Interesting Mefi post on cellphones and development

If information is power, then access is empowering

The way Mefi posts work is one smartypants takes a whole wack of links about a particular subject and makes a suitable short link essay. The idea in this link essay: That the bottom of the pyramid is where the next generation of tech development should be aimed as both a solution for poverty, and to open new markets. The rationale for this approach is the fascinating proliferation of cellular tech in developing countries, places where infrastructure-heavy technologies have not had such a profound effect. I find the argument fascinating, and not surprisingly problematic.

Best comments on the thread so far:

"'the essence of poverty is the assymetry of information'"

If only we'd known this in 1970, we could have air-dropped old Encyclopedia Britannicas into Biafra.

But armed with this insight, today we can fling Compact Disks across all of Africa, and know that as Igbo and Tutsi and Hamer children read up on Wikipedia's frighteningly complete hierarchy of Pokemons (Pokemen?), their bellies will become taut with esoterica!

and the far less snarky and very intelligent:

No, the essence of poverty is, well, poverty — problems with housing, problems with food, problems with security, problems with education, problems with health, and on and on and on.

That said, though, I think the "leapfrogging" of cellphones and the secondary technologies (eg cellphone micropayments) that this has spawned is really great. My bet is that the potential of this is just being scratched, and we will see a lot more in the next few years.

But it isn't such a great model for development overall, because cellphones work in a particular way (base stations plus cheap handsets) that doesn't work for sewage systems, hospitals, transportation, distributing food, or most other things.

So we should appreciate the potential of dispersed information technologies, while acknowledging the limitations as well.