to take full advantage of these tools when the entire information base of an organization has yet to be digitized. As the doctor had explained, she still had to rely on physical paper files for the patient history. The netbook was only useful for accessing recent visits. I wonder what she would’ve thought about the laptop if ALL patient histories was on it. Would she have sat down and put the netbook in her lap so that she could have more time with the patient?
human connection matters
decreased face-to-face time was the primary issue for the doctor. This was such a great example of when a technology appears to offer more mobility may work to compromise other forms of interactions that may be more valued in a certain social setting.
Mobility as a feature is neutral
There is a lot of excitement across HCI and CSCW for studies on mobilites and how digital tools can complement a more mobile lifestyle. Aside from my observation that most of these studies are on elite Western (usually Anglo) travelers or mobile workers and tend to undervalue informal economy workers who rely just as much on mobility - I think this is such an exciting area of research that has pushed me to bring the concept of mobility closer to lived practices of mobilities.
That being said, I think that it should not be considered a priori that mobility is a “good” or “desired” aspect of X. In the case of the doctor’s office, having a mobile laptop seemed to be novel technology that the doctor was obligated to carry around. Of course it was not an ideal office with patient history files still on paper format and badly designed patient rooms - but that is just the point. Rarely are technologies introduced into ideal or perfect settings. So it’s good to think more critically about the role of mobility for a specified audience and what mobility means to them. In this case, increased mobility of note taking and accessing for doctors compromised personal connections with their patients.
One of the ways I thought about this in the past was trying to think about the other end of mobile cellphones as mobility saviours - so what groups wouldn’t want to be as mobile - what situations would mobility as an option not be valued?
What came to my mind?
• cheating spouses who don’t want to be located
• paraplegics
• people who hate cellphones
yah ok this is a totally lame list - I couldn’t really come up with any other groups because I think my problem is that I live too much in a paradigm where mobility is valued and an absolute! I am one of those working professionals who travels a lot and would stop breathing if I didn’t have my cellphone or my laptop on a work day.
ok so here’s some things questions in conclusion:
• How do new technologies affect work flows?
• How do new technologies affect client/patient interaction?
• What are the compromises that are made for a more mobile lifestyle/interaction?
• How does spatial placement of objects affect technology usage?
Useful Links
• Microsoft Research on Health and Wellbing
Ethnography and Healthcare
• Multi-tasking in practice: Coordinated activities in the computer supported doctor–patient consultation. International Journal of Medical Informatics, Volume 74, Issue 6, Pages 425-436. M.Gibson, K.Jenkings, R.Wilson, I.Purves
• Clinician style and examination room computers: a video ethnography. W Ventres, R Marlin, N Vuckovic, V Stewart - Fam Med, 2005 - stfm.org.
• Mapping the integration of social and ethical issues in health technology assessment.
Lehoux P, Williams-Jones B. Int J Technol Assess Health Care. 2007 Winter;23(1):9-16.
• Making a Case in Medical Work: Implications for the Electronic Medical Record. M Hartswood, R Procter, M Rouncefield, R … - Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2003 - portal.acm.org
great quote about ethnography
All of us are watchers—of television, of clocks, of traffic — but few of us are observers. Everyone is looking; not many are seeing.
Todos somos miradores—de la tele, de los relojes, del transito—pero pocos de nosotros somos observadores. Todos estan mirando, pero no todos estan viendo.
— Peter M. Leschak”
I think this such a great quote for teaching or understanding the role of ethnography. It’s not so much about the passive act of watching but the more engaged notion of seeing - peering into something - a world - beyond yours.
I originally posted this on my quotes blog, Dichos y Vida.
Corporate Responsibility in the Age of Algorithms: HP overlooks “Dark Skin” users for its new HP Cam
Type in HP + Cam + Racism in Google Search and you will see 1,000 posts on this topic in the past 24 hours and 13,000 in the past week.
What I am most amazed by is the language that HP used in their online acknowledgment of the Youtube video:
“Everything we do is focused on ensuring that we provide a high-quality experience for all our customers, who are ethnically diverse and live and work around the world…
…. The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. We believe that the camera might have difficulty “seeing” contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.”
Notice that HP never actually claims responsibility in overlooking users with darker skin color. They blame the HP Cam’s inability to track black people on the camera’s algorithm. Essentially, they blame the algorithm and the camera. HP never says that their programmers didn’t program the algorithm to process conditions with less contrast. They didn’t blame themselves for not doing careful ethnography on its diversity of users. They didn’t blame managers for not even considering non-light skin users during the entire design process!
Does this signal a new era of corporate responsibility? In the Industrial age, if a worker’s arm was cut off, the blame was placed on the machines. In the Digital Age, is the blame placed on 1’s and 0’s—those ignorant algorithms?
In both eras, the blame is placed on the inorganic objects - the technology. The managers, the programmers, the designers and the company are put in the clear.
In HP’s case, I suspect that their focus groups (if they held any), did not reflect the diversity of their customer base. I suspect that the programmers are light-skinned and do not have many friends with darker skin colors. This is a great example of how a technology’s design fails to be relevant for populations that have been historically ignored by tech companies. While in this youtube video Desi claims that “Hp Computers are Racist” with irony, underlying his statement is a history of companies ignoring black users, even them they prove to be a profitable customer base.
I hope this teach’s HP a valuable lesson, that non-light skin users, are not just end-clients. During the entire design process, the diversity of its user base should inform the way its technology is designed, programmed, tested, and launched.
Leaving for 3rd ethnographic fieldwork trip to Mexico in a migrant-sending Oaxacan village.
This will be the 3rd time over a period of 3 years that I’m going into the mountains of Oaxaca (Sierra Madre y La Madre del Sur) to do research on ICT usage in a rural Oaxacan migrant-sending village. This year is particularly exciting because I feel that after two years of building up my relationship with the village the families really have become my friends. And I get to spend New Year’s Eve in the village!
