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One in five Britons don’t know how to use e-mail
The Times comments on a report on the significant digital divide in the UK, despite widepsread broadband and mobile coverage. One in five adult Britons is unable to open a word processing document on...
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Microsoft developing ‘senior PC’
Microsoft UK is developing a “senior PC”, which will have a simple interface and be aimed at older users, writes Jane Wakefield on BBC News. The machine will come software that allows users to manage...
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Recent immigrants driving advanced mobile phone use, both in Europe and in...
Last year, The Economist published an article about ethnographic user research at Swisscom. One of the findings it highlighted was that immigrant workers are the most advanced users of communications...
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Danish programme for user-driven innovation
The Danish programme for user-driven innovation (English summary) aims to strengthen the diffusion of methods for user-driven innovation, and to contribute to increased growth in the participating...
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Library of Congress lecture series on “digital natives”
The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress is organising a four-part lecture series on “Digital Natives,” referring to the generation that has been raised with the computer as a natural part...
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Intel anthropologists find keys to tech adoption
Dawn Nafus, an Intel anthropologist and her team have created Intel’s “Technology Metabolism Index,” which shows how citizens of countries’ tech adoption exceeds or lags what one would expect given...
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Mito Akiyoshi: the digital divide does not vanish with the mobile
The great people at the splendid French blog InternetActu have conducted an interview with the Japanese sociologist, Mito Akiyoshi. Since InternetActu is published in French, and I have been pushing...
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From favelas to townships: mobile use in low-income populations
MobileActive reports on two studies that explore how low-income people use mobile technology in Brazil and South Africa. This rise of mobile phone use by low-income and so-called ‘base-of-the-pyramid’...
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Mobile phones and the digital divide
Ken Banks writes in PC World on the capacity of the mobile phone to bridge the digital divide. While developed markets get excited by the iPhone, N95, BlackBerry, 3G, WiMax and Android, in developing...
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Brazil: digital inclusion, but how?
While hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on digital inclusion projects in Latin America, many of the programs start and end with the technology, writes CNET News (as part of its ongoing...
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Ethnic minority groups continue to lead the way on digital device take-up and...
Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, states that ethnic minority groups are the prime early adopters in Europe, thereby confirming ethnographic user research at Swisscom. “Ethnic minority groups...
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Understanding non-users
Interesting article by Hubert Guillaud of InternetActu.net on understanding non-users (my translation): The French Marsouin research lab just published an interesting study on people who do not use...
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Designers challenged to include disabled
CNN reports on how Donald Norman wants designers to be more inclusive: The future of design could see the divide between able-bodied and disabled people vanish. Don Norman , design Professor at...
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Everyday Digital Money workshop at UC Irvine
The Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Irvine recently organised a workshop on innovation in digital money, entitled Everyday Digital Money. The workshop examined this...
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The impact of mobile technology around the world
A three part series of special reports on Radio France International explored the impact of mobile technology around the world. The transcripts are all online and – if you read French – it is highly...
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Johannesburg conference showcases African bottom-up innovation in mobile...
If you are interested in bottom-up innovation within emerging markets using mobile phones, the recent MobileActive08 conference (more here) in Johannesburg, South Africa generated a wealth of...
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Indian usability conference tackled digital divide and user experience design
As part of the World Usability Day 2008, the Department of Information Technology at Vishwakarma Institute of Information Technology (V.I.I.T.), Pune (India) hosted on 27-28 November the Conference on...
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SustainIT – a supplement worth reading
The Independent today introduced SustainIT, the first in a series of three monthly supplements on ICT and globalisation. Some of the articles in the supplement (especially those not written by sponsor...
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Information technologies and international development
Information Technologies and International Development, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the intersection of information and communication technologies (ICT) with economic and social...
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The rise of the mobile divides
Rich Ling is a sociologist at the Telenor research institute and a visiting professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, who is particularly interested in understanding the social implications of...
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Africa perspective on the role of mobile technologies in fostering social and...
Last week, the W3C Mobile Web Initiative organised a workshop on the “Africa Perspective on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development” in Maputo, Mozambique. The workshop set out...
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Let them eat tweets
Virginia Heffernan writes in the New York Times Magazine on why Twitter is a trap. “These worries started to surface for me last month, when Bruce Sterling, the cyberpunk writer, proposed at the South...
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A selection of CHI2009 papers
Today I spent some time looking through the CHI 2009 papers. Here is a personal selection (and you need an ACM membership to access them): A comparative study of speech and dialed input voice...
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In the US, even the homeless stay connected
The Wall Street Journal reports on the use of the internet by homeless people in San Francisco. “A few years ago, some people were worrying that a “digital divide” would separate technology haves and...
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FT special report on connectivity
The Financial Times has published a special report on connectivity, analysing the implications of a connected planet. My preferred pieces: Skills: Business must learn from the new tribe So-called...
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The Economist on sensors, mapping and mobiles
The Economist this week comes with a new edition of its 24-page Technology Quarterly supplement, which contains four articles that are related to the theme of this blog: Taken your medicine? Health...
