China and the next billion customers
The second article in Vodafone’s newly updated Receiver Magazine is about China and the next billion customers.
Author Jared Braiterman seeks to understand mobile phones play in China’s fast-paced development and explores why China become a centre of passionate technology usage.
Braiterman claims there are two cultural explanations for the intensity with which the Chinese have adopted the internet and, even more so, mobile phones: the single child policy of nearly thirty years, and the dearth of communication and entertainment alternatives.
Jared Braiterman is a Harvard and Stanford-trained anthropologist (PhD 1996) who has worked for twelve years as a human technology consultant and educator in Silicon Valley, Europe, Asia and the Americas. With his San Francisco-based research and creative studio Giant Ant he recently led a public research study on youth culture and technology called “Mobile China”. Now in its fourth year, the project has examined mobile phones, virtual life and mixed reality in the world’s biggest emerging market.
