Anyone taking more than a passing glance at the kiwanja.net website shouldn’t need long to figure out my four key areas of interest. I’ve always maintained that if your ideal job doesn’t exist then you have to create it, and being able to combine my passions for technology, anthropology, conservation and development is for me … Continue reading Anthropology: Taking it mobile
Tag: mobile phones
Rethinking Schumacher
Ever since I came across Fritz Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful” at University back in 1997, I’ve been a close follower of the appropriate technology movement. Although for many appropriate technology is associated with ploughs, stoves and farming implements, for some time I’ve been thinking about how it applies to the work we do with mobile. … Continue reading Rethinking Schumacher
CNN on anthropology and innovation
“As trained observers of how people in a society live, ethnographers can help companies figure out what people need and then work with designers to meet those needs with new (or more often tweaked) products and services. In a world in which ever more people are using technology products on a daily basis, such skills … Continue reading CNN on anthropology and innovation
Caught on camera
They say a picture paints a thousand words, and that may be the case. But if they cost the earth or you don’t have permission to use them, they end up painting nothing much at all. When my mobile ‘career’ kicked off in 2003 with research trips to South Africa and Mozambique, I took the … Continue reading Caught on camera
Bones for mobile phones
What on earth are anthropologists doing playing with mobile phones? The answer may be a little more obvious than you think Anthropology is an age-old, at times complex discipline, and like many others it suffers from its fair share of in-fighting and disagreement. It’s also a discipline shrouded in a certain mystery. Few people seem … Continue reading Bones for mobile phones
Let’s not write it off quite yet
A couple of months ago a member of the Social Mobile Group on Facebook asked an interesting, and pertinent, question. Commenting on a picture of a payphone attached to a bicycle from the kiwanja Mobile Gallery (this bike is taken around the streets of Kampala for members of the public to use to make calls), … Continue reading Let’s not write it off quite yet
The Digital Divider
People tend to get pretty excited around mobile technology. In developing countries most of this excitement has centred around their proliferation into poorer rural, communication-starved areas, and their new-found potential in helping close the digital divide. Handset giants such as Nokia and Motorola believe that mobile devices will “close the digital divide in a way … Continue reading The Digital Divider