I recognize that recommending a TED video is one of the slam-dunks of blogging, up there in taking-the-easy-way-out with pointing a friend to someecards for a laugh. But that’s not going to stop me from linking anyway. After all, I’m sure there are many of you out there who haven’t watched even one TED talk yet. Prepare to change that statistic.

This particular talk is by Jan Chipchase, principal researcher at Nokia, and is titled, Our Cell Phones, Ourselves. He’s got a pretty sweet gig. He travels around the world, observing people and their use of mobile phones, amongst other individual and social behaviors.

Listening music on my cell phone

I always find it valuable to be reminded that adoption of a given technology globally does not necessarily occur fit the same pattern as in developed nations, much less the US.

For example, listen to the story about African makeshift “banking” via mobile phones. Would we call sending money in this manner a “wireless transfer”?