(no subject)

I think I just realized my true alignment: quixotic good

Nokia weirdness

I just got back from a presentation at an Intel research lab by some Nokia people on their Human-Computer Interface studies. They go around the world to interview people on how they use... stuff. Primarily cell phones, but just things in general. Studies on what items people carry with them, how they organize their wallets, and what objects they touch over the course of a day. How people rebuild their contact lists after their phone is stolen. They look into repair cultures in third world countries, and track grey-market service manual distribution. Sometimes they interview people on the street, sometimes they live with a family for a week. They go to Mongolia to see how street vendors set up cellphones as payphones and what the penetration of Nokia products is into monasteries.

On the wall above us was an Intel poster, with the text: Delight our customers, employees, and shareholders by relentlessly delivering the platform and technology advancements that become essential to the way we work and live.

All in all, in was about as close as I have ever come to touching the Gibsonian reality.