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Forms of Identity

Shacks on a Kyotera market street have the owners mobile phone number or name and phone number scrawled above the door. Here there are no signs for street names, no building numbers.

When a phone number and not say, a postal address is the primary means of remote idenification what does it mean to lose a SIM card? For your phone battery to run out? To have no phone credit? To lend your phone to someone else? Or as in the photo above, for the phone number to change? Why do the Kyotera dwellers not include instant messenger contact names, fax numbers or email addresses? Or for that matter ID card numbers or car licence plates? What is it that makes a phone number suitable for writing above the door?

Consider all this in the context of the other objects that are owned and used. How does mobile phone ownership affect status within the community? Are some phone numbers more or less desireable than others? And bearing all this in mind how important is it to have just the right phone model?

Writing from Tokyo | July 31, 2006 | Permalink