content analysis

One of the most informative articles I’ve read recently appeared in the New York Times magazine and focused on the work of Jan Chipchase. Chipchase is a sort of applied anthropologist for cell phone maker Nokia (he calls himself a “human-behavior researcher” or “user anthropologist”). He travels the world studying cell phone usage in an effort to give designers better information on how to improve the product. However, unlike most market researchers, Chipchase’s findings can tell us a lot about global inequalities and how the world is changing.Below, I will give three examples of his findings:

1. A cell phone is the first phone many people will use. As people in a society where the telephone (landline and otherwise) is such an importance part of commerce, personal relationships, and nearly every aspect of everyday life, it seems like a stunning revelation that until very recently, much of the world could not communicate instantaneously.  In the rest of the world, there has been little way (and often little reason) to quickly communicate over great distances. The introduction of cell phone, which requires much less infrastructure than landlines and which offers affordable modes of communicating like the text message, now allows people in undeveloped nations to communicate in new ways.  Doctors can send reminders to patients to take medications.  Or as the article says, “farmers would bring their vegetables to a local person with a mobile phone, who then acted as a commissioned sales agent, using the phone to check market prices and arranging for the most profitable sale.” The potential to advance commerce, health, and relief efforts after natural disasters are tremendous.  At the same time, the great potential for drug cartels, gun-runners, and warlords to exploit the technology for destructive ends is quite troubling.

2. In the Dharavi slum of Mumbai, people keep their cell phones in plastic bags to protect from “pummeling rains.” People who do not have the basics of modern life as we know it – electricity, shelter protected from the weather, running water – now own cell phones (Chipchase uses this information to suggest remedies such as water-proof features). What astonishes me about this is the capacity for change if westerners are motivated. Because there is a commercial incentive for western cell phone makers to sell to people in developing nations, we see 3.3 billion cell phone users worldwide. At the same time, since there is little incentive to improve housing for these people, the people with cell phones in the Dharavi slum have pools of water in their homes.

3. In Bangladesh, people have found informal ways to transfer money using phones. In many small towns, a “phone lady” will have a cell phone which she lets people use for the cost of the minutes plus a small fee. If someone working in the city wants to transfer money to his mother in a small village, s/he would buy cell minutes give the “phone lady” the access code and then the “phone lady” would give the mother cash (minus a small fee). We are living through a moment when our technologies have greater potential than our minds can currently envision. For quite some time to come, we will sudden bursts of creativity as people discover ways to change facets of society using existing technology. These “backdoor” money transfers will almost certainly give way to official, regulated money transfers. More automated text messaging will become available. Soon farmers will not call or text grocers to give prices, but will simply maintain live data (on something like a cell phone web page) that a variety of grocers can check.

These advancements will come from developing nations and be refined and institutionalized in western nations. And on all these advancements, Americans will be the last to know (see part 2 tomorrow). That’s because only in places with no alternatives will people find ways to make do. In a country gluttonous with landlines, cell phones, radios, satellite radio, BlackBerrys, WiFi, television, a trillion web sites, we can choose to ignore the potential of each technology. In places without this communicative wealth, they need to get the most of out what they have.

Two things happened in the past 24 hours that got me thinking about communication. First, the friendly folks at scatterplot posted a link to Lindsay Waters’ essay on Inside High Ed calling for greater clarity in the humanities. Second, the political world has been rocked by a speech by Barack Obama on race that goes beyond the typical tendency toward sound bites and actually proposes a nuanced and complex take on the issue. So, I’ve had several ideas bouncing around in my head about the constant balancing act between clarity and complexity in communication.

Like Waters, Jeremy seems to endorse the ideal of “plainspoken social science.” This is an old debate that Stephen K. Roney summarizes well in his article, Postmodernism and George Orwell. Essentially, he pits George Orwell’s argument for simplicity and clarity in writing (spelled out in Politics and the English Language) against the case for obfuscatory language supported by thinkers like Teddy Adorno and Judith Butler. Butler, for example, is paraphrased as saying, “Difficult ideas must necessarily be expressed in difficult language” (pg. 14). While I certainly wouldn’t want to oppress anyone by rejecting his/her right to use impenetrable language, I tend to agree with Orwell that clear expression is essential to putting ideas into practical use. Ideas that are communicated in an obtuse manner are rarely absorbed by the general public (I’m thinking of Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man in the 1960s as an exception). Because Orwell was more interested in developing ideas for the purpose of political action – rather than knowledge for knowledge’s sake – he advocated a plainspoken writing style that could be widely read.

Unfortunately, to reverse Butler’s formulation, simple writing is often associated with simple ideas. Politicians are masters of developing easily absorbed, media friendly sound bites that communicate very little meaningful substance (see, for example, any sentence ending with “… or the terrorists win”). Even at moments of crisis (maybe especially then), politicians seek to paint a black and white picture with simple answers. As James Carney wrote for Time magazine yesterday, “politicians routinely seek to clarify, diminish and then dispose of the problem. They play down the conflict, whatever it is, then attempt to cut themselves off from it and move on, hoping the media and electorate will do the same.” And this is precisely what made Barack Obama’s very long speech on race so stunning. Though he spoke in perfectly clear language, the speech he gave did not simplify the issue; it revealed it to be more complex. Carney continues:

What [politicians] don’t do is give a speech analyzing the problem and telling Americans that it’s actually more complicated than what they believed. They manifestly do not denounce the offensive comments that stirred up the trouble to begin with and then tell Americans to grow up and deal with the fact that those same remarks, however wrong and offensive, are an elemental part of who they are, and who we are.

How the public reacts to this speech is still an open question. Will people reward Obama pointing out the continuing tensions of America’s racial divide? When Obama says, “We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the O.J. trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina, or as fodder for the nightly news … Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, ‘Not this time,’” will people take up that challenge? It’s probably too early to say. However, what’s obvious is that his clear, beautifully-phrased, and breathtakingly inspiring speech has the potential to affect change in much the same way JFK’s inaugural speech pushed a generation into community service. This is a power that scholar writing in recent years has lacked. Scholars like John Kenneth Galbraith have, at times, used the power of clear and inspiring language to move society and policy. But who today has that gift?

On the other hand, maybe social scientists tend to see their obscure and expert language as way of protecting their supposed objectivity. It’s possible that our often incomprehensible sentences and extensive use of the passive voice reflect our desire to appear as scientists and not radicals or “policy entrepreneurs” (as Paul Krugman referred to Galbraith in Peddling Prosperity). To me, this practice seems wrongheaded. As Marx famously wrote, “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” To do so, we’re going to need some nice lucid writing, Obama-style.