Peter Van Dijck’s Guide to Ease

On the small beach in Mumbai parents kan pay someone to push their kids around in small play-automobiles.
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Worldchanging: “This year, in Mumbai alone, the upcoming Ganpati celebrations will see 70 - 80,000 Plaster of Paris idols of Lord Ganesha immersed in the sea as a holy ritual. Thereby, devotees honor their deity, and imply his status as a higher being, free from the temporal idols.

That means that on September 18th, water bodies all over India will get another annual dose of polythene bags, thermocol, plastics, and toxic chemical dyes.”

Some environmental actions are being taken. I hope to catch the Ganesh festival, I think it’s in 4 days, although I’m not sure I’ll be close to the sea.

Ganesh, by the way, is the god-kid with the elephant head. His head was cut off for some reason, so then his god-dad or mom gave him an elephant head instead. I got this information from a Belgian comic book (Suske en Wiske, where Belgians get a lot of their cultural information as kids from), so that’s my best understanding of the story.

I’m blogging while traveling in India. That means not so much bad connectivity - I haven’t had a problem locating internet access in small towns yet, and speeds are ok, today’s the slowest so far, through dialup, and it’s about 36K. Yesterday I found an internet cafe in a train station (the train was delayed 3 hours). It turns out you can happily connect between 6 and 10 computers with a mobile phone connection and that way set up an internet cafe pretty much anywhere. Speed of the main line is 125K, although it feels more like 56K. All 3 internet cafes so far (except todays’) use some form of mobile telephone connectivity. I have some nice pictures but no patience to upload them now. Although they’re not ubiquitous, I see quite a few people with mobile phones here.

Other annoyments include bad keyboards, cramped areas (Indians are small), but overall internet availability is pretty good and widespread. Blogging becomes a matter of making some time.

In a day or two, I’ll be in Malapurram (Kerala), where the Akshaya project is providing fast internet and more to the whole region. They are using some fascinating tech, and what sounds like a great model to make the whole thing sustainable. I’ll spend some time trying to find out how that’s working out, and what value a project like that brings to the users from their perspective. I hope I’ll be abe to surmount the language problems.

I’m waiting for my videos to upload. I am in a so-called broadband internet cafe. I’m uploading videos (between 3 and 9 Megs each), taken with my little photocamera. I upload them through my Gmail account to myself (10M max per upload), and Jay then optimizes them. We have to do this because BallofDirt.com hasn’t gotten their video-upload thing to work yet. I just read Lucas’ and Jay’s blogs, two of my favourites now. Lucas is extremely insightful. Jay too, no techie but he’s got raw enthusiasm (you should meet him!).

You don’t really want to spend your time in internet cafes waiting for videos to upload while travelling in India. I hope I find some fast internet when I go check out the Akshaya project next week. It’s hard to blog on the road. The setup is different (no Google toolbar, no Firefox).

If you’re getting frustrated with my lack of blogging (lack?), check this. I’m considering taking a Vipassana course, except I don’t want my butt to hurt much. The courses teach you meditation by getting you to sit still for 10 days, and you’re not allowed to talk either. Dhamma.org has details. The meditation I did before made you focus (not focus) on your thoughts, this one seems to do it by not focussing on physical sensations. Mmmmm.

Anyways, internet speeds here are at 125,000, about three times as fast as a regular dialup. They connect through a cellphone-like connection. I can’t upload pictures because they come straight out of the digital camera at large sizes - too large for this connection speed. Maybe I could optimize them locally? I’ve been making videoposts mostly anyway.

My first video entries are inside. They were taken on my first day in Mumbai. I’m on a slow connection right now so no more videos or pictures for a few days.
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My first Indian meal, a dollar and yummie.

I am still in the middle of my initial culture shock (and jetlag), so more reports later! I’m hosting the pictures on Ballofdirt.com. The advantage over hosting them on my own server is that they have better upload tools, and I can upload the uncompressed versions there and they provide various optimized versions. I believe they also don’t mind linking straight to the images.

