“Movement” is one word that’s generally accepted as one defining characteristic of Brazilian life. But movement doesn’t mean mobility. Not necessarily. Not entirely. Mobility, as the computing industry usually means, refers to the exception – staying connected even while away you’re your home or office base. Suppose daily life is the opposite. Suppose alone, at home, with your immediate family, for longish periods of time was not the norm, but that being out, seeing and talking with others, living in extended household units of family and friends, and generally not sitting was more the norm. Suppose you could walk out your front door and still be in your “family room”. None of these appellations is correct, but they’re closer to understanding Brazilian daily life than starting with the concept of a home office.
This is especially so of the non-professional, non-wealthy social classes. Brazilians themselves refer to their social strata in terms of A, B, C, D, & E classes. While we were with a wide range of people, we focus here on the C & D classes.
Let’s start with the weather: It’s hot. It’s really hot. And that’s on a cool day. The one place you don’t want to be is in a hot upstairs room, paint peeling from the durable and prolonged heat, alone, sweating on your PC – especially when everyone else is either watching TV in the largest room of the home (with potential for a fan or open, breezier windows) or is outside, talking, playing, strolling, working or perhaps, if more fortunate, at the beach.
In fact – and it does almost sound cliché - but one “cultural ideal” is to be at the beach. Consider “Lara”, who lives in a favela on the North side of Rio. Favelas are parts of the city where people have simply settled on public land and built homes. At first they had shacks, but over time they evolve into more permanent structures, gain permanence and access to “the grid” and associated services like phone, sewage, water, etc. People who live in favelas are pretty much in the D & E classes in Brazil.
Lara is the computer teacher in this favela’s community center. The computers (used donations) were provided by CDI (Center for the Democraticization of Information), a charitable organization in Brazil. We visited Lara at the end of February, 2002. Because of her job teaching the computer class, Lara said she saved her money and bought a computer for her daughter. But she hadn’t set it up yet – two months later -- because, as she reported, there wasn’t enough time. She works 6 days a week and on Sundays she goes to the beach – taking three busses and stopping at her Mother’s on the way to eat and to travel together. She doesn’t go every day as many A and B class people might, but she works hard to go once a week. But there wasn’t enough time to set up her computer, a computer that was an effort to afford.
This isn’t uncommon. Almost all of our respondents freely expressed their desire to go to the beach with any free time and or opportunity they might have. One reason is that the beach in Brazil isn’t what Americans might typically think of as the beach. And though I simply do not know nearly enough to really describe “the beach” let me offer a few observations that I hope will give you a feel for the vibrancy, the attraction – indeed, the “movement” – of the beach and the reason that “beach” is a cultural ideal for Brazilians.
The ideal beach is packed with people. The beach is the place where practitioners celebrate the new year with offering to Iemanja, the Goddess of salt water, and a major figure in Brazil. The beach is the place where some mothers with babies gather in the mornings before lunch. Gay people used to gather near Post 9. It’s not a place to lie down and rest. It’s a place where things happen. In fact, almost everywhere outside of your house is a place where things happen.
We spent two hours on the beach on a Sunday afternoon. Not far from us, the police chased an unlicensed vendor onto the beach, the beach goers booed the police for even coming on the beach, the police took their big guns out, the people booed more and continued booing and then cheered when the police gave up the chase. Meanwhile, the “rescue” helicopter periodically passed by and hovered once on a false alarm of a distressed swimmer. The beer man appeared periodically to offer me yet another beer, while the “natural sandwich” man offered me a natural (i.e., not fried) sandwich. Other freshly fried beach fare included grilled cheese on small portable braziers. I didn’t chose the natural sandwich, but I could have chosen watermelon, ice cream, fruit, beer, coconut, etc. Or I could easily have forgone food altogether and bought a wide variety of clothes, towels, jewelry, or even had a massage. All of this from just my tiny little space on the beach. Elsewhere people were up and talking, swimming, playing volleyball, walking along the sidewalk, etc. I just had a beer.
