A moment to celebrate progress!

I landed in Salvador about 30 mins ago and as I accustomed to doing I pulled my phone out right away and tried to sync my email. I was in Salvador about 6 weeks ago and was able to get a phone signal but my phone couldn’t access a data network the entire time I was here. So you can imagine my surprise when my phone download one email from a friend who is watering our plants and another from my husband telling me that he had rebooked his flight in Rio and would be getting in two hours after his original date. In the 6 weeks since I was last her the signal has gotten better in Sao Paulo and they now have a data network Just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming I just synced my phone again to be sure – and it still works, which means that I will be able to post this with little problem as an email from my phone if I so desire.

Yesterday I was talking with two young adults about the fact that the iPhone is supposed to be released in Brazil this month because the network has been upgraded to sustain it. The cell phone is a fairly standard item here. On my last visit I stayed with a 80-year-old+ couple who didn’t have regular phone service in their village but who had a cell phone attached to the wall as their house phone. After payday you see lines of people waiting to add money to their pre-paid phones.

Nonetheless cell phone minutes are still relatively expensive and people have the kind of etiquette here that you don’t see in the US. I rarely see people driving while talking, I am sitting in the airport surrounded by 40 or so people and while folks are holding cell phones, there is no one talking incessantly. In other words – Brazilians have a measure of cell phone etiquette that is not present in the United States.

I wonder what the growth of the smartphone will mean for Brazil. Will it turn everyone into incessant picture takers, bloggers, texters, tweeters, and Facebook addicts? Will it mean that people here begin to live more and more virtually and slowly neglect the great communal traditions that have led me to go hours without thinking about my phone as opposed to the minutes I go in the United States. Will people stop going by each others houses for a cup of coffee and instead just send messages through Orkut (the Google version of Facebook which is much more popular in Brazil.)

Well we will have to see. So far all of my Brazilian friends are on Orkut and many are on Hotmail Messanger but we still spent hours hanging out. The truth is that while I have my concerns I also have some faith that Brazilians will exercise more constraint then we will. In a country where people still great each other with kisses on the cheek, where it is not strange to hug someone you just met, where being a good host is considered a matter of character, I have hope that people will take advantage of the positives of this technology while not letting the visual senses replace all of the other senses. This is still a country that believes in the importance of smell of fragrant flowers, the touch of embracing a new friend, the taste of dende in a stew and the sound of drums in the street. In the rush to become an economically strong country, Brazil cannot afford to give away these treasures!