I moblogged some of it live.

At one point, the judge declares the convention hall to be a U.S. District Court so the oath ceremony can proceed, and asks the crowd to turn off all cell phones and pagers. I initially complied (thus missed recording the oath…) but then realized he didn’t say anything about cameras or recorders, so turned it back on in off-line mode to record the pledge of allegiance and national anthem.

One conclusion: it’s really hard to do live reporting with a cell phone… switching it from camera to recorder to MMS, while paying attention to our handlers’ instructions and trying not to hold up the line. Gave me lots to think about as we work with EE579 students to design a handset-based multi-media editor/preprocessor.

Your pointers to well-designed phone-based applications will be appreciated. Also, if you have developped usage practices to reliably capture and send media in the rush of the moment, we’d love to hear about them.

(This work is part of the vozmob project, in which we are inventing ways to tell stories using cheap pre-paid cellphones and MMS.)

This was the first time such training was offered. Funding came from the Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM), and the Kathalia Sukher Disha Community Resource Centre organized the 3-week course. Participants were selected from nearby villages (one per village). The goal was to provide poor women with skills that would allow them to make a living as technicians. Upon graduation, each received a basic toolkit, worth about Tk. 1,000 ($15), including a set of screwdrivers, small pliers, soldering iron and solder, a cleaning brush, a Chinese-made multitester (Sunwa YX-360TR), and a Bengla/English collection of mobile phones diagrams covering the handsets most commonly found in rural Bangladesh.

The pair decided to become business partners and rented a storefront in Kathalia for Tk. 3,000 ($45) for the whole year. They work in the shop 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. In addition to phone repairs, they also use their mobile to sell phone calls to villagers. Altogether since starting 5 months ago, they have earned on average Tk. 1,500 ($23) per month, most of it from repairs. They say most phones can be fixed by opening and cleaning them, but they can also test individual components, order and install a replacement when needed.

They hope to expand their business soon by offering additional services. First, they plan to provide “flexi load”, Grameen’s instant recharge for pre-paid phones. They would also like to sell mobile accessories. They looked into becoming participants in the Grameen Village Phone Program, but found the start-up cost too high and decided against it.

“On the right side of this photo sits my main interviewee of today: Xiao Zhang. I got to know him through his dad, Lao Zhang, whom I’ve interviewed many times since spring 2007. His parents migrated from rural Henan in central China to Guangzhou in late 1990s. They began as janitors but later had their small payphone store in one of Guangzhou’s largest migrant enclaves. Xiao Zhang came to join his parents at 16, a typical age when kids in rural China stopped going to school. He lived with his parents in a cramped room, right above the payphones they operate. The up-stair “domestic” space and the down-stair “business” space is connected by a bamboo ladder.

When I first knew Xiao Zhang, he just started to be apprentice for a large mobile phone repair plaza, about three blocks away from his family/shop, which consists of 20-30 repair counters. He was shy and reluctant to discuss things in front of his dad, although at one time he was excited to talk about Internet cafes nearby where people go and play online games. Last time I saw him was in December 2007, when he had fever and was on his way to see a doctor. Apparently he was overworked, and with malnutrition, as other teenage apprentices in the phone repair business.

By then, his dad had told me their plan was to let Xiao Zhang have his own mobile phone repair shop. Today, when I saw them, they had moved one step further toward that goal. For one thing, Xiao Zhang had stopped working as someone else’s apprentice. Six months ago, his dad already had one piece of used equipment that blows steady hot air for the softening and loosening of metal parts in mobile phone. To this they added several other gadgets including meters measuring electronic flows, screw drivers, a small welding device, and another equipment that blows less-hot wind for the softening and cleaning of plastic parts. All except the last one were from the second-hand market. The total cost is about 70 dollars.

Today Xiao Zhang was quite talkative, in part because they already knew me, in part because they now needed as much information as possible about low-end repair shops in Guangzhou, so that they could decide where to open the new business. We talked about this obviously most important matter for about 30 minutes, and then I asked Xiao Zhang to show me what he learned and his new equipment.

Xiao Zhang took out a Nokia motherboard and went into great details explaining the function of each part, the CPU, the controls, the switches, and what might go wrong more often than others. He talked in an enthusiastic way that made me feel this was perhaps his most favorite toy. We talked like this for about 20 minutes in the inside of this multi-function shop — of payphone, accessory and prepaid phone card sales, and, phone repair, at least temporarily.

