Fascinating story about Jan Chipchase, user anthropologists at Nokia in the New York Times. A man with the dream job for for anybody interested in human centered design and travel. Younghee Jung has a complementary blogpost detailing their experiences in and Chongqing, Dharavi, Jacarezinho and Buduburam

Fixed identity

A key point in the story is how cellular phone numbers provide a fixed piece of identity for people in societies where many things are usually unclear and people are on the move.

Having a call-back number, Chipchase likes to say, is having a fixed identity point, which, inside of populations that are constantly on the move — displaced by war, floods, drought or faltering economies — can be immensely valuable both as a means of keeping in touch with home communities and as a business tool.

This is pointed out as a good thing enabling people in developing countries to have the same Just In Time moments as we here have been used to for a while. We generally use them to organize meetings more efficiently and it increases our effectivity and up to dateness.
The kind of information people lower on the pyramid need to exchange is usually much more vital and so of a larger relative worth. Access to that information leads to direct and large increases in their income, wellbeing and general control of their lives. The article is packed with examples and numbers.

Virtualized SIM

Many people use their fixed identity as an enabler for transactions, but for certain transactions a requirement could be the ability to shed your identity easily, take a new name and move shop to a different place.

For instance for the prostitutes advertised in cell phone booths around the world from the article:

The prostitute ads in the Brazilian phone booth? Those are just names, probably fake names, coupled with real cellphone numbers — lending to Chipchase’s theory that in an increasingly transitory world, the cellphone is becoming the one fixed piece of our identity.

Those people do not want a fixed identity that is traceable to a single account. A combination of the anonymity of the pay phone and the freedom of the cellular phone may be useful. Maybe not only for illicit purposes, but also for people who do not want to be tied to a single telco or need some other increased flexibility.

Innovations that help people take on multiple mobile identities are already springing up with multi-band multi-SIM phones, not only for business travellers but also used by residents of developing countries where plans have large disparities for different use cases.

This makes you wonder if the whole concept of the SIM-card, the modern day passport of the mobile citizen could not be completely virtualized. Instead of a phone with multiple SIMs inside, it could contain a virtual SIM driver that communicates with a server and retrieves appropriate SIM images as needed by usage, location an cost efficiency.

Fortunately this is not going to be necessary because freedom is being effectuated by flat rate data plans and VOIP clients on various phones (see for instance Fring). But I’m still waiting for the moment that I can buy a generic device and get a simple plan to connect it to the cloud wherever, whenever.