How People Communicate - What's Normal, Anyway?

Who would have thought a few years ago that we’d live in an age when you could just pull information out of the air? I stop and think about it and am amazed that we do this, and that we take it for granted. The entertainment at our office Christmas party Friday night was either compromised or enriched – depends on your point of view – when several participants sought answers to a party game by using various electronic devices. Yesterday I sat in my office and had a long talk with my sister while she was walking home through the streets of Seattle, in what could be an everyday occurrence with the popularity of mobile phones. Lately I’ve been spending time talking with a friend 12 time zones away (which at least is easy to calculate) for just $0.02/minute.

When I went to Turkmenistan a dozen years ago my father was sure we’d find a way to communicate. He’d been reading articles even back then about computers tucked away in the back of shops all across Asia. Not so in Turkmenistan. I have not been back to Ashgabat since then but I doubt it has changed as much as some parts of the world. The ever-despotic president who ordered the closing of all hospitals outside of the capital and who keeps dumbing down the educational system would not want his people to have that much contact with the outside world.

Do you suppose it’s still true, what we used to say, that half of the world’s people have never made a telephone call? (If you’ve read my blog entry on telephones, you know I sometimes wish I were one of them). Others adopt modern technologies but limit their use to reinforcing very traditional ways of life.

Every time I take a group of people overseas I notice their reactions to what seem to be, to us, leapfrogging technologies: people who have mud floors, but satellite television; no potable water but great mobile phone coverage. We send home prayer letters with descriptions of late model trucks sharing the road with donkey carts, both playing their part to bring in the harvest. Maybe we’re technologically ethnocentric, expecting that our ‘material progress’ is normal and someone else’s path a deviation.

My family of course has always lived with a foot in both worlds: Dad boasted of living off the land, the freezer and pantry well stocked with the fruit of garden and orchard. He could heat the whole house with his wood stove. But in the summer when we didn’t use that wood stove you might find his oscilloscope sitting on top of it. He loved his $900 calculator and built the first computer network for the K2 ski company which was just down the road. We raised sheep on our little farm: We usually hired a bona fide Australian guy to come do the shearing, but other than that we could manage the whole process that people in weaving circles call “from sheep to shawl.” Meg and I 'picked' fleece and tied knots; dad carded and spun; mom knitted or wove. I still have a couple of handspun, handwoven afghans made from the wool of our own sheep. Half a fleece in a bag under the house awaits the day I actually learn how to use Dad’s old spinning wheel which now sits in my living room (don't you think every spinster should have one?). Is it ridiculous, with our global economy and the availability of goods and services, to romanticize or cultivate such skills?

I’m very interested in how technology changes – or reflects – older values in a culture. Have to do some writing about that this afternoon as we revise training sessions for a January ethnography training. So consider this a warm-up.

Fun, interesting stuff, but I might rather stay far away from my cubicle on a Sunday afternoon and get outside some more before the snow we’re expecting, the same kind of snow that might fall on the simple cement house in Eastern Turkmenistan this time of year. Picture a young wife peeling potatoes and looking forward to the day, after she produces a son, when she can speak directly to her in laws rather than respectfully closing and even covering her lips when they approach (which you can see would do much to preserve the peace in the household, for all its injustice).

I wish I could send her an email.