After talking to the son and his father, it is quite clear that the two has some different plans for the new phone repair shop. Xiao Zhang, the teenage phone repairer, wants to be as indepedent and as far away as possible from his parents. But his dad, who will turn 50 in a couple years, wants him to be nearby. His mom always smiles but seldom says anything.

I shall return in 1 or 2 months to see if and how their idea for the new business materializes. In October 2007 we have located more than 70 mobile phone repair shops in this migrant enclave. If Xiao Zhang can finally have his own business, that will make a nice study case to examine the complete life of a phone repair shop from when it is still in cradle.”

Over the summer I’ve noticed increasing talk of commercial open-source mobile phone ventures. What’s interesting about these ventures is they are growing out of the feedback of open-source mobile application developers. While traditionally US cell phones have been locked down by providers, there has always been a cannibalistic subset focused on cracking open the code unlocking phones for free open-source development. This is exactly the trend we all witnessed when the iPhone launched: within days developers were hard at work cracking into the depths of the iPhone source code. Out of this trend of cannibalization with the intent of distribution, a number of companies are now building commercial open-source mobile phones. In addition to Motorola offering a framework for open-source mobile phone development, the OpenMoko project is now selling two open source phones that allow users complete flexibility across networks and applications. The price of these phones is currently a bit prohibitive, but there’s a clear trend of open source development starting to emerge. Now that this once-niche form of appropriation is building towards mainstream, we’re hopeful that we’ll start to see a growth in applications and uses.

On the surface, iPhoneDevCamp had all the hallmarks of antagonistic cannibalism. Apple resisted the assault by refusing to help or provide any basic information about its product. Hackers strategically deployed themselves to “bend the iPhone to their will” and “make it do things Apple might prefer it didn’t.”

But following Paul Duguid’s insights, we might choose an alternative reading. The displayed hostility may simply be appropriation theater, agonistic rather than antagonistic. Indeed on closer examination, the DevCamp battle looks a lot like a love fest. The hackers clearly relish the challenge laid out for them by their idol, and Apple must love the attention (if only because it presumably made at least $150,000 selling $500 iPhones to 300 hackers.) The result, one suspects, will be more iPhones sold to happier hackers.

Meanwhile, the show certainly is entertaining as we watch Apple playing hard-to-get, enjoying every cannibalistic nibble from its suitors.

The first story brings a welcome tale of technological failure: This week’s “attempted London car bombings were meant to be detonated by calls to mobile phones in the two vehicles, but failed for technical reasons.” Re-making mobile phones into bomb detonators is nothing new, and constitutes perhaps the most radical illustration of technology cannibalism. The practice is antagonistic at every level – artifact, practice, and politics. The objective is -literally- to destroy the phone, the practice is hostile to the intentions and business plans of providers, and, most importantly, the resulting explosion appropriates technology toward aggressive political goals.

The second news item reports on several iPhone dissections, some more meticulous than others. Here, the stated purpose is to discover what is inside and understand what makes this new device tick. The next cannibalistic challenge will be to crack the software. As the Reuters story points out: “Opening the iPhone was the easy part. For many, the real prize is hacking the phone to get it to do things Apple never intended, such as run on networks other than that of AT&T Inc., the exclusive U.S. service provider. Some programmers also want to find a way to run their own programs directly on the phone’s operating system rather than being limited to programs run through the Web browser.”

(click on pictures for credits and additional information)

While an interesting forum for debate, this also represents what I consider to be a “viral” course of appropriation. Bookmarks were first used as an organizational tool, but as more and more consumers have come online it became a venue for passing references back and forth. Bookmarks evolved to include tagging capabilities, allowing individuals to categorized and comment on saved items. But tagging was rapidly appropriated by the blog community as a term for social commentary. Hence today we have tagging as social expression. Sites such as del.icio.us provide forums for sharing your online “identity” through the digital trace of sites you’ve visited and the associated tags.

Looking forward, online and mobile social networks offer an interesting forum for trading ideas, evolving concepts and collectively discovering new uses for existing technology, much like an everyman’s USENET group.

Eliezer Muniz, one of the project’s coordinators at USP, sends a useful summary of the context within which the project started (pasted below, with permission.) Here are some of the highlights: The first courier enterprises – many of them informal, micro-enterprises – emerged in São Paulo in the early 1980s. Within 10 years, there were 30,000 professional motorcycle messengers. Today, 160,000 of them work in that city of over 20 million people, whose traffic jams make Los Angeles seem almost bucolic. The motoboys are therefore essential to the local economy, shuttling the urgent blueprints, medicine, checks, samples, and hot pizza that keep business humming. Most couriers own their work tools: a motorcycle, a helmet, a cellphone, and a work license from the local authorities. They typically earn about $390 per month (R$760, or 2x Brazil’s minimum salary) and this is dangerous work - every day on average, one motorcyclist dies in São Paulo’s traffic.

