dekstop: weblog

Just saw a guy on a bike who was listening to Hip Hop playing on his cell phone. He was actually using it as a music player, not as a ringtone; and while he was riding along he subtly grooved to the music, occasionally glancing around if he was passing anyone he knew, or if anyone was watching. It seemed strange at first, but then I realized that I had seen this before, in a different context: There are more and more young people on the streets and in parks who use their cell phones as a way to play music to other people, mostly young males, gathering in groups, in front of a car or a club. They're essentially using their phone as a modern-age ghetto blaster.

It seems odd at first to use the cheap and weak speakers of a phone in this way, but when you think about it it's not that strange. Ghetto blasters were never about high fidelity sound. They were a method of communication, they were about group-building, and about attention.

I once had an interesting conversation about ringtones, with a guy during a long train ride back to Berlin; my position was that it's a fad, that the ringtone market would crash as soon as people found out about their phone's MP3 capabilities, and that to me ringtones were more an annoyance than a new way to express yourself. His answer was surprising: He explained that in his culture (he was a Turk born in Germany) people use ringtones as a means of communication, as a gesture. He explained that Turks are an emotional people, and that music was an important medium to convey emotion; and so he was overjoyed by the fact that he could now send ringtones as a gift to his friends and family, to his girlfriend. He wasn't annoyed about the bad quality, or the high prices; he was happy about the fact that he could share songs that meant something to him, that had a meaning to him and the recipient of his gift.

What I'm trying to say is this: You often overlook the potential of things you are seemingly well-acquainted with. When you're working in a field of technology, be it IT or cell phones, you usually make assumptions about what you want to enable people to do, about what they will want to do with your technology. And, of course, more often than not your assumptions will turn out wrong.

They will find ways to integrate your technology into their lives without your supervision. They will find an emotional connection to technology, and you can't anticipate what kind of connection that will be. They themselves will want to decide how to use the things they can buy. Usually this involves sharing the experience with other people. It's always been that way, and it will never change.