Our collective potential

This very compelling talk by Clay Shirky really highlights the incredible collective potential we have:



This is the fact that really bowled me over:

Wikipedia - by far the largest encyclopaedia ever produced my humankind - has taken about 100 million man-hours to produce.

In the US alone, 100 million man-hours are spent watching just the adverts on TV every weekend.

That's one Wikipedia-project per weekend!!

And globally, Internet users watch a trillian hours of TV per year.

Imagine if we spent our time just a little differently. Wow. What could we achieve?

But we are doing. We are spending increasing amounts of time producing, sharing, connecting and collaborating.

So with every 1% reduction in our TV-watching, that's 100 projects on the scale of Wikipedia that we can collectively create every year!

What does that mean for our potential for collaboration, innovation, doing good, being heard, fixing the world?

What would you do with those 100 million man-hours?

It is ready to be harnessed!

m-banking

Can mobile phones save the world?

Ten mobile phones per 100 people = +0.5% in growth in GDP per person.

Well, according to Leonard Waverman of the London Business School: "an extra ten mobile phones per 100 people in a typical developing country leads to an extra half a percentage point of growth in GDP per person." (The Economist: A bank in every pocket?)

That is huge.

GDP in sub-Saharan Africa should be around 6% in 2008 so adding 0.5% to that just with some cheap electronics isn't too bad at all!

But what is the magic of mobile phones?

Well, they enable a couple of big things:

1. They break down geographical barriers
   
   In many developing countries, geography is a big factor in hindering trade and growth. Large distances and geographical barriers make infrastructure for transport and communications too expensive to build and maintain. Unreliable infrastructure means traders cannot get knowledge of the market, they waste time and money on trips that are not worth it, they cannot exchange information and knowledge, or form groups with significant trading power.
   
   Mobile phones change all this.
   
   Suddenly, you can get market knowledge, you can negotiate before making the trip, you can coordinate and exchange information without the need for a perilous and lengthy journey. You can trade. You can run a business.
   
   
   
2. They enable Banking
   
   That's a great start. But there is something else just as fundamental to an economy that mobile phones enable: banking.
   

   "Only 20% of families in Africa have a bank account. Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania have less than one bank branch per 100,000 people. Opening an account in Cameroon requires $700—more than many of its people earn in a year. In Swaziland, a woman needs the consent of her father, husband or brother to open an account or take a loan, and 75% of adults do not have a verifiable address.”

   So, people cannot gain access to credit, they cannot gain interest on money they save, they cannot safely move their money from one place to another, they cannot transfer money to family members or for business transactions.
   
   But mobile phones change all this.
   
   Suddenly, your inexpensive mobile phone is also your life-line to the world of banking. You can use it to send money via text message, you can receive your wage via your phone, you can accept payments without carrying cash around, you can make a long journey without the risk of carrying cash with you.
   
   All without ever visiting a bank branch or cash machine.
   
   The real magic is that m-banking reduces transaction costs so much that it becomes profitable for banks and mobile providers to get together and start offering these services to even the poorest people while still making a profit.
   
   You can even combine m-banking with micro-financing and suddenly people in hugely geographically dispersed areas can gain access to credit, build up a credit rating and start to build a sustainable future for themselves.
   
   That's pretty amazing for a device that 3.7 billion people around the world carry in their pocket every day.

So yes, I think mobile phones certainly are playing a big part in saving the world.

Further reading:

There are some very exciting things going on in this space, with literally millions of people using services in Kenya (M-PESA), the Philipines (G-Cash and SMART Money) and South Africa (WIZZIT)

Last year, Western Union, present in more than 200 countries, started up a new mobile division, which in October announced an agreement with the GSM Association (representing 700-plus operators) to develop a commercial and technical framework for mobile-based global remittances.

And here are some of the best resources I found on m-banking:

• CGAP Technology Program: m-banking
  The CGAP Technology Program, co-funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, seeks innovative ways to use technology to reach poor people with financial services.


• BusinessWeek: Upwardly Mobile Africa
  Excellent article focussed on the huge impact that a single cell-phone base station had on the town of Muruguru in Kenya.


• The Economist: A bank in every pocket?


• The Economist: African banks: on the frontier of finance


• Private Sector Development Blog

Hello Android

Yesterday, I was raving about the iPhone. Yes it's beautiful and shiny, but it is totally locked-down - to the O2 network in the UK and AT&T in the US. What's more, despite running a complete version of UNIX under the hood, no tampering is allowed. No joyous writing of your own apps for it and certainly no Skyping thank you very much.

