Thanks to Steve for pointing me towards this recent ZDNet article called 'Intel's Anthropological Army.' It bascially provides a summary of presentations from various social scientists at the autumn Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. Lots of anthropologists, like some folks who work for Intel's fascinating People and Practices Group, and Genevieve Bell who's starting up a new group at Intel called 'Domestic Designs and Technology Research Digital Home,' but also more diverse folks like Eric Brewer, who identifies himself with the Intel Berkeley Research Lab, but I associate more with Berkeley's TIER group.

Since my current work withe the Digital Kids group at SIMS is about how kids percieve the relationships between virtual and physical spaces and places, this quote was particularly awesome:

Ken Anderson is an anthropologist in P&PR. "I've been looking at people who live and work outside their native country. By number, [international firms] would make up the fifth largest country in the world, but they're a group that are often overlooked. One study recently looked at Ghana in West Africa. A third of all Ghanaians live outside the country, and remittances back home account for 25 percent of the GDP of the country, which seems very high but isn't unusual for developing nations. Technology has a profound effect on people. We met Mahmoud, who puts his telephone number above the doorway of the house he shares with his eight brothers, because his mobile phone is where he lives.