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Out of Office
A positive aspect of working for a Finnish company is the respect for personal and vacation time - in July and August many of my colleagues take up to a month out of the office and head to their summer cottages. My personal equivalent to this as of last year and continuing this, is taking off most of December and some of January and exploring new parts of the world. With a hectic year's travel and research behind me there are a lot of ideas to formulate, a lot to write.
So as of next week I'll be heading to first to China and then to India with time at altitude in both Tibet and the Himalayas. I'm still not quite sure what I come back to (if you guess right you can win a Shibuya blinged iPod Nano), such is the game of corporate musical chairs. Oh, the scramble to find a seat before the music stops. One thing is for certain, next year the best is yet to come.
In a way my month off has already started - prompted by visiting family, time off in the Japanese Alps and coastal ryokan. There's nothing like the clarity that comes from watching the sun rise over the Pacific (in Izu above) or waking up above the clouds to put life, the universe and (more humbly) my research into perspective. That these mornings yield a disproportionate share of big ideas is merely a bonus.
Next to me on my desk there's a freshly brewed coffee that needs drinking (a rather tasty organic blend from Ugandan since you ask) which is probably the weakest way of leading into saying that In the next few days I'll share some research on, um, Shared Phone Use a study that co-incidentally also covers Uganda. For now I'll leave you with the following two questions: Of everything that you own what would you not share with others? And why not? Answers in the comments please.
Writing from Izu | November 30, 2006 | Comments (13) | Permalink
Posture Signfying Events
Writing from Izu | | Comments (2) | Permalink
Human Traffic Flows, Design Flexibility
Form and flow of the sign facilitated by the ability to read top to bottom. The flexibility of sign design in a culture that reads left to right and top to bottom.
Writing from Izu | | Permalink
Things That Are Included By Default
By default what is included in the package? Knife, fork, straw & banana chewing gum. For every item why?
From a restaurant close to the Caspian in Iran.
Writing from Tokyo | November 29, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Street Language
Writing from Tokyo | November 28, 2006 | Permalink
Separation of Clean and Dirty Spaces
Shoes specifically for use in the male toilet room (the rest of the building, a mountain lodge is a shoe free environment) the result of a strong separation between clean and dirty. Visually the strongest demarkation of boundaries is the presence of the objects, toilet slippers, themselves.
Does it, should it, or could it apply to the storage and separation of clean and dirty (or private and not so private) digital content? Beyond the obvious, what makes for dirty content?
Writing from Akadake | November 27, 2006 | Permalink
Honour
Make a 100 yen donation to use a mountain public toilet - including a rather fetching woolen toilet cover ideal for sub-zero conditions.
Do people pay? See related post on making charity donations in Tehran.
Writing from Akadake | | Permalink
Cutting to the Chase
Tangible reminders of memories for sale.
Writing from Akadake | | Comments (0) | Permalink
Trial, Error, Aspiration
Train carriage canvas for aspirant graf artists. Apply your tag/artwork/visual noise from the comfort of your own sofa/school desk/bedroom. A simple lifestyle object with strongly implied intentions.
From the Montana store, Heidelberg.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Object Positioning and Flow
Keys positioned in doorway - making them easier to remember but sufficiently out of the way to not inhibit flow. From the same Akedake mountain lodge as previously.
See also point of reflection.
Writing from Akadake | November 25, 2006 | Permalink
Modern Implications
Keeping with today's mountain theme, a 1970's photo of Nepali mountain guesthouse owners - modern technology having pride of place in the photo.
How to capture (for properity) and display status objects as they become small to the point of being invisible?
Writing from Akadake | | Permalink
Culturally Understood Sequences
Say the name Ichiro and ask a Japanese person over a certain age to guess the name of his male siblings they'll sequentially come up with the names Jiro, Saburo and Shirou. Why? Because at a particular time this naming sequence was popular amongst Japanese parents. (Admittedly there can't be that many Japanese families with 4 sequential male siblings but by naming the first Ichiro, and the second Jiro you are perhaps showing intent to have a large family).
