Important That You Bury People With It

The current issue of Fortune (September 27, 2010) has an article on what I think is a great area of study - - cultural anthropology. The article, Intel's Cultural Anthropologist: Genevieve Bell helps the chipmaker analyze a complex system - - humanity. Bell has the cool sounding title of "Director of Interaction and Experience Research." She basically helps Intel's engineers with right brain issues - - helping the chipmaker power new devices, make new software, and enter new markets by providing its technologists with a better understanding of how people all over the world use computers, phones, and other gadgets.

Engineers, especially those that design products where high technology and people interface, need a better understanding or appreciation for the basic concepts of anthropology and ethnology. Pick up a book on the current research on cultural anthropology or take a class on ethnology. Think and reflect on the intersection of technology and humanity. Next time at the mall, just watch people and crowds - - is technology changing us or do we choose to be changed by it? Consider Bell's observations on her many global field trips:

She recounts meeting a Muslim boy in Kuala Lumpur who used his phone to orient him toward Mecca for prayer. She relates the story of coming across a ceremonial store in a city in Malaysia that had paper facsimiles of the latest cellphones. The paper models were burned so that dead relatives could talk to each other in the afterlife. "Technology is starting to manifest itself in every part of our lives," Bell says. "Not just at work and home but in religious practices, our love lives, and how we keep our secrets."

The words "stickiness" and "additive" are terms that accurately describe are individual and collective connectedness to technology. Bell has a very broad view of "stickiness" - -

If you do it right, if you make the thing in such a way that people love it, it will be part of everything," Bell says . It sounds macabre, but it has to be so important that you bury people with it.