The Mixteca Baja is one of my favorite places in the world because the people and the place are so hospitable. I feel really at home here. As an urbanite, getting to know how people live in rural areas is such a great learning experience. It is amazing the amount of knowledge that is required to live off the land. Here are pictures below from the last trip in 2009. In the first few pics, I am riding Mocho, a one-eared donkey. I am playing with some of the kids and the last few pictures are of the village cemetery. The rest of my pics are here.
So this year I’m going with a research colleague, Tanya Menendez, who came as a research assistant 2 years ago. Tanya is now very involved in the currently funded project. She has also developed a close relationship with many of the families. I’m really excited to have her come with me this time. Plus, it’s always good to do fieldwork in teams of two when the language you are working in not your first. I am sure there will be many times that Tanya is going to correct me on my Spanish.
This time we are going to live with some of the families in the village. In the previous years we stayed in a hotel in a town 45 minutes away. This year we get to experience the village 24/7! This means that I can focus a lot of my ethnographic efforts on the social practices inside homes and really observe family interaction. It also means more home cooked yummy meals!
In terms of the fieldwork, I’m super interested in seeing what kind of social changes have taken place since last year and in comparison to two years ago. When I was there last year, there was a noticeable increase in the population of young males (from around 20 in the village to around 50) because many of them had been deported - not because they were criminals - simply because ICE (US immigration and customs enforcement) had picked them up while they were walking on the street looking for work.
With the economy as it is, I wonder how the families are doing economically and socially. In one family, the father had shown up in the village over night after having been deported. The family couldn’t get in touch with him for many weeks because he was held up in a detention center. When he appeared in the village 1 month later after no contact with his family, overnight they realized that they had lost their only source of income. Having to return back to a complete subsistence lifestyle, the mother had to make some tough decisions about the finances. They had to take their oldest son (15 years old) out of school even though he wanted wanted to finish high school. Their plan was to have being work or migrate to the US so that he could help with the fees of his two younger brothers staying in school. The mother also had to cut off cellphone usage for both sons. With no father working in the us, the kids’ social circle had shrunk down to their own village overnight. It became difficult for them to reach or even see their friends in other villages.
Another major change that we had noticed was that the youth were no longer treating their cellphones as a necessary object. Rather, many of them were using MSN Messenger as their primary communication tool with their friends. The novelty of a cellphone had worn off. This was a noticeable difference from the 1st year where the youth carried their cellphones with them everywhere in EVEN though the signal was horrible within the village. These cellphone carrying youth were the first cellphone adopter in the village and they made their cellphone ownership status very obvious. They never let it leave their hands and it was always visible. However, during the 2nd year, the youth rarely carried their cellphones on them. Many of them reported that they had forgotten it or that it wasn’t charged.
This year, I wonder how the youth will be using the cellphones and MSN. I’ve noticed that they sign on to MSN less often and I wonder if this is due to the economy tightening up.
I have a long fieldwork guide, but I would like share a quick glimpse into some of the topics that Tanya and I would like to find out from this year’s fieldwork trip:
understanding spatial perspectives: We will have people draw mental maps of their daily activities within the village and point out when and where they use their cellphones or make time to go to the internet cafe 45 minutes away. Some questions to ask: where they usually leave their cellphones, why do they carry it with them, what areas have good signals, how to they manage sharing a cellphone, when does their schedule change, where are all the places they visit in the surrounding area on a typical month?
Do more research on the caseta telefonica: when do they chose to make or receive calls at the caseta, who calls them, have they noticed any differences in calling patterns in the last 3 years, who initiates calls in the family, have they changed the way that they use the caseta?
private communication and inside the home: how to women manage the finances, how do they use the cellphone, what do they use it for, how do they communicate with other women, how to they manage their kid’s schedules, how often to they talk to their husbands and sons in the US, what is most important to them, how often to they leave the village, do they take a cellphone with them, when was the first time they used a cellphone, do they prefer to use the caseta, the telefono fijo, or the cellphone and why, and what made them decide that a cellphone was important for their child, who taught them how to use the cellphone?
undocumented migrants in detention centers: Talk to return migrants who have been held in federal detention centers: what phone #’s do they call, how often are they allowed a call, who tells them when they can make a call, do they have difficulty reaching their family in Mexico, how do they feel in the detention centers, do they hear of stories where people can’t reach their family in Mexico, what makes them want to stay longer or plead their case, did they try to look for a lawyer, and do their friends and relatives in the US know when they are picked up?
how families are dealing with the slow economy: are migrants getting or maintaining jobs, are they feeling the economic slowdown, how are families managing with less income, what kind of decisions have to be made with less money in the family, are documented versus undocumented migrants experiencing the economic slowdown in different ways, are migrants sending less money?
Changes in usage of communication tools: how do people decide when to use IM vs cellphone vs the caseta, has cellphone signal improved this year, how often are people using their cellphones, have prices changed for cellphone usage, are people on special plans and if so how did they find out about it, how much are people spending per month on cellphone usage
going to the cybercafe: I would like to go to do some mobile ethnography again and travel with the youth to the cybercafe in the town 45 minutes away. what kind of websites are they visiting, how have their internet viewing patterns changed, how often they go to the cafe, how do they negotiate getting money from their moms to pay for internet time, how often to they talk to their friends online, how have their viewing patterns changed over the last 3 years, what new things have they discovered about the internet, how often to they use email, who do they email with.
life histories: understand life changes among informants, what they plan to do, what kind of path they see for themselves, will they chose to migrate to the US, what are some difficulties they are dealing with, any stories from the previous year, what are they excited about, how they feel about their role in the village?
Cultural changes with the village and migration: how the village is doing with its resources, how the tree replanting project is going, status on water treatment, status on the library initiative, how do the older people feel about the younger people, are people moving back from the US, is there a population decline, how was the fiesta this year, why do people decide to not migrate, how do young people feel about migration, what does the village do with the return migrants and the deported migrants, how quickly do the deported migrants return to the US,
My Suggestions for Making Google’s Services More Relevant for Non-Elite Chinese Users (involves some ethnography!)
Google announced on its company blog that Chinese hackers had attacked its users and as a result Google.CN may leave China due to the security breaches.
