Reading Response #1 – “The Cell Phone”

I’m sure how to format this responses but I’m sure halfway through my rant I’ll figure one out.

The cell phone has become a cultural icon present in many cultures. The looks, sounds and the capabilities of each handset are incredibly interesting but what I want to focus on are the capabilities of any particular handset.

Sometime ago possessing just about any form of cell phone would have been enough to distance one person from another. But now in America’s consumerist culture the drive to have the “best” is ever-present.

If you can afford (or want people to think you can afford) the “best” you want the “best.” But in a culture like Jamaica simply having access to a cell phone is a big step. While they’re not quite using those Motorola DynaTAC 8000X’s like my main man Zach Morris, feature-wise they aren’t at the forefront of the pack.

Or are they?

When I started reading the article, having been somewhat familiar with Jamaican (& West Indian) culture I realized that I needed to abandon my Western-belief that the best phone is the one with the most features. How can a person have a phone with less features but still have the best phone? Well if that phone addresses all of that person’s main concerns and in many cases surpasses them do they really need any additional bells & whistles?

One of my main beefs with anthropology and more specifically documentary filmmaking is treating the subject of your doc/study as an object that needs to be poked, prodded and studied as opposed to a being that is also capable of teaching us about ourselves. Not to sound to “we are the world” but this belief that progress and evolution is a one directional road is insulting and quite pretentious.

This reading allowed me a chance to take another look at all the unnecessary features that I can’t live with out from the point of view of another culture.

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