Thought for today: culturally specific naming sequences of siblings, objects, products or services. The ways in which these sequences can be leveraged by designers e.g. to suggest that a product is the first of many. The extent to which these sequences can be exploited e.g. someone uses the first item of a little known sequence as a password, can guess other passwords based on other items in the sequence. The extent to which sequences have cultural equivilents.
Mountain hut rice cookers named Ichiro (above), and Jiro, Saburo (below).
Writing from Akadake | | Permalink
Mobile TV, Personal Experiences
Learn ten things you didn't know about Mobile TV in this essay.
A summary? Its all about a personal experiences; home use is surprisingly popular; watching is a small part of the whole; up to 4 people can view a mobile TV at the same time but the act of sharing changes what it means to be a phone; why accessories are a struggle; design content for changing user postures; immersion is possible but is it desireable?; interactive experiences require interaction which is difficult if the user is not holding the device; everything you wanted to know about very personal media consumption but were afraid to ask; and finally what, how and why people watch in secret.
You can download a new presentation on Mobile TV entitled Mobile TV, Personal Experiences here [4MB PowerPoint].
Want more? A paper co-authored with my colleagues Cui Yanqing and Younghee Jung (pictured in Seoul above) entitled Personal Television: A Qualitative Study of Mobile TV Users in South Korea can be downloaded here [0.2 MB PDF]. And the previously published presentation entitled An Anatomy of Mobile TV Use Cases can be downloaded from here [7MB, PowerPoint]
Related research as always, here.
Writing from Tokyo | November 20, 2006 | Permalink
Bacterial Paranoia And Device Handling
What are the cultural differences in attitudes towards cleanliness?
Some cultures have an inherently high awareness (or paranoia depending on your perspective) of bacteria and its perceived consequences. These photos are taken in carrier shops in Seoul, South Korea - where you can irradiate, air-brush, wipe and scent your phone.
How might this affect device usage? For starters: the extent to which devices are shared; where objects are placed when not used; the likelihood that a protective cover will be placed over a phone - all of which affect device interaction.
Related: cleaning swab for telephone in a Seattle hotel room.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
One Size Does Fit All
An innovative solution to the problem of an oversized frame.
From a field study in Kyotera, Uganda earlier this year.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Needle Through the Eye of a Fish
Twigs threaded through the eye of fish, from the market in the Caspian seaside town of Chalus.
Writing from Tokyo | November 18, 2006 | Permalink
Elevation to Art Form
The Heidelberg Montana graf shop somehow simultainiously at home and at odds with the twee surrounds of the old town. To what extent does the ability to see what other people have been doing in the same field, essentially comparison shopping legitimise the medium?
"Iranian grafitti?"
"..."
"Its all political isn't it?"
Indeed you might expect so.
Writing from Tokyo | November 17, 2006 | Permalink
Data Transmission Mechanisms
An intriguing keynote presentation by Oxford University's Dominic O'Brien of at the World Wireless Research Forum on using solid state lighting to transfer data. Background research and information can be found here. Essentially it turns a solid state light source such as an LED traffic light into data transmission mechanism.
For thousands of years people have used light sources for low data transmission mechanisms - whether its hilltop beacons to warn of an impending invasion, ship to ship morse code or more recently the extensive use of car head-lights and tail-lights in Tehran's car to car flirting culture. The inventive step is to increase the data rates, reduce error rates and get the base technology - LEDs down to a mass market price point.
Whilst its likely that most of the data transfer will be ambient - unnoticed by humans the inherent properties of the data delivery mechanism (a light source) and the simple fact that humans have built in senses to process light (eyes+) makes for a number of interesting applications. For example what kind of visual cues will indicate that that that light source is compatible with your device? The type of content that is being transferred? That the data transfer process has completed? How does today's use of light map to light + metadata tomorrow? A simple example is that whilst it takes you 0.5 seconds for you to notice that the car in front is indicating to turn right your car already noticed in 0.1 seconds. Extrapolate this to all the cars on a freeway during rush hour - each passing information on to the car in front, the car behind. Yes the car behind you is really a doctor on his way to an emergency.
