Intel embraces cultural difference
We expected Intel to be interested in materials science, but anthropology? Apparently an anthropologist working for the semiconductor giant is putting the finishing touches on a three-year study of how Asian families interact with technology. The anthropologist, Genevieve Bell, lived with families in seven Asian countries and found Chinese people take their mobile phones to temples to be blessed (check), Muslims use their cellphones to locate Mecca (check), and other cultures burn paper cell phone offerings for their ancestors to use in the next world. Bell's anecdotes will enable Intel to create "cultural profiles" to help design teams come up with new product ideas. The study counteracts Intel's earlier ideas that a global middle class was emerging in Asia who use consumer electronics the same way the Western world does. Where they ever got that idea, we're not sure, being that China is one of the largest, poorest nations in the world.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Steve Portigal @ Dec 19th 2005 3:03AM
Your breathless surprise over the existence of Intel's anthropological work is pretty lame when coupled with your smug claims of what you already knew. Intel produces a torrent of PR over the work their People and Practices group do. Genevieve's work has been written up and blogged and reblogged and in newspapers all over the world for years. In those high-profile "gee isn't this an interesting thing for a company to be doing?!" type of story that is exactly the form you guys latch onto. You can't claim "with-it" points and then attitudinal naivete over this story - how's about surprise over the fact that you actually didn't know about Intel doing any of this?!
davidm @ Dec 19th 2005 3:03AM
You are taking this site's comments too seriously. It is all happy fun talk to sell today's happy fun product, in the style of snide knowing insider. Tomorrow we will live in a world poisoned by mercury and built on one dimensional "knowledge" of other people and places, but today we can buy more stuff. Hooray for today.
Mike @ Dec 19th 2005 3:03AM
examines how some cultures use them to set off explosive devices?