While unfortunate that Google.CN may be shutting down, my ethnographic work in China revealed five things that aren’t being told in the current story:
- Many Chinese internet users don’t find Google to be very useful. Therefore, a Google withdrawal would not have any immediate impact on the daily Chinese internet user because most people search with Baidu, the reigning search engine in China.
- Many Chinese internet users prefer Baidu over Google because using Baidu makes them feel more “Chinese.” Baidu does an excellent job at tapping into nationalistic fervor to promote itself as being the most superior search engine for Chinese users.
- Chinese internet users don’t know how to get to the Google site. While they may “know” of Google, it’s a whole other matter when it comes to typing or saying Google’s name.
- Google is primarily used by highly educated netizens. And even these users prefer Google.COM over Google.CN.
- Google is not successful at reaching the mobile internet market.
I arrived at these insights after I spent over 300 hours conducting participant observation and informal interviews this past summer with government policy-makers, academics, youth, migrants, and low-income users. I was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (more info) to be a research scholar at the China Internet Network Information Center 中 国互联网络信息中心 (CNNIC), located in Beijing, China. The center is overseen by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). CNNIC manages the hardware aspect of China’s internet and produces quantitatively oriented research on internet usage in China. Their data provides policy direction for party ministries, information for private companies, and statistics for the government. While my main focus was not on Google (more info on research), the topic frequently came up and I started realizing that the non-use of Google provided a lot of cultural insights into the practices of Chinese internet users.
The blame for Google’s lack of success in China cannot solely be placed on this most recent episode with Chinese hackers. Other complications have started long before this occurrence, such as the myriad of ways in which policies work to favor Chinese companies over international ones, the difficulty in competing against government paid search results on Baidu, and the impossibility of providing consistent service when the government shuts down access to the entire Google site for few days. All of these reasons lie beyond Google’s control.
There are, however, other explanations that do lie within Google’s control in which they have failed to execute. The 3 main factors are: achieving brand recognition, creating a successful marketing campaign, and understanding usage contexts of non-elite internet users. Google should hold themselves accountable for these factors.
Google has failed at brand recognition. They have not been successful at making their services relevant for the average Chinese internet user nor have they made it easy for people to recognize, say, or even type in their name on a keyboard.
- People didn’t even know how to correctly pronounce and agree on the pronunciation of the name “Google.” When I was with a group of 5 youth, I asked them if they used Google, instead of getting an answer we launched into a 10 minute conversation trying to figure out the correct name. While it was clear that we were all referring to Google, the IT company, it was not clear which characters to use for its name. Google does not have an immediately recognizable name like Apple (Pingguo) or Yahoo (Yahe) or Baidu. I, like many other Chinese people still refer to Google by its colloquial name, GouGou - doggy (狗狗). While Google did consider GouGou as a name, in 2006 it announced that its new name would be Gu-Ge” (谷歌). But the name didn’t stick and so many people still continued to refer to Google as GouGou. Gu-Ge is supposed to mean “harvest songs”— romantic referral to a “fruitful and productive search experience, in a poetic Chinese way”. I guess that Google excecs thought, “Hey if Chinese peasants sings happy harvest songs for their productive crops, then Chinese netizens will use Gu-Ge for happy productive online searches!” Hmmmm…Back in 2006 I argued that the new name was quiet “a semantic stretch.” Even worse, it conjured up images of “slow and remote agricultural scenes,” said Jin Ge, a researcher on Chinese online gamers. The new name was so unpopular that Google fans started an online petition in 2006 for Google to abandon Gu-Ge. Google didn’t listen. The lesson? When your market cannot pronounce, remember or correctly identify your name, you’ve got a major problem—especially when your names invokes images of sterile hinterlands or groins, grasshoppers, and shaving breasts.
The confusion over Google’s Chinese name also has other consequences: people were unsure of how to type in the name “Google” on the computer keyboard. When I asked people to take me to the Google site, I received a lot of similar responses of uncertainty.
- Some youth would attempt to type GouGou (the colloquial name for Google) and they would reach GouGou.cn or GouGou.com thinking that they were at the Google site because it looked similar to Google’s bare aesthetics even though the corporate symbol is a dog. Since many people, even me, still refer to Google as GouGou, it’s not a surprise that people thought that they were at Google’s site even though they were at GouGou.com. Others would type “Gogel,” which lead to nowhere.
- Those who typed Google with just one “O” (Gogle) would get to the Google site only IF they typed in .COM. domain. If they just pressed the enter key after typing in “Gogle” it would take them to Gogle.CN, which is a phishing site (phishing sites try to get you to enter your password and email in the hopes to steal the information). This is even more confusing because Gogle.CN is designed to look like Google’s bare aesthetics. If you click on “Login 登录” in the top right corner where the Gmail login is usually located on the real Google site, you’re taken to a page that says Gogle.CN Login but its page is titled Google! As you can see in the picture below and where I’ve circled in pink, it’s really misleading!
I’ve noticed that most computers default to the .CN site in internet cafes, so this could hypothetically happen quite often if Chinese users try to go to Google and they type in the name with one less “O.” - IF youth did get to Google’s site successfully by either typing in the name correctly or going to Google.com, Gogle.COM, or Guge.COM/CN, it would usually be on their 5th or 7th or even 8th try - that is if they hadn’t given up yet and by then it was just clear that they were doing it because I had asked them to show me how to get to the Google site. It was quite obvious that going to the Google site was never part of their internet routine.
It’s not the case that people are unfamiliar with Google. People know of Google, but they don’t want to use it because it’s associated with being “Un-Chinese.” Part of Baidu’s success lies in its successful marketing campaign against Google, using nationalism as one of their publicity strategies. It’s been working well. The campaign is so effective that netizens associate the use of Google with being unpatriotic. In this infamous Baidu commercial from 2006 (below), Baidu wins an intelligence contest over the its unnamed foreign competiter who is represented by the white male actor. Baidu succeeds in “knowing more” in the back and forth banter over the meaning of the scroll. Even the white man’s Chinese female lover decides to leave him for the Chinese scholar who “knows more.”
