I am obsessed with cell phones right now. Mostly I bloody *hate* them. I haven’t had one for six months, but work made me get one last week. So since they made me get one I am lobbying to get into some cell-phone-type research, partly to figure out my personal issues with cellular voice communication, [...]
Today’s New York Times carries a front-page article about the growth of the cell phone industry in Africa.
The article is as well-written a summary of the communications crisis in Africa as I have ever read — though it is an undeniably, perhaps inexplicably, upbeat assessment of the curent growth trend in cell phone use. [...]
A technology conference yesterday in England was host to a speaker Iqbal Quadir, who has sold about 100,000 cell phones to poor folks in Bangladesh. These are people who otherwise would have no digital communications, and Quadir feels that their new phones are empowering them more than the development strategies of the last 60 years.
The [...]