In 2012 when you're flashed by the teens in the car behind are they telling you to get out of the way or trying to download tunes eminating from your sound system/rear indicators?
And what if anything does this have to do with the maclaim graf found in a Heidelberg alleyway above? Only that the medium can be the message and you shouldn't assume that the message will be friendly.
Writing from Heidelberg | November 16, 2006 | Permalink
Infrastructure Covered
The inherent properties of infrastructure that support its blending into the background. The speed at which this transformation process occurs.
How does our awareness and appreciation of infrastructure (and the services it represents) change as what we perceive as infrastructure increasingly becomes mobile?
Writing from Heidelberg | | Comments (0) | Permalink
Relative Metrics of Success
Hard to figure out whom this advert is aimed at - its extolling the number of devices success of Bluetooth with a full page spread in the USA Today.
Writing from Heidelberg | | Permalink
Whose Finger on the Trigger?
From Heidelberg above and by A1one in Tehran below. The universality of emotionally evocative content
Writing from Heidelberg | | Comments (1) | Permalink
Supporting Cyclists
Support for cyclists who want to have something to hold and don't want take their feet from the pedals. Spotted at a traffic junction on a Heidelberg cycling path.
Writing from Heidelberg | November 15, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
From Noise to Signal
Someone somewhere values that niche thing you know so much about, enough enough for a friend to ask a friend to buy a book in London and bring it to Helsinki. This issue of understanding what has value echoes a challenge we face during field studies: given that the value of what is recorded is often apparent after returning from the field how do you know what to document?
The answer is a valid reason for doing at least some of this kind of research in-house. When you out-source qualitative research the subcontractor is paid to present signals and filter out noise. But some of that noise does in fact have value, it just doesn't have value at the time of the report writing, or is not apparent to the report writers. Recording all photo/video/metadata is both impractical - too much data processing, boring - a trained monkey could do it, and morally dubious - how to protect the privacy of the people who feature in your data collection?
Writing from Helsinki | November 14, 2006 | Permalink
Snow Falling on Asphalt
In the Helsinki mothership today followed by the World Wireless Research Forum in Heidelberg for the rest of the week.
And the photos? Light snow flurries atop of Helsinki's Hotel Torni.
Writing from Helsinki | November 13, 2006 | Permalink
Personal TV
A mobile phone user sits alone watching live baseball whilst sitting in Komazawa Koen, Tokyo.
One of the surprising findings of a recent research study we did in South Korea was the extent to which Mobile TV was used in the home. Given the competition in the home from large screens, good audio, high definition and known content why would anyone watch mobile TV in the home space?
Its turns out that people really value control over the watching experience. No need to negociate with other family members over control of the remote or control of the sofa. Curled up in bed with a hot cup of cocoa. Of course. Want to multi-task whilst you're instant messaging/downloading/doing homework? Why Not? Extrapolate this contol over the experience to contexts in and outside the home. The key benefit from Mobile TV is not mobility- very few people will watch whilst actively on the move - its that the experience is personal. Its time to start thinking about Personal TV.
Picked up in a recently published summary of Mobile TV research published by Dr Shani Orgad. Plus a few slides from the South Korea study can be downloaded from here with a full paper due once a suitable venue to publish is found.
In the big scheme of things does a more personal experience for you imply a more impersonal experience for the rest of us? Are your personal experiences socially connecting? Or do they cut you off from everyone except your media?
Writing from Heidelberg | | Permalink
Harass, Segment
"On weekdays this car is 'only for women' in trains for Osaki and Shinkiba departing from this station from 7:38 to 9:33"
Of note: the necessity for gender segregation of train carriages; the precision of the rules; colour, design and placement of the sign.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Friday Pop Quiz - Free Blinged Nano
Time to clear out the old.