I don’t think Baidu is playing unfairly because American companies often tap into US nationalism with “Buy Made in the USA” campaigns. Google just needs to be more creative in using more strategic marketing to overcome its negative cultural stigma in China—a stigma that is actively nurtured by its competitor.
Another way that Baidu has had an advantage over Google is that Chinese and Hong Kong TV programming will show screen-shots of Baidu when they refer to the internet. Most recently I watched a a show on the Phoenix Channel (Hong Kong based) on January 22nd that showed several screen-shots of how Baidu helped a kidnapped child reunite with his biological parents after 12 years of separation. There are so many stories that talk about how the internet, as symbolized by Baidu, has helped citizens in everyday life. I have yet to see a negative TV segment on the internet that is associated with Baidu, rather these negative associations are blamed on specific applications, such World of Warcraft or specific places, such as internet cafes. Baidu itself is always in the clear, whereas Google is not. The only screen time Google gets on Chinese TV programming is when it is featured as another Western company disobeying Chinese laws. Google should be aware of how Baidu’s onscreen TV time contributes to its popularity and reinforces the notion that Baidu is good for the Chinese, Google is not.
But here’s the thing, solving the marketing and brand recognition problem is relatively simple when the bigger problem is that Google’s services are not useful!
- Youth didn’t see how any of the services offered by Google were easier to use than the ones that they were already using. This is because Google operates in an e-mail paradigm while other services operate in a messenger paradigm. One time when I was checking my Gmail account at an internet cafe, a youth asked me, ” how do you leave pictures and messages for others?” I would say, “just send them an email.” But here’s the thing - youth don’t have to send emails when they are using MSN Messenger. There’s a major disconnect in communication culture. Messenger-like services don’t operate on an email paradigm. QQ and MSN users can go to a friend’s MSN Live profile or QQ box to leave a message or post a photo. You can check on each friend’s page to see their last update. It’s like a mini-facebook for every MSN user but just for your own contacts. If a friend wasn’t online, youth didn’t send them an email. Rather, they would click on the user’s name and write a direct message that would be sent immediately but read later when the recipient logged in at a later point in time.
- One teenager asked me how I shared music with Gmail. I tried to explain that I used Dropbox and I put the file my public folder and then give the url to my friend. By the time I was done with my explanation, she looked totally confused. I asked her how her and her friends shared music. She said, oh I just put it in my QQ box and my friends can go in and download it. My way didn’t make sense for them and my method didn’t even involve Google. QQ and MSN make it easy for youth to exchange files without emails and without having to own your own computer. We need to understand what it means to live in an instant messaging paradigm as opposed to an e-mail paradigm.
- By the way, this is also what I’ve observed outside of the US in Mexico, where my most recent fieldwork continues to show that the primary online communication method are messenger services, not email.
- Baidu offers really good mp3 searches, Google doesn’t. Quite simple. MP3 is the most common file format for digital music. Chinese consumers really like to listen to music and they are used to having easy access to it. Music is one area of the internet that is most free from censorship and mostly widely available in China. Google did not provide mp3 search in fear of lawsuits from music labels. And when Google finally did sign a contract with 4 music labels to offer mp3 search, it didn’t work. Larry Salibra discusses his experience with google mp3. (Check our Charles Frith’s comments on this in “Is Google Stupid?”)
- Mobiles are becoming more popular and other companies are doing a better job of delivering mobile content and services. For example, several high school students showed me how they could access MSN Messenger and QQ chat on their cellphone for mobile internet. I asked them why they chose to use these apps. Some youth told me that they were already on the phone when they bought it (some were used), and others told me that it was really easy to download when you go the MSN or QQ site at an internet cafe. One of the most important reasons is that most people already have a MSN or QQ account. So when they begin to use mobile internet, the transition to using mobile MSN or QQ Messenger is an obvious one.
- For many of these low-income youth, mobile internet was used more frequently than internet cafes. They didn’t have a computer at home but what they did have was a cellphone that always had a signal. Another example is that cellphone companies have partnerships with Baidu or QQ Tencent to deliver mobile content. People would often show me a SMS of the latest news updates from Baidu. They told me that when they bought the cellphone, the vendor would help them sign up for the services. Google needs to think about how to cross into mobile services because other companies have deep relationships with mobile carriers to ensure that a new mobile user receives content from their company.
So who is using Google in China? Google is primarily used by elite Chinese users while Baidu is mainly used by non-elites. What’s the difference between elite and non-elite users? Elite users are those who are highly educated and can speak or at least read English. Interestingly, the biggest fans of Google were Chinese academics age 18 years and older. They used Google Scholar, Google Translation and Gmail for the same purposes as Western users. They relied on Google for their research and said that there was no site that even matched Google’s services. The way that Chinese professors, researchers, and academics work is more akin to the way that Westerners manage their relationships and projects. Therefore, the adoption of Google among highly educated Chinese is not surprising. Highly educated Chinese users organize and prioritize information in ways that are much more similar to Western users than non-elite Chinese users.
Sometimes you will hear me say, “I cannot imagine life without Google!” And it’s true - I can’t imagine living without my Gcal, Reader, Apps, Voice, Docs, and etc. Chinese academics who read English would often say the same thing when we talked about Google, frequently professing their love for Google. For these intellectuals, they didn’t feel less “Chinese” for using Google. My impression was that they felt more informed, could access media beyond China, and were more aware of global discourses (this includes celebrity gossip).
While Google may have a loyal following among Chinese academics, they only make up a small percentage of the population. If Google wants to become a more popular search engine in China, it has to do a better job at reaching non-elite users. Google isn’t going to get anywhere as the search engine for the intellectuals of China.
Google has built an empire of services that work for Western contexts and values. So it’s no surprise that their most loyal fans outside of the US are elite users who share similar class and occupational backgrounds with Western users. To reach new users with an entirely different set of cultural practices, Google has to rethink and reinvent itself for the Chinese market. Sometimes, one size does not fit all.
