Geetha Narayanan: Teaching Social Implications of Technoloy
Banagalore, December 2008: In 2003, in a Nokia design workshop on designing tools for children and their grandparents, I meet Geetha Narayanan. Geetha has an impressive presence around her even though she did not speak up in the first part of the workshop.
Banagalore, December 2008: In 2003, in a Nokia design workshop on designing tools for children and their grandparents, I meet Geetha Narayanan. Geetha has an impressive presence around her even though she did not speak up in the first part of the workshop.
Then, when we were discussing the life of older people and in particular that most older people in Europe seem to be women since men die earlier, she took the floor. She explained that this was very different in India, where most women die earlier than men, because in the families women are the last to eat what is left over after the rest of the family is done. Therefore they can be underfed for many years and die earlier because of this. The way she told this shocking story made an imprint on my mind. Later, when visiting the yearly graduate show of Srishti, I was impressed with the rigor and imagination of the work of the students and realized Geetha Narayanan was the woman who made all this happen. When embarking on the current research I was keen to have an opportunity to talk to Geetha Narayanan since her experience and clear insights in creating learning environments, in which on- and offline witnessing plays a crucial role as well, may shed a light on my questions from the perspective of learning, which is part of adaptation and social engineering processes. Also she has lived through several flows of technological innovation being at the forefront of the developments and in close contact with students, who take the world as they find it as a given and run with it the best they can. Narayanan’s sensitivity for women’s lives, positions and capacities is a true contribution for this research.
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Read the interview here
Geetha Narayanan has lived in Bangalore since the 50’s and has witnessed how public funding in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s made Bangalore India’s technology and engineering centre. In those days it was a city of hope. In the 90’ s, with an industry already there, Bangalore became India’s Silicon Valley. However, Narayanan argues, IT is built on a short-term vision and now with the change in the current financial market it has to be seen whether the city of Bangalore can actually sustain itself.
The way people want use technology in India and the way they connect with each other and the things that they actually do with it, are not necessarily the same as the way that people in the West use technology. Texting of course has taken over many people’s lives, but texting does not reach those who are not literate. People who can’t read and write, can’t text. Therefore, Narayanan suggests, voice and the voiceover IP and others will actually have a far greater impact than is expected even today. Also for India it is not about needing lots of technology, but about being able to use the right technology.
In the lived practice in the homes grandmothers have taught to be very careful with materials and this attitude is still reflected in many homes. However today the upper middle class students of Srishti have a different relationship with material. The students are very much in the ‘check’ attitude, and use mostly packaged goods. On the streets of India however, the relationship with material is extremely witty and conscious. Everything is recycled and everything is re-used. In communities the use of technology is mostly creative and communicative. The elite sector which is geared towards going up the social ladder, is focused on personal assets: personal memories, life blogs and pictures. People at the bottom of the pyramid however are looking for sharing, connecting, collaborating, creating ‘oneness to go forward’ as it is said in Karnataka. The use of technology in the bottom segment is critically different from the elite.