‘Playful Identities’ research blog

It’s great to be back in Jakarta! Yesterday I looked for a room for the coming weeks.
Today I went to Mall Ambassador, Jl. Satrio/Casablanca. Apparently one of the handphone hotspots in town! The neighborhood has changed a lot since my last visit 7 years ago: many new high rise buildings. In my memory, Ambassador used to be a chic mall with worldwide brand stores (Nike, Adidas, etc.). Now it has transformed into a bustling bazaar with many small businesses, many of them electronics and fashion.

Some pics below to give an impression of the visibility of mobile phone culture.

(via SmartMobs)

Former Nigerian minister of finance Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala promotes investing in Africa. On of the interesting examples she gives is the privatization and rapid growth of the telecom market in Nigeria, from 4300 landlines to over 32 million mobile phone subscriptions. Although she doesn’t mention the name, there is clearly a sense of “Glo with Pride” in her talk. Glo is a domestic mobile phone enterprise coming up second to South-African MTN and growing. Their slogan is appealing to Nigerian pride: “we can do it ourselves”.

(click to enlarge)

Skip to the section starting at 8:00 where she talks about the telecom and mobile phone market in Nigeria:

Another outdoors advertisement, shot already a few months ago in Amsterdam. The ad says “Who do I want to be today?”. Options are: kroegtijger (don’t know how to translate this, binge drinker or bar fly is a bit too negative), fashionista, paparazza, night butterfly, supermodel. All very much consumer identities. All identities that are mediatized. All ‘global’ identities, that is, recognizable in many different cultural contexts. And all identities in which the mobile phone can be an aid in the pretense to be one of these, to play a role, as if… The ad plays upon the idea of wearable identities: identity as a jacket that you put on or off.

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Also, Nokia can be added to the long list of corporations who think we should “be yourself, and do it in style”. The imperative to be yourself paradoxically is a pressure nowadays from which there is no escape…

A week or two ago (just before the migration of this blog the a new server) I walked past an outdoors advertisement in Amsterdam, near where I live. It is an ad for the Dutch Open Air Museum in Arnhem. It says “Vrij als vroeger - Even terug naar de jaren ‘60″ (something like “Free as once before - briefly back to the ’60s“).

(click to enlarge)

A brief look at their website tells me it’s an exhibition about leisure time in the 60s. What made me take a snapshot of this was that the picture shows a mobile phone being crushed by what appears a miller’s stone, or a giant tractor tire, I don’t know. So this advertisement basically says that freedom is to be without the mobile phone. It plays upon popular opinion that the mobile phone, handy is it may be, is also a burden and a restraint on freedom. Crush your phone and you’ll be free again :).

What strikes me now as I am writing is the addition of the word “Even..” (briefly, or just a little moment) in the subtitle. It suggests the possibility of temporarily escaping modern day pressures (the obligations imposed by the mobile phone) when visiting this open air museum. Why would we want/need to do so? Why go to a museum for this? And what is good about a temporary solution? I mean, nobody is really going to crush his mobile? I think the ad tries to appeal to the possibility of imagining and actually visiting a time and place when things where not so complicated. The museum then creates a temporary playground for our imagination. We can actually undergo the experience of living an ideal simple life, albeit temporarily.

And here’s another advertisement I found on their website, burning a remote control:

Source - via Textually.org.

A study by Nielsen Media Research suggests that the type of phone you wear says something about your personality:

What your mobile phone says about you:

Nokia

• Family-minded
• Middle aged managers
• Balance seekers
• Health conscious

Motorola

• Fashion conscious
• Under 24
• Fun seekers
• Individualistic

Sony Ericsson

• Ambitious young men
• Professionals
• Success driven
• Individualistic

LG

• Favourite of mums
• Stay-at-home parents
• Success driven
• Harmony seekers

Samsung

• Young women
• Career focused
• Success driven
• Fun seekers

Whatever your opinion about such research (what do you mean LG is both for “stay at home parents” and “success driven”?), most telling are the comments by readers. The majority of commenters think it is utter crap to see a communications device as part of your identity. They think it is rather sad to judge someone based on what he uses for calling.

They seem to miss the point of the article, however, that your mobile says something about you, even if you do not choose them consciously. These kinds of articles do raise the interesting view that even though we all despise being easily identifiable by the brands we use, we nevertheless are continuously making choices (yes, also subliminally) and rationalize them as ‘functional’ (like the guy who says he always buys Nokia so that he doesn’t have to relearn navigation from scratch). The interplay of brands and identities, of marketing/production and consumption, is far too complicated to just push research like this aside as nonsense…

Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf has an article about environmental problems that arise because of people putting mobile phones and other gadgets like iPods in the coffin of their bereaved. Head of the Dutch gravediggers association Pauline Harmsen is quoted saying:

“Surviving dependants often think those items really belong to the deceased. But they don’t think about the materials in the devices which are bad for the environment”.

What will our great-great grandchildren think about those strange ‘ritual items’ found scattered everywhere in the earth, and dated with great precision to a definite period in the beginning of the third Millennium?

via: nu.nl

Here is mr. Dominic busy talking through his handset.

Business in Nigeria has changed a lot with the advent of the mobile phone. It has become much easier to arrange logistics and deal with customers. It comes at a price however. First, costs are very high for most people. Mr. Dominic spends between 10.00 - 15.000 nairas a month on mobile phone use (approx. 60 - 95 euros). One of his colleagues we spoke to - running a retail shop with many different customers - even claimed to pay up to 30.000 naira a month! And another cost is that while the mobile phone gives individual freedom to communicate and engage in business, it also places a heavy burden on ones shoulders, since family and friends are now constantly calling for help and support, even when far away. So mobile telephone technology in the west-African context seems to paradoxically promote individual possibilities and entrepreneurship and a discourse of modernity, while at the same time being a medium that provides possibilities for stronger reliance on ones social circle and strengthens tradition.

kablog-j2me 2.0.8 for Nokia6233

This is an older pic shot in Jos. I was out on Ahmadu Bello way talking to some people selling all kinds of addon items for mobile phones. Joe here was very fond of his very small handset. Before this one he owned 2 earlier models.

kablog-j2me 2.0.8 for Nokia6233

Just a shot of a shot inside the WAMCO warehouse. We were comparing the quality of our photocams.