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Intel is using locally hired anthropologists in new development centers

Published on August 1, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, Asia, corporate & business anthropology, design anthropology, technology

RedHerring

In a bid to eventually sell more chips, Intel plans to announce Monday that it has set up four new offices around the world that are staffed with anthropologists and engineers to help design computers with features for emerging markets. Traveling from dusty rural villages in India to busy Internet cafés in Brazil, these Intel employees will collect data from weather to the content needs of people in regions where computers are not yet popular.

The company began sending ethnographers to study how people interact with technologies. One anthropologist spent a year living in rural China. With the creation of its new business unit and four development centers, Intel has set up permanent and locally hired staff to do ethnographic studies and engineering. The efforts appear to be paying off. >> continue

Comment by Judd Antin, Technotaste: What I particularly like about their approach is that they aren’t just sending Western researchers overseas, they’re hiring local folks to help understand their own communities

Anthropologist helps Intel see the world through customers’ eyes

When cultures shape technology – Interview with Genevieve Bell

RedHerring

Weblogs are sweeping the political and social landscape of Iran

Published on June 3, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, development empowerment, internet, media, Middle East, politics, technology

Hadi Ansari, OhmyNews International

Only four years have passed since Hossein Derakhshan, Iran’s leading blogger and Internet activist, published a guide to making a weblog in Persian. Now the influence of weblogs has spread to every aspect of Iranian people’s daily lives. Farsi has become the third most prominent language of bloggers on the Net, despite the fact that Farsi speakers around the world number just 100 million (including Afghans and Tajiks who speak Farsi). >> continue

Skypecast – Interview about Blogging in India with Dina Mehta

Ethnographic study on bloggers in California & New York

Hadi Ansari, OhmyNews International

Only four years have passed since Hossein Derakhshan, Iran's leading blogger and Internet activist, published a guide to making a weblog in Persian. Now the influence of weblogs has spread to every aspect of Iranian people's daily…

Anthropology Matters – New issue out on anthropology of science and technology

Published on May 30, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, development empowerment, fieldwork / methods, journal articles / papers, technology

New methods in the anthropology of science and technology is the topic of the new issue of the anthropology online journal “Anthropology Matters” that was published these days. The papers developed out of a panel at the Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA) Decennial Conference at the University of Manchester in July 2003. I the introduction we read:

“On the basis of the papers published here, we suggest that not only does ethnographic research prove extremely adaptable to new environments, contexts and conditions, but it also serves to make important contributions to current debates and discussion, particular in the field of science and technology.”

We find articles on dynamics how to study and theorize environmental protest movements in West Bengal (by Amites Mukhopadhyay), the role of computers in Hungarian civil society (Tom Wormald), on the relationship of information technologies to anthropological fieldwork through a consideration of internet-based clinical trials (by Jenny Advocat), on fieldwork in a web design company (Hannah Knox) and on how anthropological fieldwork might rise to the challenge of the bureaucratized, ‘objective’ forms of evaluation that anthropological researchers are increasingly facing (Susanne Langer) >> continue to Anthropology Matters 1/2005

New methods in the anthropology of science and technology is the topic of the new issue of the anthropology online journal "Anthropology Matters" that was published these days. The papers developed out of a panel at the Association of Social…

Tsunami and Internet: Social Tools – Ripples to Waves of the Future

Published on May 29, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, gift economy gift giving, internet, media, technology, Us and Them

Anthropologist Dina Mehta

Today, I believe that no crisis on this scale or magnitude will ever be handled again without sms, blogs, and wikis. That social tools will become a natural extension of rapid adaptation to chaotic conditions. While traditional media was doing its job, the World Wide Web was engaged in reaching people in ways that traditional media was not – by speaking in real voices, in real time – creating this huge wave of empathy, solidarity and action. Apart from the speed of dissemination of information, the blog also had a ‘face’ – people had access and could call or email. As a result, lowering barriers to getting information. Technology with Heart. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
The Internet Gift Culture

Anthropologist Dina Mehta

Cultural lag, a lethal drag

Published on May 26, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, culture traditions, persons and theories, technology

The Globe and Mail

Cultural lag is the term first coined by anthropologists to describe the gap between an invention and society’s ability to actually use it. It took about 50 years for the typewriter to displace the pen. When electricity first came to my father’s Cape Breton village in the 1930s, it was viewed with distrust and adopted by few. But cultural lag is not just about machinery and inventions, it is also about ideas. >> continue

PS: The Cultural Gap – also an explanation for the reluctant active use of the internet by academics?

Scott London: Understanding Change: The Dynamics of Social Transformation

Culture Change: An Introduction to the Processes
and Consequences of Culture Change

Social Change (Anthropology) – overview by Intute social science

The Globe and Mail

Cultural lag is the term first coined by anthropologists to describe the gap between an invention and society's ability to actually use it. It took about 50 years for the typewriter to displace the pen. When electricity…