It’s one thing if Google’s difficulties could just simply be attributed to government interference, and bad marketing and publicity. But that’s not the case. Their services just simply are not useful for most Chinese users. I suggest that Google dedicate itself to understanding the Chinese market in a socio-anthropological way. They should be hiring teams of Chinese and non-Chinese ethnographers, sociologists, and anthropologists to work intimately in all phases with human-computer interaction designers, programmers, and R&D managers. Google should invest in long-term fieldwork for teams to immerse themselves in a diversity of environments. While usability tests and focus groups are useful for specific phases of app development, they aren’t as useful for understanding cultural frameworks and practices because by the time an app is being tested, it already has accumulated so many cultural assumptions along the way in the design process that users are asked to test something that functions in the programmer’s world, not the user’s world.
I hope Google doesn’t leave China because both sides would lose. I would like to see the Chinese government ease off of Google. And I would like to see Google.CN re-orientate itself to create such overwhelmingly great and relevant services that Chinese netizens will WANT to use their apps.
Competition and collaboration are essential factors for an innovative market.
The last thing that China wants to communicate to the world is that it does not offer a fair playground for companies to compete against each other or against government-cozy companies. One of the keys factors to sustain and increase China’s growth this century depends on its ability to attract capital. It doesn’t look good when the largest IT company does not want to work in China.
The success of China also depends on its ability to innovate. Historically, the culture has favored followers over leaders. While this is slowly changing, companies like Google are a positive influence on the Chinese work culture because the company promotes a culture of innovation, research, and transparency. What this means is that it values risk-takers and creative minds. Working at Google gives many Chinese researchers, programmers, and managers an opportunity to engage with companies that have different protocols and values than local Chinese companies.
And lastly, collaboration is critical for innovation. If Google and the Chinese government cannot work through this together, then China would be signaling to the world that it just pushed out one of the world’s most innovative IT companies. If Google stays in China, it should think about how to become a leader for IT innovation in China. Some good ideas to consider can be found in Isaac Mao’s open letter to Google to “save [the] Internet in China.” Mao suggests that Google create a VC fund, develop anti-censorship tools, and improve Adsense. I am a big fan of his first suggestion of creating a VC fund as a way to nurture new Chinese IT companies. This is an excellent idea that would infuse the market with innovative companies that are more closely aligned with Google’s culture. With Google running a R&D like VC fund, it would diversify the players in the Chinese internet landscape, increase Google’s industry alliances, and nurture its ties to other IT leaders that may have deeper connections to other sectors
Whatever the outcome, we should not be misled to think that everyone is on the same page in the Chinese government. Like all large institutions, there are different alliances and divergent opinions. The Chinese government is not a unified front that necessarily agrees across all levels on its censorship policies. I believe that there is a lot of opportunity for change. I worked with a lot of smart and open minded people who were willing to explore different positions. The question is are those talented people in the position to bring things like innovation, competition, and collaboration together.
In the beginning of this post, I said that that if Google were to leave China, there would be no immediate impacts on the average Chinese internet user. However, the long-term impacts would be devastating. The Chinese IT industry would lose such a critical player. The Chinese government would appear more hostile towards international businesses and privacy protocols. The citizens of China would have less access to unfiltered information. And the world beyond China would lose a critical link to the country. I hope that a compromise can be reached.
Two must-read view points on this topic:
Why I Love Fieldwork - Post 4 of 4: Eating Live Insect
This is the 1st post of a 4-part post on my fieldwork experience in Oaxaca, Mexico. This are unedited field notes that show the moments that have nothing to do with technology during my fieldwork. Here is where I explain the context for why I’m sharing these notes. (Post 1,Post 2,Post 3,Post 4)
I am so sad to leave Sabinillo. Today was our last morning and everything would be much more meaningful as it would the “the last” of whatever. We got up and Esmeralda was still sleeping but everyone else had woken up. We sat at the breakfast table as Eusevia served all of us some yummy tortilla breakfast. We also had some of the chayote from Magdelena…
Joaquin at the very last minute said that he couldn’t join us on a hike because he had received a call about a job. I told him that I was very sad that he couldn’t come with us because this was the day we were going to eat the chinches! Someone had called him at his house and asked him to transport water so he had to take the last minute job.
As we were walking, we all kept an eye out for the chinche. I wasn’t sure what to expect. In my mind I was expecting for them to catch some kind of tiny bird.
Maria showed me the little basket weaving that she said the chiches would run into when we created the fire. So then again, I thought we’re going to find birds!
As we were walking, Leonel started screaming that he found some chinches. I looked at his hand and realized it was a freaking insect! it was a full on cockroach looking specimen with legs and wings. And before I could even scream Cristobol put the chinche in his mouth. Then Yuxi found one and put it in her mouth too. They both seemed to enjoy the insects. Then they told us that it was our turn. I said that they were way no way I could eat the insect - I have never even touched an insect before! I have extreme insectaphobia and scream at the site of a cockroach or spider. But Tanya then said that she could do it. I didn’t believe her, but then the kids just kept encouraging us. then I said I would eat it if they took the legs off it which would effectively kill the insect. So Tanya and I agreed to eat it. I tried not to flip it. I couldn’t touch it so I needed the kids to put it in my mouth. I flipped out. I thought the insect would come back alive in my mouth. The taste wasn’t too bad. I was waiting for the spicy taste because everyone said that Chinches were spicy. After some quick chewing I separated out the insects body onto my tongue and before I spit out I showed the camera (Tanya was shooting) the insect’s body on my tongue as proof that I ate an insect. But then everyone kept saying that we had to one “en vivo” - live. I was thinking that there was no way I could do that but I would just keep hiking.
We then continued on the trail to look for more chinches because Maria said that the chinches that we ate were too small. And the bigger ones were tastier, but we needed to attract them into the basket with fire.
We could see the entire village from where we were - it was so quiet - I guess this was perfect chiche gathering hour!
So I thought all week that were going to hunt for birds and roast them, but now I understood that it we were hunting for insects. the other word for insects is Beechos - which I didn’t know. I only knew the word “insecto” for insect. I feel like a dummy! Now I know why all the people had a surprised look on their face when I told them that I was going to eat a Chinche. Here I was thinking that they were impressed I was going to go bird hunting, but they were probably thinking this crazy Chinese girl is going to eat some insects!
