1 post tagged “connection”
I just blogged about my new mobile laptop, a Lenovo Ideapad s10. Buying the notebook as part of my desire to become more mobile for the year of 2009 has got me thinking about this relationship of mobility and the technologies that make a mobile lifestyle possible.
This will the first entry of a series of three posts on Mobility and Tools. This entry is about our mobile tools as a modern reinterpretation of the purse or hand-clutch. The next post in this series will be about how mobile tools can enrich the consumer experience of clothing shopping and finally the final post will be about the relationship between the size of mobile tools and gender norms.
This series will also be the first entries on my new blog, Cultural
Bytes, that I am launching in 2009. Cultural Bytes is where I will comment on the cultural
aspects of technology use from a theoretical and practical point of
view, highlight research that values cultural knowledge and practice
in technology research, and use my research and work experience as case
studies. So stay tuned! For now I will but these posts on mobility
right here on hi tricia!
Post 1 of 3 on Mobility Series: Why Lenovo s10 is a modern reinterpretation of the purse-clutch
There's something culturally innovative about the new stylish netbooks on the market. If you don't know what I am referring to, check out hp's collaboration with fashion designer, Vivenne Tam (the photos below of the woman in a black dress carrying the clutch is actually an hp laptop that tam designed) , or the Lenovo s10 that I just bought. These netbooks embody the notion that objects should become deeply integrated into the socio-cultural context in which the object is actually used.
The beauty of the Lenovo s10 or tam's hp is that it is examplerary of how a popular technological object can balance the symbolic and pragmatic demands of an everyday tool. This is the exact innovation behind Post-its - and the same can be argued for netbooks. Post-it's took the idea of writing, noting, jotting to a whole new level by integrating its innovative design and technology (3M stickiness what what!) into the everyday.
When I started carrying around my Lenovo s10 this past weekend, I realized that i so badly wanted to put a chain on it and carry it around like my hand clutch! If you know me well, you know that I am obsesed with purses, in particular small, mobile, fashionable purses - the exact words I would use to describe the new Lenovo s10 - small, mobile, and fashionable. A balance of symbolic status and pragmaticism are the qualities of the modern purse - seems like the Lenovo s10 could be a play on this idea!
Symbolic boundary
The purse is a symbolic boundary between the person and the world, much like the laptop. And technically, you can only connect to the world through a laptop (email, skype, internet and etc). The things inside your purse (or wallet) connect you to the world, your driver's licence, passport, cash, credit cards, photos, cellphone, and keys to your car. If you think about it, all the things in our purses/wallets are reproduced on our laptops in some shape! You access your online back account through your laptop with a password key - this isn't too far from the your house key that gives you access to all the things you own. The photos in your wallet are in your iphoto/flickr or picasa album. The levels of comparison are endless!
Value
We are making a statement about what we find to be valuable when we decide to put something in our wallet or purse. We are saying that these possessions are so important to me that these things need to be close to my body and within arms reach. In a world of mobility and virtuality the body doesn't lose its importance - if anything it gains importance in new ways. Ultimately it is still mediating all the communication and doing so in a very physical way. The cross-over quality of netbooks is that they can be held against the body comfortably - comfortable is the key here. You can hold a heavy 4.5-6lbs apple laptop that looks beautiful - but with it being so heavy it's really not mobile! At the end of the day, a useful purse is a mobile purse - it goes with
the owner and is an extension of her/his body. It's a utiliarian
statement that says "these things need to be with me constantly when I
am outside of the house."
Status
The purse symbolizes the carrier's status - it is a public statement that one is taking the things they own, putting them into a purse, and carrying all of in this external, untransparent shell outside the private home. The purse is signals to potential things inside - expensive purses signal to expensive things - same thing with our tech tools. Laptops symbolize who you are, what you own, and where you are
going. When used in public, one can extrapolate a lot of information
about a person from the way they use their laptop, from the case they
carry it in, to icons to documets on their desktop to
the decorations on the laptop and to the additional accessories for the
laptop and etc.
"What you put in your bag is very important to you. That makes a bag very personal because in it you have a secret. A secret gives you some sort of power," says Farid Chenounne of Carried Away: All About Bags. A purse carries financial capital and also points to the social and cultural capital of the carrier - and again the laptop does the same. The laptop itself speaks to the finances of the owner and indicates the owner's social and cultural capital. How many times have you noticed someone's laptop in public, such as at the airport or at a coffee shop? Did you see stickers on their laptop cover? Did they have a special case? A special mouse? All these things speak to the public display of status in the tools we use. It's the same thing as in suburbia when neighbors check out each other lawn mowers (I think this is what people do in suburbia) - whenever we have bring somthing into the public, it takes on a voice of its own and symbolizes parts of "you."
Design Catch Up
Netbook and Purse-Clutch-Wristelet designers have some major catching up to do with each other. Netbook designers need to pay more attention to the design of clutches as mobile purses, and purse designers need to design more fashionable clutches that accomodate a netbook along with a tube of lipstick, business cards, and cellphone.
What I see my Lenovo s10 being most akin to, is the wristlet. I LOVE wristlets! In nyc, wristlets make the perfect wallet to put inside a bigger purse so that for your night parties you check your day purse and carry your wristlet around as you schmooze.
So I conducted a little experiment and took out some of my favorite wristelets and did a visual comparison with my Lenovo s10. As you can see from these pictures, none of the wristlets I tried to put on the Lenovo worked out. And it only barley fit in my doggy purse and it was definitely contorting the dog's body - I know a doggy purse doesn't count as a wristlet but I just had to try it out!
So the next phase of netbooks can further explore the balance in symbolic status and pragmatics of the equipment, while at the same time considering how the object can more closely mirror the clutch/wristlet. With a netboook, carrying around a laptop without a backpack becomes a possibility. Well and really who wants to carry around a backpack - it's so ugly - but even I've resorted to using backpacks after backpain of carrying around a heavy macbook - well surely a backpack is one of the most unsexy and unfashionable carrying devices ever! Not digging the external hump on my back..
The design and use properties of a successful mobile tools must be integradable into the specific socio-cultural context of usage. The culture of purse carrying (value, status, fashion, symbolic boundary) is a critical factor to understand for anyone developing mobile tools.
