Mobile is the great leveler
I saw this video with Bruce Sterling a couple of week ago, and something really stuck: mobile is the device that’s flattening the world. Poor people have mobiles, or they figure out ingenious ways to timeshare a mobile. For the first time in history, here’s a technology that’s truely leveling the field. The growth of mobile access in the Thirld World is growing at a staggering rate.
I’m quite content with the way this is playing out. I think access to information is important, in both directions. A whole service-system is sprouting up, a whole local industry that supports and exports access to digital information. The Wealth of the West has been in great part intellectual wealth. Not in the sense that we’re smarter than they are (it would be racist to think so), but in the sense that we own the data. Being able to deliver this wealth of information to the Third World, we have immense opportunities of combining our knowledge (which is mostly technical) with their knowledge (e.g. knowing how to introduce our tech into their culture, without having to sacrifice their non-Western ethics).