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US Government providing cellphones for the poor
A US federal program providing subsidized phone service now offers cellphones, showing how much society values them, reports The New York Times. “The users are not the only ones receiving government...
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Identity crisis in the West and innovation in the developing world
Nokia’s Ideas Project published two feature stories today: Digital We: A (Multiple) Identity Crisis We create new digital identities almost without limit – at the same time new technologies urge us to...
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danah boyd on new habits in a connected world
danah boyd, a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society, got incensed at an Italian conference and bites back: “I’m 31...
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The digital age of rights
The digitally deprived have rights too, says BBC News columnist Bill Thompson, who is quite upset about a new French law: “If it is unacceptable to cut people off from the network because their...
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Converting those who have no desire to be converted
80% of the transactions of the UK Government are done with the bottom 25% of society and migrating services online offers great cost savings. Yet, 17 million Britons have never been online and many of...
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Indian Design for All newsletter features German design
The Design for All Institute India has published a special issue of its newsletter together with IDZ International Design Centre, Berlin. Guest Editor is Prof Birgit Weller. Design for All Institute...
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Implementing digital TV in Italy: the other side of the digital revolution
Italy is in the process of switching to digital TV, and the implementation is pretty much a disaster, as far as I can tell from the reactions in the region where I live (Piedmont). Many of the...
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Motorola research shows technology use is becoming age-neutral
The 2009 Media Engagement Barometer commissioned by Motorola’s Home & Networks Mobility business has revealed a shift in [US] consumer influence that hasn’t been widely recognized yet: age no...
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Coercing people into a brave new digital world
Design consultant Martyn Perks thinks that a UK government-backed campaign to get the entire UK adult population online “threatens to make cyber slaves of us all.” “Is it not possible that some people...
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Time to break the cyber-utopian myth
Who do you read and associate with online? Ethan Zuckerman argues in this Guardian video that cultural and linguistic barriers stand in the way of our using the internet to tackle global issues. The...
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Innovation in Kenya’s informal economy
In Making Do: Innovation in Kenya’s Informal Economy, Steve Daniels of Brown University illuminates the dynamics of Africa’s informal economy to enhance our understanding of emerging systems of...
View ArticleTrapped in the Anglosphere
Martin Kettle thinks the UK has lost sight of next door Europe, trapped as Brits are in their Anglo-centric internet. “It is hard to recall a time when the national, not just the London, mind was...
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A cyber-house divided
Online as much as in the real world, people bunch together in mutually suspicious groups—and in both realms, peacemaking is an uphill struggle. The Economist reports in an article that quotes Danah...
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Digital fluency: empowering all students
Liz Losh writes on DMLCentral on an inclusive and interdisciplinary approach to “digital literacy” that is more in keeping with the latest thinking about “digital fluency” in the field “Although...
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Connected Learning
Together with a committed group of colleagues and partners, cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito has been engaged in the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative to address the...
View ArticleDigital differences in the USA
When the Pew Internet Project first began writing about the role of the internet in American life in 2000, there were stark differences between those who were using the internet and those who were...
View ArticleIs the 1,9,90 rule outdated?
The BBC have just released some interesting research around participation online, writes Neil Perkin on FutureLab. The findings (the result of a “large-scale, long-term investigation into how the UK...
View ArticleA qualitative study of internet non-use in Great Britain and Sweden
Living Offline – A Qualitative Study of Internet Non-Use in Great Britain and Sweden by Bianca Christin Reisdorf (U. of Oxford, UK), Ann-Sofie Axelsson (Chalmers U. of Technology, Sweden) and Hanna...
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What does it mean to be a digital native?
The war between natives and immigrants is ending. The natives have won, argues Oliver Joy on the CNN website. It was a bloodless conflict fought not with bullets and spears, but with iPhones and floppy...
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Intel’s ‘Women and the Web’ report
From the press release: Intel Corporation released a groundbreaking report on “Women and the Web,” unveiling concrete data on the enormous Internet gender gap in the developing world and the social and...
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Exploring customer centricity in financial inclusion
CGAP (a World Bank affiliated but independent policy and research center dedicated to advancing financial access for the world’s poor) has partnered with Janalakshmi Financial Services, one of India’s...
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The challenge of connecting the unconnected
Every time we return to or sign up for an Internet service (e.g. Facebook, Google, Gmail, YouTube, etc.), writes Hassan Baig on TechCrunch, we rely on what UX experts call a “mental model” for...
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Europe’s White Working Class Communities: A Report on Six EU Cities
Europe’s White Working Class Communities, a research series published by the Open Society Foundations, documents the experiences of “white” communities in six cities across Europe. Each report focuses...
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Uday Dandavate: “stupidity wrapped in ignorance” underlies Facebook’s Free...
Uday Dandavate, co-founder and CEO of design research company SonicRim, is appalled about Facebook pushing its Free Basics program in India, which he think is driven by “an attitude that represents...
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