Now for something completely different:



Google recently launched the Android Mobile Phone Platform, which they developed in conjunction with some big players in the Open Handset Alliance (LG, Motorola, Samsung, T-Mobile, Telefónica, DoCoMo, China Mobile, etc.)

This is a completely open framework allowing people to develop their own mobile phone software. It uses a Linux kernel with application development in Java.

Now, remember what happened when Google launched their Maps API? Suddenly we had hundreds of crazy mash-ups and every second web-site had a Google Map embedded into it. But some really great uses of geographical information came out of that. Android means something similar (but bigger!) for phones. We are going to see a load of really innovative applications built by thousands of developers around the world.

Here are some things that excited me:

1. Everything is replaceable. You can use whatever application you want for each thing you might want to do (each "intent"): to make a call, to pick a photo, to look up a contact, etc. We just plug in whatever app we want to handle it. Maybe a Skype app handles our calls, a Flickr app for our photos and a Facebook app for our contacts!
   
   
2. Your location is available to any application you choose using GPS, cell tower location or wi-fi network geography information. So an app could notify you when you are near a shop with a sale on, or when you are within 100m of one of your buddies.
   
   
3. Google Maps is a standard UI component that can be embedded into any application.
   
   
4. Data messages can be sent directly by applications from one device to another. Apps that use interaction between your phone and your friends phones are suddenly simple to make.

Here's another video about the possibilities: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiD4fGjjXcc&NR=1

I can't wait to see some cool things come out of this!

iPhone: it makes you smile

iPhone: Time Magazines Invention of the Year

I just got back from playing with an iPhone in my local O2 store. I must say that it is truly phenomenal. Using this thing just makes you smile.

Two things make using this phone an incredible experience: 1. the interface and 2. the seamless wi-fi.

The interface really does make you smile

I'm sure we've all experienced trying to use a shoddy user interface, one that just doesn't work as expected and only frustrates. And phones really have been the worst offenders in this department for many, many years. In a rush to get new features to market, or sell the coolest-looking phone, handset manufacturers and operators have been forcing rubbish into our hands and pockets for too long.

But the iPhone has got it right. If we put aside issues of cost and locked-down software, and just look at the interface - like the iPod before, this is a revolutionary device.

It just feels natural. Simple. Intuitive. And it's really as easy as making sure all the little touches are right. Like when you reach the bottom of a web page or e-mail it does a cute little bounce, or when you attach a photo to an e-mail the photo shrinks down and the blank e-mail pops up around it, or when you accidentally miss a key while typing it automatically corrects you.

You immediately and intuitively know how to do what you want to do. Things feel almost real inside the beautiful screen of the phone as you move them around, stretch them out with your two fingers and send them flying across your view with one flick of your finger.

This is what technology should be like!

Wi-fi snazziness

As well as doing all the normal things like calls, SMS and voicemail shockingly well, it's the seamless wi-fi access that really makes some apps stand out.

The iPhone automatically connects to any wireless network in range, including all of The Cloud's wireless access points in the UK. Web-browsing is actually pleasurable for the first time on a hand-held, a zoom-tastic Google Maps app is available in your pocket whenever you need it and you can purchase music with iTunes and listen to it right there and then, wherever you are.

When there's no wi-fi, I understand O2's EDGE network is used. EDGE is like GPRS++ but not quite as good as 3G. I don't think this matters too much. We're moving towards a time where broadband wi-fi is being rolled out across major cities and I imagine will soon be part of the fabric of space-time.

I certainly want one.

I really hope this inspires better interface design across the board and everyone to stop accepting crap design.

As for me, from now on I'm not accepting anything less than smile-generating technology.

Comet Holmes one million times brighter

It's a beautiful clear night in Haddington and I just got in after having a look at Comet Holmes. This was a pretty nondescript comet up until October 24th when it suddenly got nearly one million times brighter over a period of 24 hours. It then either exploded or errupted or collided with something, which was actually how it was first discovered.

It is visible with the naked eye but with binoculars you can see it really well. It's like a giant blob of light in the sky, unlike anything you'll have ever seen. And apparently it's growing at a few thousand miles per hour. So watch out!



It's visible from the northern hemisphere and will probably continue to grow for a few weeks before it fades. Don't miss it!