So far we’ve been in the United States, New Zealand, Mongolia, India, Bhutan, two islands of Indonesia (Bali and Flores), four regions of Australia, and countless airports. We have seen different people using technology and have spoken to that least one person in depth about it in each country. And you can learn something by looking at people. Let me tell you some of the things I’ve noticed.
First of all “first world” seems to apply to Internet as much as anything. I had sort of gotten used to the idea that people are glued to their phones all the time whether it is to socialize, to learn, to optimize their travel schedule, or to be entertained. Not so outside of the US, it seems.
Namaste.
An Indian builder greets us with his phone conveniently tucked between his palms, a sight I saw often seen in India where people hold their phones ready-at-hand.
Internet service does not exist everywhere, and it does not always work. And connectivity alone does not make a country internet-native. As the Kiwis say, they live 20 years in the past. So even though Google Maps works flawlessly, not that many people depend on the internet the way we do at home. In the other places I’ve been, the internet does not always work, or even exist in the same form as we have at home, because unreliable or horribly slow connections really change what you can use the internet for, and how you will end up using it.
Some challenges
- The internet doesn’t work very well most places. Many of our web services don’t work when this is the case (e.g. many Google services like Photos and Hangouts). Personally, I have had to migrate to WhatsApp, SMS, and Instagram just to have tools that work reliably.
- The only place that people seem to have their eyes glued to their phones is the airport. Maybe this is because people have more time or more money or come from bigger cities, or perhaps they are bored or lonely being away from home (or all of the above).
- Phones started out as communication devices and seem to still be that for most people in most places. There are some additional utilities, such as in Mongolia where they rely on cell phones for weather forecast which are quite helpful to the farmers. But mostly they are about being connected to people.
- When I have asked people what they use their phones for, internet services are often not mentioned. For example, a man in India told me lots of things which were mostly about using Facebook (although he never mentioned Facebook by name). He didn’t mention any Google services, which surprised me (as a former Googler). So I asked specifically about Google and Google Maps and things like that. The man I was speaking to said, “oh yeah of course – Uncle Google! That’s what we call it – uncle Google knows everything and yes we know Google Maps to and use that a lot.” This attitude was pretty typical: people focus on what they are for, not what the tools or networks are called, or who provides them.
- Most of the places we have been to are not iPhone-heavy cultures. Attitudes about iPhone range from not caring, to wanting an iPhone and not being able to afford it, to assuming that we own iPhones even though they have handled our phones directly to take our photographs. They seem to largely be status symbols at this stage, since people can’t tell the difference between a Pixel and an iPhone.My guide in Flores had two phones: a Nokia candy bar phone for calls and SMS, and a Samsung S5 for WhatsApp. He also uses the S5 for Google photos (whose client-server model is much too complicated for him to understand), and FB messenger (which brings home new business) and occasional demos of Google maps, when he wants to “take his uncle to Europe,” or see where a client lives. He has no real idea that Google makes Android, and he uses email and Facebook too. But it’s basically his WhatsApp phone, in his thoughts. What’s the most important thing to people? Other people.
People are interested in other people
The rest of the world seems to have stronger sense of community than we have at home, at least in the old-fashioned sense of community where community means that you live with other people and you talk to them all the time. Community means you get in each others’ business, in each others’ ways, and rely on each other deeply. This is true in New Zealand (which is a little bit more affectionate than England), and it was also true in India where people are almost literally living on top of each other everywhere you go. It was true in Bhutan, in Indonesia, and in Australia. Because of this, in some places like Flores, people spend little or no time maintaining relationships with people who are far away.
Tools like Facebook and Instagram take on a different role when they are used more for coordination of the next face to face encounter, rather than relationship maintenance (as we do in the US). In a culture where families live together and people require face-to-face communication to make important decisions, technology is a way to (at best) arrange your next encounter with someone important, or (at worst) to get in touch with people who have made the unfortunate choice to move too far away talk to be part of your face to face community. In short, it’s all about the people.