Here is one of their videoclips (shot by Viralata on 2007-04-30) showing what it’s like to ride the corredor between traffic lanes at rush hour on Av. Paulista:

(there is a growing sub-genre of corredor-riding DIY videos from Brazil, which are reminiscent of the many stunt videos that can be found around YouTube. For the motoboys however, this isn’t only a thrill-seeking game, but an integral part of the job. How fast they get around the city directly determines how much they get paid.)

In recent years, informal pseudo-enterprises and self-employed individuals have started to compete with the more established courier services, leading to a deterioration of working conditions. In reaction, the local government has passed laws to regulate ‘moto-freight’, including punishing fines for motorcyclists riding the corredor. Motoboys, typically portrayed negatively in the media, have not had a voice in the ensuing political debate – until now. Apparently, their use of cellphones to publicly document their daily lives has allowed them to gain attention, for once yielding some sympathetic coverage in the Folha de São Paulo.

Breve história da Categoria

A profissão de motociclista – atividade remunerada que faz uso da motocicleta para execução de diversas tarefas, como entregas e retiradas de documentos, cheques, malotes, medicamentos, alimentos e todo tipo de pequeno volumes e componentes, que prescindem de certa urgência -, surge no Brasil a partir do início dos anos 80 e cresce, exponencialmente, após a Constituição de 1988, com a terceirização e o fortalecimento do setor de serviços.

As primeiras empresas de entregas rápidas, criadas para atender a demanda dos escritórios que começam a substituir seus office-boys, pelos Mensageiros motorizados, datam de 1983/84, e em menos de uma década já existiam mais de 30 (mil) Mensageiros apenas na Capital de São Paulo.

Este rápido crescimento se deve a vários fatores. Mas o principal foi uma relação custo/benefício – que reduzia os gastos trabalhistas, e otimizava os serviços das empresas contratantes (clientes) que passariam cada vez mais a utilizar este novo modo de produção -, operando assim uma modificação no mercado de trabalho, que já se orientava se pela terceirização de mão de obra de tudo que não fosse sua atividade principal.

No entanto, foi a rapidez e mobilidade da motocicleta, nas vias cada vez congestionadas das grandes cidades, que dava razão a sua utilização como alternativa de transporte e envio de mercadorias e documentos.

A explosão das vendas de motocicletas nos últimos 15 anos, com a entrada de novos motociclistas neste mercado, demonstraria que esta atividade profissional tinha vindo para ficar, é o que se espelha hoje no Brasil com seus quase 2 milhões de Profissionais Motociclistas, perfazendo as mais diversas funções, como Moto-táxistas, Mensageiros, Couriers, Deliverys, Motoboys e atividades afins, somando nas capitais dos Estados brasileiro um volume de 1 (uma) motocicleta para cada 10 (dez) automóveis, com médias anuais de venda 20%, ou seja, com cerca de a cada ano a entrada de 1.2 (milhão) novas motocicletas (Fonte: ABRACICLO),

A manutenção desde elevado índice teve uma rápida repercussão no trânsito, e, como uma nova Categoria Profissional, que ainda não tinha criado regras claras para seu mercado, surtiram efeitos catastróficos, tanto para a Saúde Pública, que precisava lidar com uma verdadeira avalanche de novas vítimas de trânsito, pelo despreparo destes novos consumidores, quanto para os “primeiros profissionais”, os mensageiros, que viam suas garantias trabalhistas se esvaindo pelo ralo de um “mercado” de pseudo-empresas de entregas rápidas, que competiam deslealmente no mercado, contratando qualquer pessoa, desde que possuísse uma motocicleta, mas não dando qualquer seguridade social.

Mas foi justamente pelo viés do Trânsito que as luzes vermelhas acenderam para por fim a esse descalabro.

Em final dos anos 90, o então prefeito de São Paulo, Sr. Celso Pitta, movido por pressão de diversos setores da sociedade buscou uma solução que, à primeira vista, parecia ser pertinente, mas que contemplava apenas a dimensão do trânsito, aprovando um Decreto, que ficou conhecido pelos motoqueiros como a “Regulamentação do moto-frete”.

