Hey, there are people inspired by me :). Check out Darryl Cressman’s article about mobile gifting. Darryl is from the School of Communication, at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. He visited us with Norm Friesen a couple of weeks ago in Rotterdam.
I see my preliminary article is spreading it’s way onto the Internet (a huge link dump here about mobile phone & art). About time for me to finish the paper…
Last Friday, October 27, I did a talk for the Transito Festival 2006 at the Melkweg in Amsterdam. It was an evening about identity and technology.
Here’s the PDF of the presentation Mobile phone as gift culture (Dutch).
According to Washington Post, Indian Fishermen make intensive use of the mobile phone to find the best place to sell their fish. While still at sea, they make several calls to buyers in different ports to inquire which one offers the best price. It is also used to alert friendly boats to huge schools of fish.
I have heard of similar stories about Senegalese fishermen using GPS to inform each other of coordinates of good fishing grounds. Of course, this may be occurring in Nigeria too, with Fulani herdsmen…
Just like the idea was in the case of farmers, the mobile phone has led to a power shift from middlemen to the fishers. I remember from my research in Jakarta in the year 2000 an enthousiastic article called from Njuwok to New York that hailed the potential of the internet for tahu farmers to trade directly with other markets.
Via the mobile-society mailinglist (post by Rich Ling)
Blog has been silent for a while, which in my case is an indication of doing lots of things at the moment..:). This post on textually.org I found interesting, since media artist Esther Polak and I will be going to Africa (Nigeria) in a couple of weeks for the art/science project NomadicMILK. It’s a project about mobility patterns amongst nomadic Fulani herdsmen and WAMCO truck drivers. We will be traveling with cultural anthropologist Ab Drent, who has done a 10-month research amongst the Fulani in northern Cameroon in 2000/2001.
We will try to visualize to uses of space by both nomads and truckers by means of GPS and find out whether the use of the mobile phone influences their use and experience of space. There is a preliminary website for the project NomadicMILK with more info about the project.
Anyway, here’s the article:
Pumpkin power dawns for African mobile phone networks
Palm and pumpkin seed oil could soon be generating electricity to help power mobile phone networks across Africa under a plan to replace fossil fuels with sustainable biofuels made from crops grown by local farmers. Reuters reports.
"Swedish telecoms networks group Ericsson and South African cellphone operator MTN said on Wednesday they want to start replacing diesel with biofuels in electricity generating stations powering mobile phone base stations in rural Africa."Swedish telecoms networks group Ericsson and South African cellphone operator MTN said on Wednesday they want to start replacing diesel with biofuel in electricity generating stations powering mobile phone base stations in rural Africa."
Via textually.org
——- update ———
Mobileafrica confirms that several players work on a pilot project in NIgeria:
The MTN Group, the GSM Association and Ericsson have teamed up to establish biofuels as an alternative source of power for wireless networks in the developing world. The three organisations have set up a pioneering project in Nigeria to demonstrate the potential of biofuels to replace diesel as a source of power for mobile base stations located beyond the reach of the electricity grid.