Internet cafes are about half a $ to 1$ an hour in Mumbai. Decent fast connections.

For my first 2 nights I took an ok and friendly hotel (recommended by Lonely Planet), it’s about 20$ a night. The bathroom is as follows, to give you an idea.

Refuting objections to a Global Rural Network (GRNet) for developing nations (by Larry Press) addresses the question: why give poor people internet if they don’t even have clean water/phones/… yet? I am a geek, so I tend to believe in the power of technology to fix things. That’s my bias, but I understand the counterargument as well. The paper includes this interesting screenshot.

E M E R G I C . o r g: July 22, 2004 Archives: “Two years ago, it would have been hard to imagine that Indians would be buying cellphones at the rate of nearly 2 million a month. Similarly, today, it is hard to imagine a broadband India - but that is exactly what we are about to see. The next couple years will see Indian consumers and enterprises enveloped in ubiquitous, high-speed connectivity from multiple sources - wireless, DSL, cable and satellite. Complement this with WiFi-enabled laptops and smartphones, and the always-on world is at hand.”

Leapfrogging.

A lot of stories about technology in rural areas often don’t have much to say except for how rural it all is, and how amazing that they now have access to technology x or y. Like this one about PC’s set up in a remote area, titled “These PCs came on elephant’s back”. Wired has one titled “Indian Villagers Pedal Wireless“, a bit more in depth. It’s the exotism (look at how different they are!) of many of these stories that annoys me sometimes - although I also enjoy some exotism, it shouldn’t be the only reason for the story. I’m more interested in figuring out how technology and social worlds interact.

By the way, this funny ad came was on the page:

rediff.com: Nyala ‘unaffected’ by Clinton visit: “What about the IT revolution in the village, the computerised milk co-operative society of women and much-hyped internet-connected panchayat, a first in Rajasthan? “Our panchayat is yet to get a telephone connection and you ask about the internet,” says sarpanch Kalu Meena. The computer on which ‘tutored’ women members of the co-operative demonstrated their skill to President Clinton is lying unused.”

Last (W)rites: The Indian PC (aka What women want. :-) )
Let me expand on this perspective - if you start to profile the average Indian PC buyer what stands out notably is he is more often than not a she. If we regard women as the central figure of an average middle class Indian family, what are we specifically doing today to ensure that the PC addresses some common scenarios around Indian housewives?”

In a way, he his saying that the computer needs to be socially and culturally “constructed” (by adjusting it to the needs of these users) while at the same time constructing the users (through classes, advertising, …) and letting both user and technology construct each other. It relates to the social co-construction of users and technology, something I’ve written about a bit since I read a book with the same subtitle.

I made a SMIL playlist for Quicktime, combining the text and links of blog entries with the video in them. I hope to provide this as an alternative way of viewing my videoblogging during my Indiatrip. So any user experience-type or technical feedback is welcome! Click the button to try it.
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While I am in India, I plan to videoblog daily (although intermittant internet access might make that hard). I also plan to do some ethnography-like research, and blog my source material.

Blogging the source material (I’ll make an effort to indicate where I am interpreting stuff), hopefully, will enable others to reinterpret it. What’s more, I hope it will start a conversation that will make the resulting interpretation much more refined that what I could have come up with myself.

In practice, that means that I’ll transcribe interviews. I’ll put video and photomaterial online. I’ll mix those materials with my notes, and then leave it up to my esteemed audience (that’s all 6 of you!) to discuss.

That’s the clearest I’ve been able to explain what I have in mind. I’ll try again later. See also: how to blog like an anthropologist.

BBC NEWS | Cheap flying option for Indians: India’s first low-cost airline. Americans still don’t have (real) low cost airlines, but in Europe we’ve been used to them for a while.

(via Emergic) Internet arrives via rickshaw in India: a mobile rickshaw-like computer with teacher, from the InfoThela project. This way they distribute the cost of the computer, and provide a way of developing knowledge as well.

