As ethnographic researchers, we focus on the everyday lives of people, and particularly how the information and communication technologies, or ICTs, that they use, such as PCs, laptops, phones, TVs, video cameras fit meaningfully into people's lives. Our research engages with the felt life of people, with their experiences. The goals of our research are to inform, innovate, and inspire new technologies to fit naturally into people's lives.

Recently we've been studying transnationals and cosmopolitans-people who are living outside of their home countries, and who move back and forth between countries. If you were to take all transnationals today, the size of the group would be equivalent to the fifth largest country on the planet. In world cities like London, transnationals account for up to one-third of the population. Transnational movement has doubled since 1975, a substantial trend. We're using multi-sited research to understand their lives by examining life where they have emigrated to and their country of origin. From this research we are identifying current usage models and values that drive them, as well as the potential for new technologies for transnationals and others.

One of the countries we focused on is Ghana. We studied transnational Ghanaians living abroad in London. Then we visited the cities where they live in Ghana, including the capital city of Accra.

We found that there are two main usages of ICTs among transnational Ghanaians living in London. One is the use of technology to "look homeward" by using digital photos, camcorders, IM, mobile phones and websites to keep connected to Ghana. Another is the use of the Internet for exploring the world-searching the Internet for blogs, information, contacts, job opportunities and so on elsewhere.

When we visited Ghana, we found that most of the PC activity involved IM, chat rooms and e-mail, often for the purpose of scamming, from credit card fraud to misrepresentation scams. The PC in Ghana is not at all the information appliance that we tend to think of in the west.

The mobile phone, on the other hand, is starting to take on attributes typically associated with the PC. Ghanaians were downloading music onto their phones along with pod casts-audio versions of online blogs. In fact, the blogs are more popular than the online versions, since few people in Ghana have their own PCs. Computers and broadband access are far too expensive for most Ghanaians. Internet cafes are ubiquitous. In any business district, there are probably half a dozen Internet cafés within three blocks, and many of them are open 24/7.

As part of our research, we wanted to learn how technology is adopted or diffused around the world, which is obviously important to Intel. We were particularly interested in transnationals as key influencers in driving technology adoption. You might not perceive a Ghanaian transnational seamstress as a key influencer by observing her at home or work in London, for example. But when she returns to Ghana, she is fairly influential. Native Ghanaians often perceive transnationals as bringing symbols of modernization and westernization back to their homeland.

We found that expatriate Ghanaians are key distributors of technologies. In one wireless café in Accra, for instance, during the course of two weeks, 80% of laptops had come from outside the country, mostly from expatriate uncles or cousins who were visiting or had sent the technology back home. We see transnataionals as key in the flow of ideas, beliefs, behaviors, and objects around the globe. Ghanaian were just one example.

Our study of transnationals is part of a broader effort to help Intel to think more strategically about the world. Companies have tended to view the world as being just like the USA. The recent trend is to view the world in terms of individual nations. We're trying to conceptualize the world in ways that balance the global and the local into meaningful and actionable categories for the purposes of technology development.

Transnationals may be one such way to look at the world. A similar one we've been exploring are cosmopolitans, that is young professionals in global cities. In a study we completed in 2004, we focused on young professionals in London, Tokyo and Los Angeles. We found enough similarities in behavior, purchasing patterns and usages that we could view the populations in each city as a single group. We saw largely the same results when looking at Rio de Janeiro, San Paolo, and Belo Horizonte. This calls into question whether Intel should be thinking about these cities as a single category, rather then viewing them by geographic regions.

Ken Anderson co-authored a paper describing the results of the research study on Ghanaian transnationals. Other recent presentations and publications include a paper and session at the 2005 conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S); a workshop in Tokyo on technology use in hybrid and undisciplined spaces; and a session at the 2005 American Anthropology Association annual meeting.

Anderson also co-organized the Ethnography Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC), held in November 2005. This was the first ever conference of practitioners of ethnographic research, with the goal of furthering professional development in the field.