I'll gift this Shibuya blinged iPod Nano to the first person who can guess my job come January 1st 2007. Bonus points for naming the city and country I'll be living in and, gosh, the name of my employer.
Post your answers to the comments.
The glittering prize will be shipped to one lucky winner once I figure out the answer myself.
Writing from Tokyo | November 10, 2006 | Comments (35) | Permalink
Two Wheels Good
Documenting a city or country from a car is a bit like doing human behavioural research without ever leaving a laboratory - there is worthy stuff you can learn but IMHO you'll pretty soon reach the limitations of what's interesting. Yeah I know, unless of course the focus of your research is car culture itself. But mostly getting out there requires removing the barriers between you and the world around you. What's your excuse when a motorbike and local driver can be yours for as little as 5 Euro for half a day? And even if motorcycle taxi's don't exist in a city of your choice it is possible to engage regular motorbike drivers to engagte in a bit of moonlighting.
Photos from motor cycle field research in Shanghai above, Kampala, Tehran, Hue, Fujian Province and Ho Chi Minh City below.
So you think language an issue? Some of the most effective days spent researching from the back of a motorbike have been with a driver that doesn't speak a word of English/German/Japanese and likewise me struggling to get my tongue around Farsi/Vietnamese/Chinese/Lugandan. What makes for a good research ride? A driver who is sufficiently aware of the passenger but ultimately knows exactly what he can get away with on the road/pavement/cattle path; a comfy passenger seat; plenty of cc's; and ultimately someone who is not phased by requests to stop in wierd places; and ends up anticipating places and peoples of interest.
Pillion highlights from this past year?
Interviewing boda-boda (motorbike taxi) driver's in Uganda for a study of shared mobile phone use, and on one occasion speeding through Kampala sitting Tour de France cameraman style i.e. the wrong way round on the passenger seat trying to get a good shot of a colleague Indri conducting an eventually very successful interview. Trust in your driver is a wonderful thing, especially when near misses are only witnessed after the miss and the only practical alternative is blind panic.
Being baled out of a sticky street situation by a motorbike driver in Tehran who knew just when to come and rescue me from over inquisitive officials. Watching Ho Chi Minh City wake and commute to work - Vietnam is after all still a 2-wheeled culture. The morning included a stop for a double condensed milk coffee and spending the next 30 minutes gripping and tripping.
And finally a day in the mountains of Fujian Province listening to tunes and staring contentedly at the back of a plant pot helmetted rider, who later introduced me to his favourite barber. The size of rock falls that were common in that part of the world would have wiped us out no matter how much wickerware protection he was wearing.
Bargain hard, tip well, don't expect a helmet.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
When Every Private Vehicle is an Ad-Hoc Shared Taxi. When...
Many private vehicles in Tehran operate as shared taxi's - stand in the road stick out your hand, communicate your destination through the window of the slowing vehicle and if he or occasionally a she, is going your way then you have a ride. The resulting dance looks somewhat like mixed gender curb crawling with both men and women peering into car windows agreeing on the details of the transaction in advance and hopping in.
The process is relatively efficient - single occupancy cars taking on passengers to travel routes they are likely to travel anyway, and the process makes me wonder why similar practices haven't evolved informally in places like London, Tokyo or New York. Yes there's car pooling in places like Los Angeles but it's mostly pre-arranged and not as widespread as in Tehran.
Is this kind of service more likely with: a means of screening potential customers; and our abilty to increasingly micro-coordinate making smaller decisions later?
Mobile devices are already capable of running as fully functioning nodes on the internet i.e. not just a terminal, and can in effect act as a personal and proximate, digital, connected presence. What ad-hoc services will be provided in markets such as Tehran? How to design these services in a societies where the boundary between official and unofficial is at best blurred?
When every car is an ad-hoc taxi, every everything can be an ad-hoc something.
Heading to Finland on Sunday if any of the Helsinki crew is around?
Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (1) | Permalink
Four Person Taxi Meter
When you run a shared taxi service and customers step into and out of your ride at different points of the journey - how to you keep track of what to charge each person? This four person taxi meter introduced by Tehran's taxi authority technically works but according to this taxi driver is not often used. Why? Unpopular with customers more used to a culture of bargaining.
This meter is crudely indicative of the finer granularity of data that increasingly surrounds us. In which cultures will this measurable/precise data be welcomed? In which rejected?
Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (1) | Permalink
Documenting You, Documenting Me
A Cairo waiter shows off his photo of this researcher above, and a more traditional studio photographer in Delhi below.
With the tools to capture experiences in the hands of more and more people its not surprising that one of the experiences that ends up being documented is, um, the process of being documented. How does being watched affect how we (researchers) work? when will we have the first Rodney King style documentation of a mis-behaving field researcher?
Writing from Tokyo | November 9, 2006 | Permalink
Demarkation of Segregation
Physical barrier on a Kobrasol bus deliniating who has paid and who has not, in the above photos. Male only queue for a Tehran bus in photos below - the female only queue was for the back half of the bus, and yes with equal number of seats in both halves.
At what part of the (service) process to sort/filter/segregate? Motivation for segregation? Implications of segregation on the objects/people being segregated?
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Gender Norms
Male housekeeper in a Tehran Hotel above, female paintball team in Northern Tehran below.
Writing from Tokyo | November 8, 2006 | Permalink
Unique in the Same Ways
A week ago I was standing in a Tehran bakery observing the bread making process and just as fascinating, the customers interactions with the baker. Yesterday I stood in my Tokyo kitchen with K as she opens up the rice cooker. She turns to me and says "You'll never understand the true meaning of freshly cooked rice". Its true - you can't instantly adopt a life time of emotional attachment with an object, when you consider the thousands of ways it makes it way into your psyche.
But every culture, every person has its equivilent of the fresh-out-of-the-oven experience it's just a matter of figuring out what it is. Your culture's appreciation of [insert emotional food experience here] may be unique. Every culture unique, they just so happen to be unique in the same ways.
Writing from Tokyo | November 7, 2006 | Permalink
When Localisation Means Not Localising
Weighing scale in Tehran above, and Tokyo below. Both languages have their own scripts for numbering, so why are western numbers used as a default? If you enjoy the challenge of localisation you may like this.
How do local preferences translate into the device user interface? Ask someone about what kind of design they want and they'll talk passionately about having a user interface localised into their own language. The challenge is matching your and their idea of what it is to be local.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Knocking Off
Diesel, Pamu, Rebook on sale in a Cairo store.
Remember the comments about Al Zawahri in his promo video wearing New Balance shoes? What chance they were fakes?
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Opening Rituals
Exhibition opening at stich Daikanyama.
Writing from Daikanyama | November 6, 2006 | Comments (0) | Permalink
Trust in What You Give
At any time the average urban Iranian is within a few meters of a collection box like the one pictured - the larger model can be found at regular intervals on most pavements and its smaller cousin (photo below) is frequently found on shop walls. A snap assumption would be that their frequency is indicative of the nature of giving in Iranian society, but is it really so? Does the tangible reminder to give translate into actual giving?
It's partly an issue of trust - to what extent do you trust that the money that is placed in the collection box ends up in the hands of those for whom it is intended? Street crime is an issue in Tehran - I’d guess from the way people behave, carry and interact with the objects they carry it is similar to London in its intensity. To a thief the charity box represents an-hoc 24 hour loose change machine - to be carried off, forced open or, given the volume of keys that must be out there, simply unlocked.
And supposing you trust that the money is affectively collected by the, um, money collector, do you trust that it is put to good use? How transparent is the collection, distribution and application of those monies?
