techNOlogy

(Dee Luo)
This must be as old a debate as any words invented to use in a debate. Technology versus human culture. Many 3rd world tribes have several feelings against media. The Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania prefer not to have their pictures taken because they think it will take their spirit away. The Armish as don't like it either but this is more directly to do with technology. From About.com:
"The Amish are averse to any technology which they feel weakens the family structure. The conveniences that the rest of us take for granted such as electricity, television, automobiles, telephones and tractors are considered to be a temptation that could cause vanity, create inequality, or lead the Amish away from their close-knit community and, as such, are not encouraged or accepted in most orders. Most Amish cultivate their fields with horse-drawn machinery, live in houses without electricity, and get around in horse-drawn buggies. It is common for Amish communities to allow the use of telephones, but not in the home. Instead, several Amish families will share a telephone in a wooden shanty between farms. Electricity is sometimes used in certain situations, such as electric fences for cattle, flashing electric lights on buggies, and heating homes."
The indigenous people of Australian people don't like to have their pictures taken because once they die they want to return to the earth, but a picture holds a part of them in the waking life even though they have passed away.

Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist who works at Intel Research says, "mobile phone manufacturers have developed popular phones for Muslim users that support their religious practices by (1) reminding them when it is time to pray, (2) orienting them towards Mecca and (3) disabling incoming calls for 20 minutes. She gave many other examples from Africa and Asia that showed how new technology is being used in ways that fit into the existing cultures." She continues "I found the message reassuring. It's easy to get worked up into a state of anxiety about what our modern world is doing to our societies. Human cultures are apparently more resilient than we naively assume."
I have a teenage daughter who sends and receives nearly 20,000 text messages a month. When she's not with me, it's the primary -- and sometimes sole -- way we communicate.

What are your thoughts? How do you see technology affecting your culture?
Location: Silicon Valley, California, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Social network aggregator, a lot of dimes

Where is the aggregate social network, for Pete's sake! Not so long ago, I talked with John Merrells from sxip about unified registration and the compilation of user identities across the digital land but surely right behind that is the need to also aggregate other personal and professional information contained within the deeply specific preferences and data contained in social network services. I was so excited to see GoingOn get it on, and out and public, but when I come to the site, and few people are actually there or participating yet -- we must assume they are reading blogs from their various readers, writing their own blogs from their various blog publishing platforms, doing their 9 to 5 thing but not at, as the name leads us to want, "Always"-- and not at the same time, "On." Where is the social network aggregator? I log in once, it has multi access like individual systems do, but it's multi-system. I 'm abreast to the changes in blog and medi
Read more

ITU Conference

Image
This week I attend the largest technology conference I have seen to date. Typically held in Geneva, the International Telecommunication Union Conference (ITU) was held in Hong Kong December 2006. Held once every 4 years, this event has drawn over 150,000 attendees from all over the world. Those who know me will understand the sheer nirvana I am experiencing in connecting with people from so many countries all discussing and understand opportunities to extend technology and improve social conditions. Very few people I spoke with in the US before the event even knew what the ITU was, including me, so I learned that the ITU is the telecommunications committee for the United Nations (UN). This morning, among a diverse and experienced group of telecommunication leaders in a panel on this first official day of the event, were Andre Smit of Cisco and Didier Philippe , President of the Micro-Enterprise Acceleration Institute in Switzerland, who is working with HP. They spoke about the conver
Read more

Love hate relationships

Image
Rafe Needleman is one of my favorite reporters. I wonder instead of being hated, how he manages to stay relatively well-liked. The other ironic thing is that by writing about how much they are hated, those five people must like him even more. Ah, there's the real magic. I interviewed Rafe a while back about his initiative at CNET called Webware. Some insiders at CNET tell me that it doesn't directly make money (sounded a little paranoid actually), but I would tell CNET that Webware is great for it's own brand awareness, plus it raises visibility for all those companies and software applications.
Read more