We found open field and Maria started the fire to get the Chinches to come out of hiding. Then they captured them. I wasn’t brave enough to put the insect in my mouth. But Tanya and I decided that we both had to eat it live - and plus they said that was when the insect was most tasty.
They caught several large chinches. I couldn’t believe that I was going to eat them.
I tried to touch the insect but I panicked. When Yanette tried to put it in my hand I couldn’t rack up the nerves to actually grab the insect so Cristobol walked on over and put the insect in my hand and I started screaming and had a panic attack. I couldn’t control my screaming and I threw the chinche on the ground. Yuxi came over to hug me. I was hoping that Yanette wouldn’t find it. But she was too smart. She found it. EVeryone kept saying that it wouldn’t do anything to me (no hace nada) but I kept thinking that the insect would bite my lips off. So finally i thought ok I am going to do this and plus we are grabbing video of this moment - I told Jonny to put in my mouth - he put in my mouth and I flipped out a bit…but i did it! Esmeralda hugged me immediately and everyone was congratulating me.
I can’t believe that I ate a live insect. I have a complete fear of insects. I am so proud of myself.
When we came back from the hike, Jacinto still wasn’t there. We prepared our luggage and walked it out to the fields and put them on top of a large can so that the dogs wouldn’t pee on it.
Post 1 of 4: I touched the stomach of a pregnant Donkey!
Post 2 of 4: spending New Year’s Eve Dancing til 5am
Post 3 of 4: Time for the Jaripeo - Bullriding
Post 4 of 4: Eating Live Insect
Why I Love Fieldwork - Post 3 of 4: Time for the Jaripeo - Bullriding
This is the 1st post of a 4-part post on my fieldwork experience in Oaxaca, Mexico. This are unedited field notes that show the moments that have nothing to do with technology during my fieldwork. Here is where I explain the context for why I’m sharing these notes. (Post 1,Post 2,Post 3,Post 4)
Manny and Leonardo came with us to the Jaripeo. Leonardo drove to the Jaripeo. We parked the car. It was complete darkness as we were driving on the carretera and then you can see the fabric of the stage for the bands. The Jaripeo’s smell started coming through the windows. As we drove closer, we could make out people standing out front waiting for their friends. All of sudden the night seemed to brighter. The moon was full and the dogs were howling at the noise. In the middle of the mountain crevices, was a firefly - the light of the jaripeo. I imagines those who lived in the sierras who were looking down at us with their binochulars trying to find out when the bulls would be let out.
The jaripeo entrance fees were 100pesos a ticket. Originally they had been 80, he raised the price last minute!!
We sat in the bleachers next to the entrance. Many people are there with families.
Leonardo said that he never has ridden a bull.
I took lots of photos of the band and of the jaripeo.
There were two clowns - payasos - performing to the music. They were engaging in very homosexual behavior. They simulated anal sex and blow jobs. The clown grabbed the other clown from behind and pushed him over and rocked himself on his butt. This was very shocking to see at at Jaripeo. They were very sexual with each other.
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The stadium was only 50% filled.
We drank some cafe de holla. I bought it from Esmeralda’s aunt. We talked about a bit.
I saw Esmeralda (Jacinto’s grandaughter). Esmeralda talked this year, but she whispered a lot inside my ear. It was hard to understand her. She sat on my lap while I was observing the crowd.
I would’ve liked to talked to Carlos about how he organized the event. He was too busy with running the event and he said that he could talk more when he done returning all the bulls but that would be after we were gone. I had the chance at least to chat with him a but when I was near the bullriders by the stage taking pictures. Octavio let me into the area and said I could take pictures.
I spent about an hour near the band and I saw the photographer/videographer of the event. He was about 40-50 years old. He was using an old handheld video camcorder. He walked like he owned the place. He had a humongous photography camera and he made sure that his hands were always on it. When he walked up, one of the bull rider assistants gave him a cigaratte. He sat down, put his feet on the table. He didn’t take any pictures of the band. I couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other because the stereo was right behind my ears. During the event, the photographer/videographer was walking around selling his dvd’s of the event for 100 pesos. He was the only the one who had the tools to record the event. other than the person with the hand-held cam, I didn’t see anyone with cameras or video cameras.
The jaripeo announcer was also treated with a lot of respect from the bull riding assistants. The bull riders were preparing themselves near the bulls. The photographer and the announcer acted like they were the most important people in the area.
When the announcer was resting in this area, there was an assistant announcer. The head announcer would shout out announcements and make lots of hand motions to the assistant. He seemed frustrated when the assistant wasn’t saying things on time or would forget to mention things. For example he was motioning like crazy to the band, and then the assistant mentioned the band.
When it was time for the announcer to enter the ring, he was puffing up his hands, shaking his limbs and took his vest off.
There were only men in the area. The only time a woman entered the area was when Esmeralda’s aunt came into sell beers to the Jaripeo riders. I was very aware that I was the only female in this space. But I didn’t feel unwelcomed.
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The announcer started the event by introducing each bullrider. He kept saying each bullrider was “la seleccion Poblana.” When each bull rider was introduced, he would come up and draw a sign in the dirt - maybe the bull rider was making a sign of a cross?
The bullrider (jinetes) wore colorful bullriding pants. They would kiss their hands and wave to the crowd.
Carlos owned two of the bulls. He was asked to come out and the announcer thanked him for organizing the event. He then asked the photographer/videographer to come out and he talked him up big time - like he’s the best photographer and he makes the best videos and you should all buy them. When he was finished with the introductions, the announcer said a prayer and asked the virgen mary to protect each rider.
The first novice rider to come out fell off his bull and then the bull stepped on his back. He crawled back out of the ring and barely made it. He needed people to pull him out. He lost conciousness for about 5 minutes. The clowns and Octavio were trying to wake him up. The bull had stepped on him several times. He didn’t look paralyzed at least. He woke up and then they put him in a chair. He look so young.
