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!

Expressed without words

Wall-E is Pixar's greatest film yet.


The real beauty of it is the simplicity.

That so much can be expressed in a film where the two main characters say no words except for each other's names is an inspiring reflection on the human race.

Companionship, joy, surprise, dance, laughter, beauty, fear, purpose, love - all these things can be expressed without words. All these things can be shared across humanity, regardless of background, culture, language or preconceptions.

So this is not only a story about love; it is a story about humanity. More specifically, it is about our place on this planet, and what we are doing to ourselves as a society and as a world.


Wall-E is set 700 years into the future. Earth has been abandoned and the entire human race lives aboard a gigantic pleasure-cruising spacecraft. Everything is comfortable, every need is taken care of, every amenity is provided. Everything runs according to the pleasant and monotonous daily routine of "perfection".

But in that routine, life of course loses all meaning. If everything stays the same, and there is no challenge or surprise, then what's the point?

The sad reality is, right now, for many people, that kind of life is what they are striving for. We plug in our iPods, shut ourselves off on our daily commute, play our trivial games on our phones, go through our day’s work, eat our microwave food, watch our on-demand TV, absorb some advertising, then repeat. We spend far too much time on making trivial choices and enjoying completely superficial entertainment, slowly making things more and more comfortable and convenient for the next generation.

That can’t possibly be our purpose on this planet. That can’t possibly bring us real joy, fulfilment and happiness.

In the film, the real joy comes when humanity realises that no matter how difficult it will be, it must return to earth, cultivate the planet, take action, strive to become at one with the ecosystem of our world once more, and to reconstruct a society based on human passion and endeavour.

This is the real important message of the film: Joy doesn’t come from routine or comfort, it comes from seeking new adventure, challenging ourselves, finding a greater purpose, working together to achieve something that at first may seem almost impossible.

The Road

As the start of this week showed, our world is an extremely fragile place. Once something starts to move in a direction, things spiral out of control, effects multiple, people react, stock markets come tumbling down.

I think everything is the same. Politics, war, ecosystems, relationships, order. It can all spiral so easily out of control.

I just finished reading a book that affected me a great deal - The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It was one of the most powerful, captivating and beautiful works of fiction that I have read. I got through it far quicker than I normally read a book (possibly my long daily commute helped me there).

The Road puts into your mind a very bleak picture of a man and a boy travelling through a destroyed world that has been ravaged by disaster. It is a desperate and cold world; a wasteland that could be the result of any number of actions that we as humankind – and as individuals – are taking.

It is stunningly written - easy to read and incredibly emotive. You feel that world. You are in it. The hopelessness, the desperation, the fear, the numbness. The cold hard reality. But also the sliver of hope that amazingly, we can hold onto no matter how bad it is.

And we must hope that this world does not come to be. In fact, more than that: we must prevent it.

Read The Road and enjoy it as the fantastic book it is. But also think about your responsibility. Are you moving the world down that road, or in another direction? Things need to change, we know that. But who will make those changes? Is it up to "them"? The people in power, with money, with influence? No. It's up to you. You are not them. This is your world. Only you can change it.

Small actions. Big actions. It all matters.

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

Chavez has won

Just announced.

Chavez 61%
Rosales 38%

Fireworks deafening at the moment, people cheering from the hills.

Update: This is based on a 78% count of the vote.

We just watched the report in Spanish on Globovision (CNN), then in English on BBC World, then in German on DW-TV. I find it interesting that the BBC correspondant said "Chavez would be wise to sit down with the opposition" to work with them. I don´t think that´s how it works here. Chavez has at least 6 more years now. His Socialist Revolution continues...