Posts Tagged ‘mobile phone’

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Nokia ad: “be yourself and do it in style”

Sunday, May 13th, 2007

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.

Nokia ad “be yourself”

(click to enlarge)

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…

 

 

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“Free like once before”

Tuesday, May 8th, 2007

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.

Openluchtmuseum Arnhem:

And here’s another advertisement I found on their website, burning a remote control:
Openluchtmuseum Anrhem - Vrij als vroeger (2)

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Phone brand tells who you are?

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

pica

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…

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Mobile phones on last journey…

Thursday, March 8th, 2007

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

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WAMCO distribution centre in Jos

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

Here is mr. Dominic busy talking through his handset.

Mr. Dominic in Jos

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.

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Joe showing his handset

Thursday, December 14th, 2006

KABLOG
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.

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Nketchi in the WAMCO warehouse

Thursday, December 14th, 2006

KABLOG
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.

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“Give yourself away…”

Monday, October 30th, 2006

logo

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…

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Mobile phone comes in handy for Indian fishermen

Sunday, October 22nd, 2006

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.

Indian Fishers

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)

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Article about impact mobile phone

Friday, September 1st, 2006

(Via the mobile-society@groups.l.google.com mailinglist)

The SFGate has an article dated February 27, 2006 about the impact of the mobile phone. The somewhat over the top title of the article is “The world’s a cell-phone stage: The device is upending social rules and creating a new culture”. Of course the article goes on in using the usual terms like: “revolutionary”, “seismic cultural shift”, “new realms”, “upending existing social rules and creating a new culture “, etc. Some brief comments by Howard Rheingold and Paul Levinson. Last alinea kinda interesting:

Your phone is you The negative perceptions about bad cell phone use suggest that the way we use our cell phones can have a strong effect on how others perceive us. In the Cingular Wireless survey, more than one-fourth of respondents formed opinions of someone based on their ring tone, while 7 percent have ended a relationship due to rude or offensive wireless behavior. In the BBDO Worldwide study, 31 percent of Americans said a cell phone revealed as much about a person as their car. “Cell phones are now just like your clothes,” said Clifford Nass, professor of communications at Stanford. “It’s a very personalized thing. The assumption is you can wear anything you want, so this tells you something about me.” The cell phone still has a long way to go, said Levinson, in transforming our lives. “It’s still early,” he said. “Television has been here 50 years, computers 25 years. The cell phone is still in its infancy. Every sign indicates it will continue to be hugely important to us.”

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