There has been a lot of hype recently about the “mobile revolution” taking place especially in the poorer parts of the world. India alone added some 76 million mobile phone subscriptions in 2006, a lot of it in its smaller cities and rural areas. Africa, considered often the poorest part of the planet, now has, according to some estimates, 100 million mobile phone users - that is: every ninth person on the continent now sports a mobile phone in one form or another, connecting regions that don’t even have electricity or normal landlines.

What fascinates me about this rapid escalation of mobile phones especially in the poorer regions of the planet is that it becomes rapidly appropriated to accomodate to the local conditions. The problem with many of our understandings of modern technology comes from the fact that we - as a part of the global information elite located in the cushier sides of the digital divide - have been accustomed to seeing the world through the prism of our broadband, blogs, Second Life, IM, email, Twitters, Jaikus, Internet-mobile convergence etc. Because of this, we have a hard time to imagine how, for instance, mobile phone use changes drastically when there is no steady electricity (in Africa, entrepreneurs have come up with car battery-operated charging stations on motorbikes) or proper infrastructure (cross-national trade now is being done in Kenya by sending paid airtime as a viable currency for payment).

Therefore, reading Jonathan Donner’s research into the use of mobile phones in sub-Saharan Africa is like pressing the refresh button on the browser. Donner argues that in Rwanda, “beeping” has emerged as a mainstream activity as a way of staying connected with each other. Basically, what this means is that instead of paying for the call, the ringtone of the phone acquires a pre-texted (ignore the pun!) meaning for the receiver, acting sort of like simplistic morse code that is sent according to an evolving sender-receiver feedback loop. Donner writes:

Beeping is simple: a person calls a mobile telephone number and then hangs up before the mobile’s owner can pick up the call. If the beeper’s name and number have been programmed into the recipient’s mobile, then the recipient will see the beeper’s name on the call log as a missed call. If not, the recipient will see only the number of telephone placing the call. In either case, the missed call is intentional; the beeper has sent a signal to the recipient without saying a word or typing a single character. Better yet, sending a beep is nearly free.

As these examples from the popular press suggest, “to beep” and its synonym “to flash” are common practices among the rapidly growing ranks of mobile phone users in sub-Saharan Africa:

• A lighthearted book, called How to Be a Kenyan, was originally published in 1996. The revised 2002 edition includes a new chapter called “of beepers, flashers, and vibrators” (Mutahi, 2002), reflecting the rapid spread of mobiles in Kenya.
• A columnist in Uganda writes: “I was angry with my so-called friends who ‘beep’ me all the time – blackmailing me into calling them back….I can understand someone beeping me once and a while. My problem is that so many Ugandans – from MPs to senior military officers and at least one government minister – have turned beeping into a profession. And, they never seem to realize that if they perennially don’t have “units” or airtime to complete a call, it must be the same for me too” (Pajero, 2004).
• In an article called “That Beeping”, a Tanzanian columnist explains, “beeping is a habit that transcends all social classes,” perhaps because “phones are cheaper to buy than to maintain”. His conversations with college students also suggest that “beeping is a modern fashion to say hi to friends” (Kalagho, 2004).
• On the GhanaHomePage website, expatriate columnist Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng describes his difficulties learning “Efie Nkomo (Flashing Skills)” as a returning visitor to his country. “I got loads of flashes on my phone in the days following my arrival. So many, dear reader, that I almost got blinded by them” (Nkrumah-Boateng, 2004).

As Nkrumah-Boateng succinctly puts it, “it can get confusing, all this flashing businesses”. Not all beeps mean the same thing. Some are requests to call back; some are little signals that the beeper is thinking of the recipient; others convey some pre-negotiated instrumental message, like “I’m done with my work, pick me up”.

Read the full essay HERE. So for us interested in the future media, I think it is sometimes necessary to step offline and outside our e-skins to see how the rest of the world is busy hacking the new techonologies for their purposes. The biggest problem I think that currently exists with the web 2.0 social software mobile etc is that the community that produces the tools and applications is closing in on itself, sharing the language, the desires, the lifestyles and the ways of using technology. Whereas most innovation happens when something unexpected is created and brought to the world - when “the difference that makes a difference” is produced. So the question is: how to break “outside” this? How to see what we are not habitually accustomed to seeing?

Perhaps, we should worry less about the latest trends in technology and backpack through Africa for 6 months and listen to people hacking the tools in order to make life better. Get lost on a train in India, hike in the mountains, and go offline for a month. It is (t)here where the future is being developed in unexpected ways .