Fast forward to our naturally future perfect, where you carry the real time means to browse, preview, pay, track, and in the case of digital goods and services, receive and store what you buy i.e. through a personal mobile device. What new ways of charity giving does this enable? What is the personal mobile device equivalent of putting a few pennies in a collection box? A pre-loaded Give Now application - simply select a charity an amount and press send where the results are billed to your account? Or donations triggered by the tasks you complete - every time game played results in a 10 cent donation. Even matched funding according to how much you spend on your phone bill, assuming of course calls are not already free by then.
But as with the collection boxes on the streets of Tehran, how sure are you that your digital donation is actually being put to good use? Whom do you trust to administer the money collection service? A Vodafone, MTN or Cingular? A Motorola, Samsung or Nokia? An HSBC or CitiBank? Or a charity branded application or service?
And given that donations can be tracked to what extent do you, or for that matter the charity, want to highlight exactly when and how the money is spent?
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Opportunity to Give
As collection boxes become part of the urban landscape, how to ensure that customers continue to give? And the same question when giving is digitized?
Photo from newspaper kiosk in Tehran.
Writing from Tokyo | | Comments (0) | Permalink
Moral Guardians, Learned Behaviours
As our collective ability to watch and monitor becomes ever more sophisticated how does this change the relationship between individuals, governments and organisations?
In our future perfect your government, network provider and/or device manufacturer has taken it upon themselves to keep society decent. Your communication device monitors your spoken conversations and every time you swear a 10 Euro cent 'fine' is levied to a virtual swear box. Each spoken swear word appears on your phone bill as 'Profanity'. The only question is whether profanities need to be itemised?
Writing from Tokyo | November 5, 2006 | Permalink
Line, End
Signal, Daikanyama attempts to brand the end of the line. Urban spam? How could it be cleverer?
Cheers to the Tokyo crew - you're what Sunday's in Tokyo are about.
Writing from Daikanyama | | Permalink
Features That Help Owners Make the Sale
Menu items on a japanese Sony Ericsson phone converted on the fly into a comic strip - each speech bubble represents a function. Navigating left or right trigger a new comic strip layout. Highly creative but also a jarring transition as soon as you skip to any other part of the phone's standard menus driven interface.
The extent to which this kind of software interface feature helps raise awareness of the product - the 'hey check this out' part of hanging out with friends. The extent to which device owners actually uses this feature once bought - or whether they revert to the (arguably more) usable menu driven interface for day to day usage. The extent to which use after purchase is irrelevant i.e. the feature has served its function.
It's owner? David Williams of Asentio Design Shanghai.
Writing from Daikanyama, back of | | Permalink
Deepresso
A variant of Georgia Coffee called Deepresso showing at least that someone in Coca Cola has a sense of humor.
The effect of product naming on the enjoyment (or otherwise) of consumption.
The happy convenience store model? Danke und gruesse are in order.
Writing from Aoyama | November 4, 2006 | Permalink
Peace Needs a New Logo
Lights projected onto the United Nations University in Aoyama being photographed by numerous passers by. Proportion of camera phones to cameras? About 8 to 1.
Writing from Aoyama | | Permalink
The Art of Remembering in a Nano World
Typical behaviours when carried objects go below a certain size: attaching similar objects together such as key rings; grouping similar objects together - the wallet being a commonly carried example; enlarging such as adding straps. Clustering is somewhat like a mobile center of gravity. Straps serve multiple purposes and I'll write about the nuances once I've sorted out the research.
What happens when more of what we carry is designed and minaturized using nano tech? Will we become a society of attachers, groupers and enlargers? At what point do objects become so small that these strategies fail? At what point do objects that evolve into services become so distant that these strategies fail? Example - a carried key evolves into a remote monitoring service that provides access to the secure places and objects in your life - your car, home, diary. Embedding or attaching nano-objects to the body is one solution, but will another category of object arise - that of placeholder? An object whose only purpose it is to remind and support our use of some minutely small other object (or naturally clusters of minutely small other objects). Placeholder's already exist - the business card is a common example. How will tomorrow's placeholders be different than todays?