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We noticed that people weren’t using their cellphones at all to take pictures. I wonder if people had even brought their cellphones with them.
We saw one person with a handheld video-cam.
We saw someone taking out their phone for about 1 minute and then they put it back in their pockets.
A lot of people were complaining that the bulls weren’t good. That means that they weren’t going crazy.
Leonardo’s cousins kept walking by and trying to give him beers. Lots of youth were drinking beers. Lots of youth were also smoking. There were people from surrounding pueblos - not everyone was from the Sabinilo even though Carlos organzied the event.
When we left the event, a lot of men were drunk. They smelled so bad. Lots of alcohol in the air. As we were crowding around the exit to leave, there were several men lined up and trying to say hello.
There was a total of 9 bulls. Octavio paid 2000 pesos for 7 bulls and he owned 2 bulls.
Each jinete gets 4,000 pesos to come out and compete.
Leonardo mentioned that Carlos will end up losing money on this Jaripeo, and realized that after he summed up all the costs; but decided to go through with it anyway since he had already told people he was doing it — this is also why he raised the price last minute, so he wouldn’t lose as much money. It was supposed to originally cost 80 pesos, but it ended being 100 pesos to enter.
Post 1 of 4: I touched the stomach of a pregnant Donkey!
Post 2 of 4: spending New Year’s Eve Dancing til 5am
Why I Love Fieldwork - Post 2 of 4: spending New Year’s Eve Dancing til 5am
This is the 1st post of a 4-part post on my fieldwork experience in Oaxaca, Mexico. This are unedited field notes that show the moments that have nothing to do with technology during my fieldwork. Here is where I explain the context for why I’m sharing these notes. (Post 1,Post 2,Post 3,Post 4)
After eating tamales and hugging everyone with the New YEars blessing, Elizabet went to the stereo to turn the radio on. She put in a CD. It was around 11pm and a couple started dancing and then they were joined by Eva and her husband Alex. Eva was wearing high heels - they were too big for her. The shoes were at least 1 inch too long. She painted her nails.
As I was watching the two couples on the dance floor, I was wondering what the process was to invite more people onto the dance floor and how it people could dance to 5am in the morning.
Then all of sudden, Ricardo, the 60 year old man, asked me to dance. Now we were the 3rd couple. I had no idea what I was doing, but I just hopped around like a bunny hoping that I could pass. This was my first time dancing the Chilena. while it seems easy - just a two step tap with no hands and the couples spin around each other. it was kinda hard. I was really embarrassed at first. Ricardo wasn’t too drunk and I heard everyone cheering me on so I kept dancing. When we finished, we sat down.
Then Ricardo asked me to dance again, this second time around everyone had joined the dance floor. I was trying to get the Chilena steps down and every-time I felt tired, I would smile at other people and they would give me energy by giving me words of encouragement.
Alvaro was very encouraging, every time I looked at him he would smile and be really positive. He always danced with Elizabet.
In between the Chilenas, people would sit down and wait to be asked onto the dance floor. I eventually started sweating because I wasn’t getting any breaks. The minute I would sit down, someone would ask me to dance.
Manny dances with such happiness.
Some parents were dancing. Married couples only dance with each other - they never dance with anyone else.
During the slow dances, husbands and wives usually dance together - even the ones who didn’t dance the Chilena would get up to dance the slow songs. I only did one slow dance with some uncle of Leonardo. He wasn’t creepy. I didn’t like the slow dance because you had to hold hands.
The males were drinking tequila. The women didn’t drink at all.
Ricardo kept wanting to dance with me. Dancing with Ricardo beccame increasingly difficult because he was sweating tequila by the end of the night. He kept asking me to dance.
I danced with Beni a few times and I also danced with Leondardo.
The dancing continued through 5am. There wasn’t out right pressure to stay, but everyone did through the entire night except for Leondardo’s sister who just had a newborn. Her husband stayed.
I used the bathroom outside- they have a really nice bathroom - a stall for a toilet and a stall for the shower. They have running water inside where they wash the dishes. Two story house.
Dancing appears to be a way to socialize kids into dancing at a young age. Adults would dance with kids and old people would dance with younger people. No one ever danced with a partner of the same gender unless it was between two young girls under the age of 12 years old.
Some people didn’t dance and they just sat there and watched the whole entire time.
This reminds me of the first time I came in 2007 when there was the big dance fiesta in SAbinillo. All the older people would stand outside of the fences as they watched young people dance inside.
We just danced the Chilenas allll night with the occasional romantico. There were probably only 3-4 songs that were not a romantico or a ____some other type of dance. I kept thinking surely they would change the song….nope…chilenas….ALLL night!
While everyone was dancing, Ricardo made an announcement inviting everyone back over for a posole breakfast in the morning at 8am. It was already around 3am when he made this announcement.
I never saw Beni take his cellphone out. I noticed that the girl with the camera would occasionally take her camera out to take pictures.
There were no calls to the caseta during the entire night.
It’s impossible to find a clock in the village. People never know the time and if people do have cellphones, they don’t carry it on them.
I couldn’t believe that everyone stayed until 5am. Even the oldest people!
Post 1 of 4: I touched the stomach of a pregnant Donkey!
Post 2 of 4: spending New Year’s Eve Dancing til 5am
Post 3 of 4: Time for the Jaripeo - Bullriding
Post 4 of 4: Eating Live Insect
Why I Love Fieldwork - Post 1 of 4: I touched the stomach of a pregnant Donkey!
This is the 1st post of a 4-part post on my fieldwork experience in Oaxaca, Mexico. This are unedited field notes that show the moments that have nothing to do with technology during my fieldwork. Here is where I explain the context for why I’m sharing these notes. (Post 1,Post 2,Post 3,Post 4)
-post-4-of-4-eating-live-insect”>Post 4)
I felt the heartbeat of a baby donkey inside the mother’s tummy!
