Mobile Phone and the Crafts Person
Written on September 1st, 2009 by AnuragPhones have been with us since long. Now every school, college going kid is carrying one. Phones have changed our ways of communicating. Though I have often contemplated how having a conversation over the phone with my weaver never gets the design methodology/ implementation through. He just doesn’t understand over the phone!
Each one of us have our handicaps, but this is a handicap and is not at the same time. I can get my weaver to understand the urgency over the phone without travelling a 100 kms, but at the same time he will never make what I want him to. I may be communicating incorrectly but I have tried this little trick
I wrote down my instructions and said them over the phone. I then had to of course go and tell him in person. This I did with the same set of written instructions. This worked like a miracle and he understood. Now barriers are many and we need to overcome them. Solutions need to be found so that we aren’t restricted by our own or others handicaps. I decided to play another trick on my unsuspecting weaver.
I decided to break my set of instructions through sms’s. My weaver detests sms as his English is limited. Surprisingly this worked very well. The instruction was given in a single line. This he read and made another person read as well. This was interpreted and discussed and then they reached the correct conclusion.
The phone surprises me each time. All the while I was struggling to communicate with my weaver he has been accessing all the latest cricket uploads and has been almost busy being the first one to announce the latest score in the unit while others were still trying to listen hard on their radio over the rattle and hum of the looms.
Why cant they get to use their phone for their work?
How often have I asked myself – simple access to information of yarn – availability, rates would make life so much simpler. Each time it is such a struggle to find out where to sell the yarn what if there was some sort of a network that would enable information of availability of whatever surpluses each person had. What a fantastic timely use of material this would be. Our country masters the art of recycle and reuse. We are always looking to cut costs and get the best price in the optimum time. Traders no longer send people to find out where a certain material is available. They just make a few phone calls. What if we just had real time access to such information.
Another idea I love to play with is the thought that an sms would just speak to you like a voice mail – this would enable the uninitiated, the illiterate to use their phones so easily. Most of the time phones aren’t being used other than for calling because the people using them cannot read. This would revolutionise the use of the phones. What if my spinner who only understands hindi would get a voice recorded message telling her about wool available for cheap in the area. Or my weaver gets a voice message in Tamil about sisal yarn rate. Wouldn’t life change – they would make a few phone calls and get the material to make a better priced product –the cost of storage would convert into profits for someone else.
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