A British doctor volunteering in DR Congo used text message instructions from a colleague to perform a life-saving amputation on a boy.
Quotes
The speed of growth of mobile penetration in India, China, Africa, South America is phenomenal. This is where we’ll see innovation. This is where we’ll see real people come up with new ways to use mobile technology to solve their day to day problems or enhance their day to day lives.
. French texters have devised “ght2v1,” which means “J’ai acheté du vin.” In Germany, “nok” is an efficient solution to the problem of how to explain “Nicht ohne Kondom”—“not without condom.” If you receive a text reading “aun” from the fine Finnish lady you met in the airport lounge, she is telling you “Älä unta nää”—in English, “Dream on.
These resources were not being stolen to for use in Africa. They were seized so they could be sold on to us. The more we bought, the more the invaders stole – and slaughtered. The rise of mobile phones caused a surge in deaths, because the coltan they contain is found primarily in Congo. The UN named the international corporations it believed were involved: Anglo-America, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and more than 100 others. (They all deny the charges.) But instead of stopping these corporations, our governments demanded that the UN stop criticising them.
Johann Hari: How we fuel Africa’s bloodiest war – Johann Hari, Commentators – The Independent
British American Tobacco South Africa has, in defiance of the country’s tobacco control law, resorted to marketing of cigarettes by phone text messages and MMS.
The blog of Jackie Tumwine: BAT marketing dunhill cigarettes via text messages in South Africa
All of it was a dream. All that crap we bought, all the bottled water and Blu-Ray players and designer shoes and iPod Shuffles and patio heaters; all the jobs we had; all the catchphrases we memorised and the stupid things we thought. Everything we did for the past 10 years – none of it really felt real, did it?
Charlie Brooker on the end of the world as we know it | Comment is free | The Guardian
Much mobile phone use (certainly in the DRC) is to solve problems that people shouldn’t have in the first place. It is strongly related to precarity. For the wealthy and secure, the mobile phone is of minor importance – the wealthiest often don’t have one, or forget to take it with them and joke that they can’t remember its number. For illegal migrants and asylum seekers, it is a lifeline.
A survey on the secret habits of French mobile phone users found that 14% French women (compared to just 4% of men) actually take their mobile phones into the bathroom with them.
Please don’t call me from the toilet.
The Telemegaphone is an open, non-anxious installation waiting to be put to use. In Dale, a small town idyllically located on the shore of the Dalsfjord in western Norway, the installation of a Telemegaphone in fall 2008 will act as both a sonic mirror for the inhabitants and a reminder that that “the world can interfere”, uncensored, at any moment.
Texting is a fundamentally sneaky form of communication, which we should despise, but it is such a boon we don’t care. We are all sneaks now. It’s as if we have an endless supply of telegram boys who, in a matter of seconds, can not only locate anyone on the planet on our behalf, but also tap him on the shoulder and hand over a sealed envelope marked “For Your Eyes Only”. My favourite text – which I lovingly preserve – was sent to me by a friend in Greece, when I was staying the other side of the harbour from his house. “AM WAVING” it said, and I looked across with my binoculars, and so he was. The oldest form of communication was thus served by the latest. It seemed daft, but also right.
Becky Faith 