Hoje, não há pessoa de bom juízo nesta cidade que não reconheça, aquilo que se constitui um dos maiores equívocos daquele Prefeito, e que ainda perdurou, nas novas e seguidas tentativas de regulamentação pelos prefeitos que o sucederam. As gestões de Marta Suplicy e José Serra, não reconheceram o erro, já que aquele Decreto embasava o seu aparato jurídico na regulamentação da frota de táxi da Capital Paulistana, e, mantiveram o mesmo artifício, ou seja, buscaram enquadrar uma Categoria Profissional, que opera um sistema de serviços privados, com todas suas especificidades, a partir de parâmetros e dispositivos legais de uma outra categoria profissional, que presta um serviço público e de fácil fiscalização, portanto, totalmente à margem de qualquer consulta aos interessados. Assim, as conseqüências foram nefastas. E os resultados podem ser observados na atualidade com os dados da Secretaria Municipal de Saúde, com um aumento de 66% de acidentes fatais nos últimos 5 anos e um alerta geral para uma calamidade pública, de vermos noticiado, todos os dias, que há uma morte de motociclista por dia na Capital, ou seja, governantes que se valem de decretos para governar, produziram mais de 380 mortes de motociclistas só no ano de 2006, segundo a Companhia de Engenharia de Trânsito – CET (Fonte: O Estado de S.Paulo, 24/04/2007).

Como afirmou recentemente o jurista Dalmo de Abreu Dallari, referindo-se a um outro decreto, que paralisou a maior universidade pública deste país: “antes de tudo, há um aspecto jurídico fundamental que torna absolutamente nulo esse decreto, por inconstitucionalidade óbvia. É regra mais que consagrada, conhecida por qualquer pessoa com razoável conhecimento jurídico, que uma lei só pode ser alterada por outra lei. Há uma hierarquia nas normas jurídicas, estando acima de todas as constitucionais, vindo depois as leis e, num terceiro nível, mais abaixo, os decretos”.

A miopia diante da complexidade dos problemas sociais, a falta de consulta a comunidade, não compreendendo todas as relações singulares de um setor da economia que é motor do crescimento, além da falta de representatividade por parte de sindicatos e associações, mas também não contando com um representante eleito na Câmara Municipal, resultou em razões que levaram a Prefeitura do Município da maior cidade do país a um impasse, pois, não até o presente momento, suas secretarias e departamentos de trânsito não conseguiram enquadrar as empresas que prestam serviço de entregas, mas, principalmente, não se teve até qualquer reconhecimento ou adesão por parte da maioria dos Profissionais Motociclistas, ao passo que processo de regulamentação dos motoboys nunca chegou aos seus termos. Levando a atual gestão – num claro sinal de falência – a transferir para a CET a responsabilidade pela fiscalização do moto-frete e uma consulta desesperada ao CONTRAN (Conselho Nacional de Trânsito), para encontrar algum dispositivo legal, na interpretação da Lei, a fim de multar as motocicletas que trafegam pelo corredor entre os carros, aplicando-as os Artigos 192, 199 e 169; o que oblitera assim o Artigo 56, do Código de Trânsito, vetado em 1998 pelo então pelo Presidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso; que retira a proibição explícita da circulação das motocicletas nos corredores entre as faixas de rolamento dos demais veículos.