See also this story about bookmobiles.

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Understanding the Indian Tech Boom: what effect does the tech boom have, and what are its costs?

Wireless Internet revolution sweeps through Kerala villages: “For 71-one-year-old Velukutty Master, a computer linked with wireless Internet is nothing short of a magic box that helps him keep in touch with his sons and grandchildren in Dubai.”

A retired government schoolteacher, Master dutifully walks into one of the many cyber kiosks cum training centres, which have sprung up in recent months in India’s most literate state, to take lessons on computer and Internet from people less than half his age.

Arranged marriages go online in Kerala

I am planning to experiment a bit with doing ethnography-like research and presenting it on the web using a mix of media (video, audio, text). There is a history of using video and images in anthropology, but there is still little work being done (that I know of) on using the web to what I think is its potential in presenting ethnographic research.

I’m looking for examples - tips welcome. visualanthropology.net seems a good starting point. Visual studies seems an interesting publication as well - you can see a sample online but you have to get a free login. (They’re good about providing linking options with each article.)

I have a documentary photography background, so I am all for using visual techniques. What I also want to do is to publish interviews and such, and annotate them, online. I want to publish unfinished, not-very-interpreted results of the study, so they can be re-interpreted by other people. I haven’t seen examples of this online yet. I say not-very-interpreted because I am well aware of the problems with trying to be objective - I won’t even try to be that.

A nice example of having extensive source material online and reinterpreting it through an ethnography is Looking at discipline, looking at labour: photographic representations of Indian boarding schools (PDF, 3M). (I think this direct link should work.) The ethnography looks at the documentary pictures of Indian boarding schools. A fascinating read, check it out. (A lot of classic documentary photography was commisioned by the USA and is freely available online.)

Photographs have the strange property of gaining meaning over time - the older they are, the more we can easily re-interpret them. Video may have the same properties.

More:
- Visual Anthropology Papers
- Understanding What We See: Subject, Author, and Audience in Visual Anthropology, which includes this quote:

“All over the world, on every continent and island, in the hidden recesses of every industrial city as well as in the hidden valleys that can be reached only by helicopter, precious, totally irreplaceable, and forever irreproducible behaviors are disappearing, while departments of anthropology continue to send fieldworkers out with no equipment beyond a pencil and a notebook. (Hockings 1975: 4)”

Also (this nicely illustrates the reluctance anthropologists seem to have with visual media) : “”Ethnographers worship a terrifying deity known as Reality, whose eternal enemy is its evil twin, Art. They believe that to remain vigilant against evil, on must devote oneself to a set of practices known as Science. Their cosmology, however, is unstable: for decades they have fought bitterly among themselves as to the nature of their god and how best to serve him. They accuse each other of being secret followers of Art; the worst insult in their language is ‘aesthete’.” - Eliot Weinberger, The Camera People”.

Here are some more thoughts on the same issues. A brilliant explanation of the history and issues in ethnographic filmmaking.

I’m looking for a piece of screencapture software, or a methodology. I want to use it as follows - recommendations are welcome.

I am interested in studying how people use technology, in an ethnographic kind of way. When I visit someone’s house, I might take pictures of where the computer is. I might also want to take some screenshots. What I need is a way to make screenshots on pretty much any computer (varying OS’s).

As long as it’s Windows, I think I can do this: use CTRL-PRT SCR to make a screencap. Open M$ Paint (which is installed on all computers). Paste in the picture and save it. Then either save it on a diskette (most computers) or email it to myself (internet cafe where diskettes are disabled).

Any tips for macs?

Discovered an interesting new blog with a great post on India and Technology

Om Malik on Broadband: India’s wireless culture:
“My recent trip to India opened my eyes to how Indians were using wireless technologies in various different spheres of life. I saw a wireless-enabled ATM machine on a ferry, and wireless-enabled delivery boys with credit card machines.”

