In Myanmar, display and usage behavior around landline phones is that
for both privacy purposes and to spread awareness of the service the
usual practice is to keep phones on a separate table outside of the
managing retail space, creating a separate "phone area." As with other
electronic instruments in this rainy and resource constrained
environment, phones come with their own standards of protection for
the object from the elements.
This particular desk sits in front of an internet cafe, a space with
which the phones on top of it share a communication function with the
computers within the store. With the advent of Skype, Google Phone,
and other VoIP services, acoustic intrusion from one set of users to
the other seems unlikely. Whether on the phone or using the computer
as a phone, you will always be in earshot of a possibly private
conversation, although computers are superior to phones for
conversations of this nature as the more sensitive elements can be
communicated through text in the chat windows accompanying some of
these calling applications.
When I first noticed these phones, I was interested mostly in the
approach this net cafe has taken to protection of their hardware
through the use of particularly colorful and attention-grabbing means.
While another shop chose to repurpose a transparent document storage
envelope to protect their phones (the other photograph) - perhaps more
securely than cloth - the nature of the protective cloth itself has
the potential to draw the attention of passerby in a way that the shop
using transparent covers does not. Do phone (and other object)
protection solutions in this resource-constrained context sit along a
continuum of functionality at one end and attention
grabbing/attractive at the other? How do standards for protection and
display differ between an object whose service is being advertised to
passerby versus one where use is reserved for employees?