Sem voz para defender seus diretos e sendo representada constantemente de modo negativo pela mídia, a Categoria dos Profissionais Motociclistas, – que somam hoje mais de 160 (mil) profissionais em São Paulo, e é composta em sua maioria por pais de família, ganhando em média 2 salários mínimos líquidos e detém o modo de produção dos seus serviços como a moto, o celular, o capacete e o Alvará da prefeitura – se vê hoje mobilizada para sanar esta crise. Este movimento constituiu-se a partir de um projeto artístico, coordenado pelo artista espanhol Antoni Abad, que passou recentemente pelo Brasil e está sediado no Centro Cultural São Paulo na rua Vergueiro 1.000, mas pode ser acessado pelo site na internet www.zexe.net , onde 12 motoboys transmitem de celulares com câmeras integradas, ligados a internet, onde narram suas vidas – mas também tornam-se assim porta vozes de sua Categoria. Este Projeto, que já vem sendo realizado em diversas cidades do mundo, com comunidades em dificuldades muito parecidas com as dos motoboys de São Paulo, procura estabelecer uma nova sociabilidade com a coletividade, oferecendo uma forma inédita de auto-representação, dando autonomia ao grupo participante – que se organiza em torno das questões mais significativas para a classe -, expondo suas contradições, mas também, uma procurando abrir um diálogo com a Sociedade, promovendo a busca constante de soluções para seus problemas. É nesse sentido, das reuniões que os motociclistas que vieram participando, com o apoio deste artista e em conjunto com o Centro Cultural São Paulo, foi formulada a proposição de um Ciclo de Debates e filmes, onde contamos com a presença de diversos especialistas, personalidades, representantes de classe e do poder público, com apenas uma finalidade, fazer uma profunda reflexão sobre os problemas e causas do “fenômeno dos motoboys” na cidade de São Paulo. Assim, após tratarmos de temas como Arte pública, Política e Trabalho, estaremos encerrando neste sábado 23/06/2207, no Auditório Freitas Nobre, na Câmara Municipal de São Paulo, este Ciclo de Debates com uma Audiência Publica, para debater sobre os possíveis destinos desta categoria. Portanto, convocamos todos os cidadãos paulistanos a debater uma nova Legislação para normalizar e legitimar esta Profissão, mas também procurando encontrar nas suas razões um encaminhamento para sua definitiva organização.

This particular appropriation mode, in which users follow the script laid out for them by suppliers, echoes a well-trodden cultural appropriation practice: baroque infiltration. During the colonization of Latin America, the Roman Catholic church was eager for local people to make the Catholic religion their own. To nurture the process, repeating a strategy used in Europe during the counter-reformation, Rome left spaces open on its monuments and in its ceremonies. Thus, the invaders set forth opportunities for the invaded to state their presence, infiltrate their messages, suggest their cosmovisions. Such “baroque infiltration”, Rome reasoned, would allow indigenous people to appropriate European culture and religion, but to do so safely, according to Rome’s own blueprint. In The Buried Mirror, Carlos Fuentes describes the results of this appropriation practice in the creations of José Kondori, the Quechua architect who built “the magnificent churches of Potosí, undoubtedly the most brilliant illustration of the meaning of the baroque in Latin America”.

“Among the angels and the vines of the façade of San Lorenzo, an Indian princess appears, and all the symbols of the defeated Incan culture are given a new lease on life. The Indian half-moon disturbs the traditional serenity of the Corinthian vine. American jungle leaves and Mediterranean clover intertwine. The sirens of Ulysses play the Peruvian guitar. And the flora, the fauna, the music, and even the sun of the ancient Indian world are forcefully asserted. There shall be no European culture in the New World unless all of these, our native symbols, are admitted on an equal footing.”
Carlos Fuentes (1999) The Buried Mirror – Reflections on Spain and the New World, Houghton Mifflin. p.196 (*)

Of course, Rome was perhaps naïve to think the locals would remain docile and stop there. Fuentes, along with others such as José Lezama Lima, go on to describe how baroque practices can overtake the very objects they infiltrate. Natives, Africans and criollos in Latin America learned to create a baroque within the baroque, appropriating the process itself into an art of contraconquista. This is a story for another day…

For the moment, we simply want to point out the striking parallel between “baroque infiltration” and the business strategies through which technology suppliers lay out a script for users to re-make their products. There is no good verb in English to describe the resulting user practice – personalize, fill-in, infiltrate, decorate, layer… each captures a dimension of the process but not its essence. So, we need to coin a new verb:

to baroquize (v.t.) = to re-make into one’s own, following an appropriation script proposed by the provider.

While “baroquize” doesn’t yet exist in English, we feel encouraged to proceed by our readers’ comments, who point out that barroquisar, barroquizar, and baroquiser do exist in Portuguese, Spanish and French. It must have been an oversight.

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(*) “Pues entre los ángeles y las viñas de la fachada de San Lorenzo, aparece una princesa incásica, con todos los símbolos de su cultura derrotada animados por una nueva promesa de vida. La media luna indígena agota la tradicional serenidad de la viña corintia, el follaje de la selva americana y el trébol mediterráneo se entrelazan. Las sirenas de Ulises tocan la guitarra peruana. Y la flora, la fauna, la música e incluso el sol del antiguo mundo indígena, se reafirman con fuerza. No habría cultura europea en el Nuevo Mundo a menos que éstos, nuestros símbolos nativos, sean admitidos en pie de igualdad.” (Carlos Fuentes, El Espejo Enterrado p. 282)