Gauravonomics Blog

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Even as I’m painfully aware of the myth of leapfrogging, I’m endlessly fascinated by how young people in urban India have embraced mobile phones.

I have been able to persuade new friend Priyanka Matanhelia to blog about the findings of her doctoral research on mobile phone usage amongst Indian youth and she is off to a quick start.

Consider her post on SMS romance in India where she references some interesting sources like the 2002 Asia Times story titled “India’s Love Affair with Hi-Tech Flirting” and the 2002 India Today story titled “Love, Sex and SMS” —

In most cases, hi-tech flirting - often punctuated with smileys and winking ‘emoticons’ - is a private display of affection. You can hear them in pubs, meetings, seminars, fashion shows, sit-down dinners, drawing rooms, even in bedrooms. The buzz of the SMS has become an omnipresent, everyday rhythm, sometimes the secretive smiles giving away the frenzied exchanges between couples even as they sit in the same room watching a fashion show or attending a corporate conference. Some users confess that they spend a good part of the night making SMS love. It is indicative of a paradigm shift in personal communication among Indians, for many of whom explicit talk about love and sex is restrained by conscious cultural reminders, but continues to simmer inside.

From Gapingvoid

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I have been thinking about honesty today.

First, my daily horoscope advised me to be honest but not too honest -

You may be tired of always being the one to tell it like it is, even when you know someone else doesn’t want to hear the truth. In time your honesty will be appreciated, but you must be careful about overstating your case. Avoid self righteousness and others will be more likely to join your cause.

- and then, I read Po Bronson’s take on how we are increasingly relying on technology to be honest -

We need an excuse, it seems, more and more. We need a way to soften difficult conversations. We need some way of introducing ourselves to strangers, and we need a way to complain, and we need a way to be brutally honest. New technology (caller ID, voicemail, email, SMS, Tivo) happens to be very good at filling this need. We rely on it, more and more, to assist in a variety of difficult conversations.

Bronson also explains why we do it -