I haven’t even felt the heartbeat of a human baby inside a mother’s tummy before! It was totally crazy! We were hiking back to the village after we spent a morning learning about how the pueblo is reforesting its land to capture water and how it currently receives water from the mountains without any pumps - just through pure gravity - and on our way back we saw two donkey’s tied up to a tree. This donkey is pregnant. Can you see it’s big tummy?
It was such a beautiful moment - the air was so clean and all you could hear were the birds and crunching of the earth from the donkey moving around. I really happy to be so connected to everything around me at that moment - the air, the clouds, the blue sky, the animal, the grass, the earth, and the water. I breathed in the smell of fresh trees and sometimes whiffs of donkey poo - even that was lovely.
Leonardo taught us so much that morning about water supply, management, and distribution. I am amazed at the knowledge that each pueblo to maintain themselves.
I think that a lot of times in urban areas, we are so removed from our daily resources - we don’t really understand how seeds become the food on our plate, who picks the fruit so that we can afford vegetables without running a farm, how water arrives in the house and etc. Massive infrastructure is highly capitalist societies automates and centralizes many functions so that larger populations can be organized in more concentrated or spread out areas. But the flip side is that we lose so much knowledge about our basic necessities.
I don’t mean to say that I felt that life in a rural area is more “simple” - I don’t like that connotation - that urban areas are more complex and rural areas are more simple. Everything that I was learning while I lived in the village was super complex.
For example, there was an immense amount of complexity involved in the village’s water system - but what was most interesting was that the level of complexity was most relevant for the village and it was one that the chose for themselves, it was not something that was decided by the government or some water company. The current water system relies on pure gravity. The water is from the ground and it is delivered through pipes that were built 20 years ago. Since it is from the ground and they do not use massive fertilizers, the ground water is clean. The village has plans to build a electro water pump but they are trying to figure out the best way to do it sustainably without negatively impacting the land. Therefore, they’ve started a reforestation project to capture water in several parts of the mountains before they proceed with the electro water pump. To me, this is really complex thinking because it’s strategic. They are thinking through the consequences of over-digging a hole to suck out ground water with an electric pump - they are thinking about the future of the village. That is just beautiful.
Anyways - I ended that morning with touching a baby donkey inside its mommy! What a great morning to start a day of fieldwork. I got some great interviews so far.
Post 2 of 4: spending New Year’s Eve Dancing til 5am
Why I love fieldwork: becoming a better ethnographer, personal tranformations - Four Posts to Follow
I started to write this post about how much I love fieldwork when I had just returned from my last field work trip to Oaxaca, Mexico from December 2009 to January 2010. But I’m just getting around to posting it! This will be a 4 part post that shows 4 excerpts taken out of my field notes (unedited) on observations that have nothing to do with technology usage.
I just returned from Oaxaca, Mexico and this was the one of the most fun fieldwork trips ever. I miss everyone in the village so much as a I’m reading through my fieldnotes. Three things really stand out in my fieldwork trip this year.
1.) After three years of visiting the village, I felt so welcome this year. I really felt like the people trusted me and were so much more open with me. I could just chill with families and feel confident that they were very comfortable with me in their house. In the past two years, I didn’t live in the village. This year, I went with my research colleague, Tanya Menendez, and we both lived in the village with several families. It makes such a different to go to sleep with the family in the same house and to wake up together, eat breakfast together, brush your teeth together - you get to see all the little things and hear all the stories that people talk about at the end of the day.
2.) I’ve noticed that I’ve become a better ethnographer. After three years of doing fieldwork in China, Mexico, and the US, I can actually see how my fieldwork notes have improved this time! One of the best things I’ve learned about doing excellent and honest ethnography (yes I put a value on that!) is something that my adviser Barry Brown told me and it’s something that has stuck with me ever since.
Barry and I were on a bus ride back from an exhaustive fieldwork workshop in Mexico. It was 7pm and really dark. With the Pacific Ocean to our left, our bus felt like it was hugging the mountain as we were making our way up the Pacific Coast from Mexico back into the US. We were chatting about my dissertation and I was saying something to the effect that my fieldwork in China during the summer didn’t go as expected because I didn’t get to observe what I had wanted to research. He responded to me, “you don’t get to chose what you observe.” Barry’s advice was so simple, yet so true. He reminded me that every moment is ethnographic. So this time I took his advice with me into the mountains of Oaxaca. I ended up writing everything down. I almost became obsessive about what I recorded. Glancing over my fieldnotes, I am surprised about how much of it isn’t about technology.
And then that’s when I realized that this is precisely what informs my analysis and my way of thinking about technology usage. If I am to truly call myself an advocate for low-income communities and their access to technology, I have to understand all those little moments that do and don’t involve technology. I have to understand their life completely from their point of view.
3.) This realization of the importance of moments that have nothing to even do with technology made me realize how I was so transformed by the fieldwork. I truly felt like I had come back a different person. I was really proud of myself for just how quickly I adapted to life in the village. There’s always the concern for an ethnographer when going into a field site of how much time it takes to feel like you’re a part of the community, get adjusted to the food and lifestyle (I never have a problem with the food!), and understand local rhythms. And I must admit, I was nervous myself about how quickly I could adjust to living in a place where I couldn’t shower everyday and have running water and electricity 24/7. But I did just fine. I didn’t even really think about it after a while. I came back to the US transformed.
Is there such thing as conducting ethnographic fieldwork where you are not transformed by the process? I always feel like I am an undergoing a new experience when I’m in the field and I’m not sure if I ever want to change that. Perhaps that’s a good way to gauge my interest in a project - my personal degree of interal transformation. I see no other way to conduct engaged and passionate ethnography. This is the best job ever!
So I’m going to provide 4 excerpts out of my unedited field notes of moments that have nothing to do with technology directly. But these moments inform my research and they maintain my connection to the village. I hope they give a sense of why my heart is in Oaxaca.
Post 1 of 4: I touched the stomach of a pregnant Donkey!
Post 2 of 4: spending New Year’s Eve Dancing til 5am
“I was not prepared for the elementary fact that an anthropologist is at work from the moment he opens [her] his eyes in the morning until [s]he closes them at night.”
pg xviii, James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Yale University Press, 1987.
