Better news: poverty and new media take 2

Finally something concrete and slightly related to poverty and new media.

Cell phones.

In developing nations, cell phones are more popular and widely used than regular land-line phones. An essay I read, in New Media, Old Media, explained this phenomenon in the Philippines. According to an article in the Washington Post, similar phenomena is happening in Vietnam, Bangladesh and other Asian and African countries. Basically, before cellular phones, most people didn’t have their own phones. A few phones were scattered for public use. (The Post article gives the figure of 1 phone for every 100 people in Vietnam in 1995.) But now, cheaper cell phones have made private phones possible in Asian and African countries. The Post article also says that in the Philippines, cell phones can be used as virtual wallets to buy things.

Novelist and de facto cultural anthropologist Douglas Coupland summed it up nicely in his 2006 book “JPOD.” A character muses: 'Remember how, back in 1990, if you used a cellphone in public you looked like a total asshole? We're all assholes now.'

I do remember this. I was in middle school and the only people I knew with cell phones were, well, nobody. They were simply too expensive. Actually, the first cell phone I ever saw was in the 1987 movie “Wall Street.” Michael Douglas stands on a beach in a smoking jacket/bathrobe and talks to Charlie Sheen on a cell phone the size of a loaf of bread.

In high school, my parents got cell phones. My mom had a ridiculous bag phone. Later, in 1996, she got a Motorola MicroTac, with some sort of Atlanta Olympic tie-in special. In Atlanta, companies were eager to test the capabilities of wireless phones, and decided the 1996 summer Olympic influx of people provided the perfect opportunity. Mom's phone was cheaper than normal because of this, but still pretty expensive. My stepfather eventually had the very-hip-for-its-time StarTac.

I got a cell phone when I went to college in 1999. I remember it was very expensive, but my parents insisted on me having it for emergencies driving to and from college. Apparently, they forgot that in high school, when I did not have a cell phone, I drove a 35-year-old car that broke down almost every week. Being stranded on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere north Georgia was apparently not an emergency situation.

I remember getting it and how cool I felt whenever it rang. It was like a little announcement that pointed to me and said “This person is very important!” I hardly feel that way anymore. Now, my cell phone is pretty much my only phone. I have a home landline for telemarketing (and so I have a local number), and an office land-line, but my cell phone is always with me in my purse or pocket.

But back to the developing nations. These people are experiencing the freedom of personal telecommunication that Americans had post WWII. The economic upsides are potentially huge. For example, fishermen and farmers can call ahead and see what prices their products will sell for at market, and compare different markets to get the best prices.

Other cottage industries have popped up around cell phones in these areas as well. In Bangladesh, women buy phones on credit from a Nobel-prize-winning bank, then resell them, or time on them, in their villages. These women now can save up money to start their own stores or other businesses.

This is clearly a technological tool that has brought certain people out of poverty. By making cellular phones cheap enough for poor people to get, and making cellular plans (like pre-paid and these cottage industry situations) available to people without credit or references, economic progress has been made. Maybe the Internet is not the telecommunications tool that can help poverty because computers and the electricity to run them are very expensive compared to cell phones.

One group, though, is trying to make cheaper computers for children in developing nations. The One Laptop Per Child program has developed the XO, a $100 laptop with rugged construction and a simple operating system. It has antennas to connect to wireless Internet systems (skipping the plug-in Internet just like they skipped the plug-in phone). It can also be manually powered, with an attachable crank or pedal for children to use at home if they don’t have electricity.

Projects like this have the potential to be able to connect poor people to the Internet. The developers of this project were forward-thinking enough to consider that the reason poor people weren’t on the web was that they couldn’t afford the tools. By making this an education project instead of a telecommunications project, and targeting it at children, they’re really, clearly trying to do something for the future, instead of trying to make money or solve poverty in one quick step. By giving children the tools to learn how to behave in the new digital world, they are making future technologically-savvy adults.

So, that’s what I found in my deep search for information on Poverty and New Media. It’s not great, but it’s a great start.