Friday, April 13, 2007
Lil' Red Riding Hood
Like many North Americans I thought that traveling in South America would be a distinctly alien and second world experience: busing with livestock through jungles of shantytowns. That point of view was entirely misinformed. A month in
OK. So I wasn't actually around after WW2, or for several decades thereafter, but the image it has projected forward is one of optimism. Optimism based on new homes, new education, and new industry. The small and large cities that I visited in SA were full of new construction. This was funded by family members working abroad and supplemented by an urgent entrepreneurship on the local scene. Most of this entrepreneurship was based in the retail and service trades, but in tandem with a variety of local industries was creating a palpable middle class. This middle class is filling local universities that are molding a new generation of highly educated citizens.
Everyone that I spoke with had relatives that were currently working, legal or not, in the
The American Hemisphere is huge and it is impossible to address all of it as a uniform whole. There is, however, a definite connection between its nations and peoples. This connection gives North American designers an advantage when designing for this burgeoning consumer population to our south. Designing products for this new bourgeois will not only reward companies with financial profit, but because of this connection, it will give new insight into ourselves. Why is this insight important?
The better to eat you with, my dear.
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