week 3 // CH5 You are what you carry.

In the TED talk, The Anthropology of Mobile Phones, Jan Chipchase talked about how in pretty much all cultures people carry three things and they were keys, money, and a cell phone. He mentioned how they all are tools used for survival and mentioned how so. Money being a source of getting food, keys giving people access to shelter as well phones cutting out the middleman when it came to tasks that a smartphone could undertake. He also explored his thoughts on the future of culture and other things, touching on the importance of cellphones in connection with culture, innovation and design.

He also questions delegation, delegating roles to not only other humans but technology too. Then the different roles cell phones comes in. Nowadays our cell phones are the embodiment of most of our current spiritual and functional purposes. I think that will represent parts of our personality as well as serve as a way to preserve our culture. With all the information that the internet can hold and the constant improvement of technology, it’s only a matter of time before cell phones replace many of the forums we use to do everyday errands. Jan’s ability to touch on how identity has been related to traditions, norms and other things was imperative to proving how technology is making its way into culture and how it effects it.