This active description of the beach is just the ideal: the best, biggest and most obvious expression of what we mean by “movement”. But everyday life is filled with movement, or, sometimes, with just the absence of a sense of settling. For example, there are a host of places where you can get a juice, a bite to eat or perhaps a drink, but often they are open to the street (or to the inside of a mall); they are really quite small and they offer no place to sit. And the food is not intended “to go” or to “take away”. Food comes on real plates; fruit juices arrive fresh squeezed in real glasses. People stand next to the counter and eat or drink right there, sort of as an interlude, a moment to pause to slow the movement but not be too settled.
Part of the sense of movement may derive simply from the density and population. Brazil itself is heavily urbanized – about 85% of the population lives in cities. Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro are among the 10 largest cities in the world. At any one time, there are many people on the street, in busses, in cars, on trains (the ones that exist), etc. Homes shelter extended families and are, compared to the US, relatively small given the number of people living in them. It’s another reason to be outside. There’s too many people to be inside.
Another indication of “on the go” is that people just don’t carry much with them. One woman leaves the house with a tiny bit of money, a small walkman and her apartment key. Other people wear speedos and carry a cell phone. The “towels” that are sold on the beach can serve as a “swim wrap” or a hat or shawl or indeed, serve the same role as a towel might in the US, as an accommodation to sit on the beach.
Side walk vendors sell $3 radios designed obviously in bright colors in some respects to advertise that they are indeed $3 radios and not worth stealing
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The Samba “schools” responsible for the majority of Carnaval each year are all about movement. Carnaval happens all over Brazil each year in the week leading up to Ash Wednesday and the Roman Catholic season of Lent. The extraordinarily elaborate parades are actually staged competitions. The moving stage set is staffed in part by members of the various samba schools, but for a small fee, anyone can join in the festivities and dance and parade right along with the schools. The festivities go on for a week and than again the following Saturday when the winners put on another exhibition in the stadium.
Perhaps a subtler sense of movement is knowing that people were out and about in the wee hours of the morning. Many people leave offerings for the Orixas, the goddesses and gods of the Umbanda/Candomble religion. The offerings are sometimes in the middle of the street, or on stone walls along roads, or along the beach near the sea. There’s a pretty good likelihood – especially near the beach – but anywhere, of seeing an offering on any given morning if you’re out. And regardless of where they are, we noted they went undisturbed by human intervention.
To the extent that these impressions and findings suggest technologies, we must say they don’t suggest PCs in their current instantiation. Thinking just about movement suggests a different set of technologies or at least a different configuration of the current set. Partial evidence for this comes from the wild success of the cell phone in Brazil. But other examples come from all around – for example: iPAQ’s in waiters’ hands in restaurants, a flawless electronic voting system, the Brazilian national motto: Order and Progress, and our own sense of their optimism and forward looking inclinations - indicating that C-class Brazilians are not afraid, not concerned, indeed even eager for new technologies, but are also somewhat discriminating and want to know what value the technology will provide.
As one example, let’s return to the juice bars. The question of course is: What would a “juice bar offering computing and internet access be like? That is, in what way can computing and Internet technologies be introduced into this existing social? It’s probably not a room full of computers, one per person. For one thing, there’s no room. Perhaps it might be a form of “local area broadcast” with one screen showing content of particular interest to the regular patrons of that juice bar. Or perhaps it might be small flat (but bright) touch screens attached to the bar with local newspapers or magazines that people can pick up, scan for an interesting publication and read an article or, in Brazil particularly, watch snippets of web cast TV news as it unfolds over the course of the day. Of course, these suggest different support technologies as well. For example, small screens on the bar counters might receive information wirelessly from a backroom “server” or wireless “hot spot”. Perhaps people coming in can also receive information to their own personal devices as well, e.g., to a personal digital assistant or to a cell phone. It’s ideas of this ilk that might be viable and valuable to many Brazilians.
