How technology is shaping society

Mobile phones aid in romance in modern India

Carolyn Wei, a dcotoral student at University of Washington, conducted a study (Link to the post about it is here) about how mobile phone  facilitates relationship maintenance in India. An interesting finding is the use of mobile phone for maintaining contact between to be bride and groom before marriage and after engagement. India, where most marriages are still arranged, and tradition does not permit contact between bride and girl, cell phone is being used as a tool to maintain virtual contact. Few interesting findings-

1. In arranged marriages: A young man was given some time alone with a prospective bride-to-be and he had one question for her: "What is your mobile number?"
2. Between working couples: One research participant often called or sent text messages to his wife, also living in Bangalore. If he lost his mobile phone he would be scared, he said, not because he had lost a phone but because he had lost this connection with his wife.
3. Traditional etiquette: Indian mobile phone companies typically bill the person making the call. Men will occasionally ignore or hang up on a girlfriend and then call her right back, a modern instance of picking up the tab.
4. Domestic spats: One partner might deliberately ignore calls to punish the other, or one might become angry when the other wasn't answering. In one instance a participant threatened his partner that he would not answer her calls for a month.

Wow! the last finding is really interesting! Threatening not to pick up calls! I wonder what kind of incentives would carriers provide for calming down such a person, so he/she starts answering the calls!

And perhaps #3 still has some male chauvinism factor in it.

However, the point I have is that the social norms for arranged marriages are also loosening up, and the effects of this will be felt in coming years, including greater understanding between couples after marriage.

Internet Bandwidth still not cheaper than Station Wagon?

This is an interesting analysis of how transferring large amounts of data is still cheaper to send by FedEx versus sending it over Internet.
Does that mean NetFlix's business model of movies by mail will still be a good business model?

Telemarketing Forcing India to implement DNC registry

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, according to this post, is promising an Indian Do Not Call registry for Mobile Phones.

DNC registry in USA did make difference in number of calls received by average home owner, if you register. Now, the registration process is simple in US, where one can go to the federal government website and register the number on which they do not want to receive telemarketing calls. If the people do not have access to Internet, they can call  a toll-free number. The problem is how to know that toll-free number. When you go buy a service, the provider does not tell you about that number proactively. I like the TRAI approach that you just tell the service provider and they will have to take care of it. I also like the fact that one can ask for blanket ban or selective service bans.

I think the mobile telephone carriers can implement such a service, where the end subscribers can list the types of telemarket calls they want. That would be positive call list. Of course the operators would do other way round, where they would implement negative call lists and then justify any calls received as not in the one of the blocked categories.

We also need similar service for SMS, where no unsolicited SMS can be sent. Lets call it DNS (Do Not SMS, not Domain Name System).

However, at the end of the day, this problem can not be solved, unless the call screening is in the phone itself, where the end subscriber somehow can see all the details of the caller (name, company name, address, what service does that company provide, how much would that call will cost me etc.). But, that might not be practical.