When an object can be any shape or size what shape or size should it be? When does form not follow function?
And the photos above? A Japanese bondaged bunny attached as a strap to an easy-to-lose USB drive.
Writing from Tokyo | November 3, 2006 | Permalink
Remembering Founder
From a deli in Chalus, and related thoughts from Cairo.
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Mobile Classifieds
From a Tehrani free sheet.
Writing from Tokyo | November 2, 2006 | Permalink
ID Cards and the market for Fake ID Cards
Take a journey through a Chinese urban landscape and you'll soon come across stenciled advertisements for fake IDs - one phone call, meet up, hand over some yuan and you can obtain a work live/permit for a different city. In China there are restrictions on where you can live/work and although its possible to get away with it, having the necessary permit brings a degree of flexibility. Jump over the ocean to the US where college students are frequently carded - producing a photo ID, typically a driver's license to get served in bars or enter nightclubs. It's not surprising that in the US fake IDs abound, or at least that they did when I was underage and hitching my way across Texas.
What has this got to do with Iran? Iranians carry a National ID card and from experience where there are originals there are invariably fakes. Or are there? Buying a train, bus or plane ticket requires the ID card but the activities where fake IDs are most likely to be used in other cultures - drinking alcohol and entering night clubs don't apply to Iran. Underground events or private pool parties aren't the sort of places where a card with a photo is any more likely to get you in and buying alcohol is strictly an under the counter affair.
What mainstream activities enabled by being able to prove you are a different age, person or even gender? Are these 'benefits' sufficient to trigger the mainstream use of fake ID cards?
And what does this have to do with the photos above? Actually... nothing, they're just details from one of dozens of revolution related murals that have been painted on the sides of Tehran tenements. These remind me of the 'men ...rituals... touch...' by Barbara Kruger.
Writing from Tokyo | November 1, 2006 | Permalink
Local Graf
Writing from Tehran, suburbs of | | Permalink
Abstract Commodities: Money, Identity
The shared understanding and agreement of value that enables markets to form and transactions to take place. Current Iranian Rials, Shah era Rials and US Dollar bank notes for sale in the photo above, and SIM card + phone numbers below.
SIM cards are still scarce in Iran - ordering one takes months unless you're willing to pay to jump the queue. Numbers starting with a 1 - the first SIM cards to be issued by the government/operator, command a higher price than more recent issues. Abstract values indeed.
Shipping out in a few minutes. Cheers to the local crew for making it happen so smoothly: Mahsa, Saeed, Mohy, Nigar and Azadeh.
Writing from Tehran | | Permalink
Tehran Sk8, RIP
Unused swimming pool in a Tehran housing estate converted into a skate park - to my knowledge the only skate venue in Iran. Whilst the brick & concrete ramp construction is admirable the current state of the ramps shows there's not a lot of skatin' going on here.
Writing from Tehran, suburbs of | | Comments (0) | Permalink
Dancing in the Dark
Iran is a society where an unmarried man and woman alone in a car together can trigger a ticking off, fine or worse if stopped by the Basij - a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. As well as the more common parks and shopping malls how else to meet the boy or girl of your dreams without falling foul of the authorities? For some younger driver's Tehran's car 2 car flirt culture has evolved to fill the niche.
Rules of the game? Pile in a car and head with your same sex possie to one of the city's flirt strips, cruise up and down until you spot a likely target, being careful to pick a car that's broadly your car's equal and then aggressively use tail lights, fog lights and rear windscreen wipers to initiate the courting ritual. A response is equivilent to a pick-up and the cars cruise side by side to arrange later rendezvous through open windows and over the sound of preferred music tastes. Rapid excelleration and braking are optional.
Need a social excuse for getting out of the vehicle and interact face to face? Nudge someone elses car and swap personal details for 'insurance purposes'. Iran as lead use case for anyone developing car to car communication solutions?
Cheers to our local guides for the heads-up.
Writing from Tehran | | Permalink
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