On my upcoming trip to India (6 weeks woohoo!) I plan to keep an eye out for interesting uses of technology. Meanwhile, all pointers are welcome.

World’s biggest rural wireless network in India!: “Kerala one of the southern states in India has launched wireless broadband connectivity to rural areas where land lines or cellular phones are not available. The Kerala State IT Mission Department has setup 550 internet kiosks covering 3500 square kilometers of land.

The services available will be Internet access, VoIP Telephony and Video conferencing.”

Interestingly, I plan to spend a few weeks in Kerala in October, so I can investigate. Here’s the CNET story.

If you go travel for any serious amount of time, and take a lot of digital pictures, you need to figure out a way to store all that goodness. Uploading to a site is not a practical option (too much data, and you don’t want to spend your days sitting in an internet cafe waiting for the upload to finish). You basically have 3 options: a portable harddrive, a portable CD burner, or buying lots of memory cards.

When I went for two weeks to Colombia, I took my 256M memory card, and that was fine. I put the settings to make medium size pictures, and didn’t make too many movies. This time I’m planning on spending 6 weeks in India, so I need another solution. I want to feel as if I can take as many pictures and movies a day as I like. Memory cards do drop in price - a 256M SD card is now less than US$50 - but the approach doesn’t scale if you plan to travel a lot.

This Thorntree thread discusses most options. DPReview.com has a list of options.

Portable CD recorders.
Many of these double as DVD players and such, but I’m not interested in those features. The biggest problem seems to be availability in the US.

The Nixvue Vizor (straight out of Startrek) looks, um, interesting, but doesn’t seem to be for sale anywhere.

(Yes, they’re bulky, these portable CD burners. But less bulky than, say, a guidebook.)

The EZDigiMagic is for sale for US$300 but out of stock, oh wait, seems to be available for US$259. Gets good reviews (scroll down). Seems like a decent option.

The most recommended portable CD writer seems to be the JOBO CP 200 Apacer Disc Steno, currentl at US$250. Here’s a good, real life traveling review. The writer recommends having 2 storage options while travelling (not a bad idea but expensive) - he carried a CD burner AND a portable harddrive.

The Carry Fotobar stands out because it burns to DVD as well as to CD, but again, seems hard to find in the US. Here: “It can be found at 3C outlets, where the device is sold in the US$249 to US$269 range.” Carry’s site.

Harddrives.
Harddrives are less of a contender for me because the harddrives they use are pretty much laptop harddrives and these often give problems. A CD with pictures won’t lock up on you as a harddrive might, loosing you everything (it might break but you can just send a copy home). So I haven’t listed many options here.

The coolest option, if you have one of the newer iPods, is the Belkin iPod Media Reader. It’s about US$80, and lets you save data from your media cards on your iPod. Funky, but be careful traveling with iPods. They’re very stealable. Also, reviews seem to indicate the transfers are so slow that your iPods battery might run out before you’ve transferred all your pictures.

The FlashTrack is US$700 for 80 Gigs, US$400 for 20 Gigs seems one of the typical dodgy options. You need to buy an adaptor if you want to use anything else than Flash memory cards.

The big boys seem to be entering the playing field as well. Nikon has the Nikon Coolwalker is a bit expensive at US$500. Sorry for the large picture.

Not yet available.
There are also some promising options that aren’t yet available.

Sony has a promising 40Gigs portable harddrive (supposed to be available in Japan now) and a portable CD writer, the Sony MCS1 PhotoVault Mini CD-R Station at US$199 at Amazon (not yet available) - it burns photos to mini CD-R (which only hold 200M) instead of the standard writable CD’s.

Finally, the Delkin USB Bridge, at US$70, means you don’t need a computer to get data out of your camera, but you still need storage, like a normal (not standalone) CD writer (they’re cheap these days at US$75 or less). Some experimentation required, but may well be a great option.

What’s your experience? Real life stories very welcome!