13poverty-cellphones
"The street finds its own uses for things." Cellphones and cellphone components were formerly restricted to a high-spending demographic. They transitioned toward mass proletarian usage faster than any electronic tech in history.
Here cellphone gear of dubious provenance is being retailed by a Turinese street-vendor of dubious residential legality. It may seem odd to see the migrant underclass brimming-over with "high" technology, but that's an artifact of a 20th-century model of technological diffusion.
The conceptual twin to this photo would be some "trickle-up" technology, for instance, Wall Street bankers using M-Pesa cellphone payment systems pioneered in Kenya.
How "atemporal" is this image? That perception depends on historical models of class-relations. If class is considered sacrosanct, then this is radically atemporal. Whereas, if "class" is supposedly dissolved in a globalized flat-world, then one would be hard put to notice this spectacle.
13poverty-cellphones
"The street finds its own uses for things." Cellphones and cellphone components were formerly restricted to a high-spending demographic. They transitioned toward mass proletarian usage faster than any electronic tech in history.
Here cellphone gear of dubious provenance is being retailed by a Turinese street-vendor of dubious residential legality. It may seem odd to see the migrant underclass brimming-over with "high" technology, but that's an artifact of a 20th-century model of technological diffusion.
The conceptual twin to this photo would be some "trickle-up" technology, for instance, Wall Street bankers using M-Pesa cellphone payment systems pioneered in Kenya.
How "atemporal" is this image? That perception depends on historical models of class-relations. If class is considered sacrosanct, then this is radically atemporal. Whereas, if "class" is supposedly dissolved in a globalized flat-world, then one would be hard put to notice this spectacle.