I’ve been trying to notice how people use technology around the world. But before I talk about what other people do, l want to talk about our use of technology on this trip. We have been quite dependent upon it. Our books come in the form of four Kindles. Our vegertainment comes in the form of four cell phones loaded with games (mostly 1010!), music (all offline) and YouTube (downloaded sit com scenes, squishy slime videos, and cooking videos). The rest of our academics happens with three laptops which we share. I got tired of not having a keyboard so I bought a tiny Bluetooth keyboard in Mongolia to go with my phone, because I’m too stubborn to buy a fourth laptop and carry that much more weight with us around the world this year. We can share.
Doing academics in the Beijing airport. A good place to learn some math and catch up on writing.
Even though I’m often told by Anika that “Everyone has one,” we have been reluctant to get the girls phones for years now, promising them they can have one when they turn 25. We broke from tradition on this trip so they could have decent pocket cameras. It seems that today’s cell phones take pictures almost as well as a pocket digital camera, and they are a whole lot easier to use for saving and sharing the pictures. Plus, they come with YouTube, music, Google and various other things like video games and flash card apps. We’ve forbidden the kids from using social networks like Instagram despite many pleas and persuasive essays (which were actually quite persuasive) because I think these services are just too addictive. As a designer, I see a slot machine every time a social feed is down-swiped in search of an update, and as a parent I’m not ready to argue with my kids about the line between self-control and addiction. That said, Rachel and I got on the Instagram train for this trip, and I have to say that has been an easy way to quickly share a few photos and keep a minimal connection to friends back home. A two-sided coin.
We’re relying on lots of offline content this year, such as many books we photographed before leaving home, and a few android apps that work well without an internet connection. It’s a relief when the internet actually works reliably and quickly, and it’s taken me over a month to finish this post because I just have not had a reliable internet connection for that long. Who would have guessed that I would have to come to Hobart, Tasmania to find one – even major Australian cities like Melbourne only deliver the equivalent of a 56k baud connection most of the time. It’s like going back to 1998!
p.s. Speaking of Instagram, a quick aside to give credit to Facebook, whose folks seem to have figured out that the rest of the world doesn’t have a good internet connection and wants to stay connected anyway. Most Google services are woefully unreliable in the parts of the world where 3G comes and goes. So far this year we have come to expect that LTE may not exist. For everyone we have met, the internet is sort of like boiled water: it exists sometimes but you can’t count on it so you hope for the best and do what you can to get through the day. More about that later….
