Reading Reflection – Internet in Iran

It is not hard to imagine why Internet usage in Iran continues to increase at a sharp rate. Iran is not really a poor country where people are suffering hunger, it is a land with lots of free-trade and business, but people are forbidden to communicate and express themselves. When people have nothing to eat, Internet may not be their first priority, but when a bunch of educated people with enough knowledge and enough daily-basic stuff, it is natural to want the freedom to share what they think and what they believe.

It is also pathetic to know that there are governments in some areas fear the power of Internet instead of embrace it. Four days ago, Iran has deployed a special police unit to sweep web sites for political material and prosecute those “liers on Internet”. Will that really work? Within the Iranian authorities are trying to crack down on the International press, the West world is reliant online to find out what is happening on the ground. Hard as it might try, it will be difficult for the regime to easily stop the flow of information online, web users around the world are rallying behind it. It is the “magic” and true power of Internet. A blogger explained the motivation of the global community of supporters, “Whether we agree or disagree  with any given Iranian citizen, they ought to have the right to express their views.”

This brings up another issue: should governmnet monitor its citizen’s online activity and filter websites for nationalt security reason? If there are terrists spread the hatred ideas online, should we worry about it? My answer is always no. I believe an efficient government should trust its people and let people decide what they want to believe. “Blocking” is not a permenant solution, anyway. On the contract, if a government want to see a real bloody revolution, yes, censoring its Internet and forbiden its people from any form of communication technology is a road that guarantee for a bloody result.

Reflection Paper 11/13 – Citizen Journalism in Developing Countries

Citizen Journalism has always been an interesting subject to me, and this week’s  readings opened another window in my head – citizen journalism in developing countries. As the author described, this is a totally different model for reporting news and exchange information, and most importantly, everybody can do it as long as there is a proper tool.

So the first problem for citizen journalism in poor countries is also “the tool”. Two of this week’s articles mentioned that the cost of the infrastructure is still relatively high in these countries, even though the mobile phones are affordable for lots of people now, the construction works need to be done are still expensive and relies on the aids and donations. What’s behind this is the strong support from the government. We all understand there will never be “the real news” if the government puts the tight restriction on the journalism, not to mention the tough rules when it comes to build up communication technologies. The more the government support it, the faster the country will get benefit from it.

It is a good news to know that people from developing areas now can share information, check internet articles and even listen to the radio on the mobiles phones, it means people eventually would find ways out to get what they want no matter how hard the situation is. Even though the scale is small, I believe that once some “news sharing” groups” are established, they will grow as fast as the mobile phone’s usage in developing countries.

For resource limited areas, the first priority should always be “letting people get the news”, and mobile phone has a big advantage in these areas.

Some people have concerns about the quality of the news from citizen jourlists and worried about it might cause ciaos in society, but that’s not just the case in developing countries. Of course we still need professional journalists and photographers. No matter how many amateur reporters are there, we need pros to help to edit the incoming news, or even we need pros to be there for a more in-depth report. The news industry still need qualified professional to offer qualified news and pictures. But when it comes to natural disasters, interesting stuff at the street corners, someone’s dog saved a baby’s life under a truck, amateur’s service would be much handier. The co-exist of professional and amateur would enhance the journalism. There are just some rules that every news media should always follow, “No matter which tools and technologies we embrace, we must maintain core principle, including fairness, accuracy and thoroughness.“

Reflection 11/06 – Mobile Techonolgy in Kenya & Afghanistan

The M-Pesa is a good example of “teaching them how to fish instead of giving fish”. The author and his organization hied local company and employees for the project, offered the training and all other related knowledge in order to maintain the service, shows that it is not just a short-term mission from the foreign private companies who just want some money and run. We all need to realize how hard and yet important it is to maintain a good service and keep the good quality going.  The mission of M-Pesa not only introduce a secured online banking service to people who didn’t even have bank accounts before, and it also changes people’s life.

I believe the development of mobile phones in Afghanistan dramatically changed people’s life there as well. For a nation that was constantly in the war and nobody was allowed to communicate with each other till almost three years ago, bringing cell phone communication defeniltely opens up the world for them and they can contact families who are not in the country much easier. Here in this case, we are not talking about the convenience of SMS, cellphone cameras and MP3 players, we are talking about the basic function of the phone – communication. When thinking about how long it took for Afghanistan to adopt this techonolgy, it is not hard to understand why mobile phone grows rapidly there, it matches Prahalad’s theory, the bottom of the pyramid represents a huge market.

The two mobile communication development missions in Kenya and Afghanistan both seemed very difficult, and yet the latter one required the risk of being killed by the bombs. I need to mention that I am truly impressed by these people who was willing to try that hard to improve others life quality and again let me see the hope of humanity.

 

Reading Reflection 10/30 – Mobile phones in Africa

This week’s readings are actually quite cheerful, at least these articles deliver a message – hope. I especially like the micro-mortgage solution that offered to ladies in Bangladesh. Phone-lady idea is really a brilliant one, it not only gives those women a chance to be financial-independent, helps them to support their families, it also spread out the seeds of phone-usage, makes communication easier to local people, and it eventually makes the big growth of mobile phones in the area.

From the materials of this course so far,  it’s delightful for me to know that In regions where there are no fixed landlines, cellphones have been hailed as an opportunity to leapfrog existing technology. And I believe that many in the industry predict that many Africans’ first experience of the internet will be via a cellphone.

Although there are some arguments and doubts about this type of cellphone-Internet would really create a digital-environment like the developed world. I think those points of views are quite arrogant and ignorant. We all understand that mobile phones can’t really compete with PCs with Internet connection, people can’t really create much content such as blogs or upload a home-made videos from their cell-phones easily. But like any market in the world, cell phone gets popular in poor areas simply because people there need it and it has a huge market. It is not like adding an extra fancy service on our DVR, it is a breakthrough and a jump basically from NOTHING.

The quick growing of mobile phones in Africa generally is a good news, but somehow it also raises up some concerns. Not to mentioned the network security issues here, how about polarization? Will the mass adoption of mobile phone makes some people’s situation  from developing areas even worse?It is easy to foresee that this mobile technology is getting better and more popular in the “lack-of-land phone & PC” lands, but there certainly will still be people who will be left behind the train due to varies of reasons, such as poverty, location, education and accessibility of the device. As one of the articles mentioned, government’s control is also playing a crucial part in the communication technology development. Will the sudden thrive of technology push some people even further from being “advanced”? I don’t expect to see the answer in the near future, but I cross my fingers to wish the technology can continue its development and benefit more people there.

Reflection Paper 10/23 – Carlos Slim, the Bottom Billion & Mobile Phones

Let’s start from Carlos Slim. I was quite impressed by the article about this richest man from Mexico and his story. I can not say he is a good or bad guy, but Carlos Slim sure is a very smart business man and all he does is for his business. It would be hard to say if a monopoly-style company should “donate” how much of money into the market to stimulate the local economic to make it “a good company”, but Slim indeed offer lots of jobs to local people from his 200 companies and that certainly is a big help for local economic. We can’t say Slim is a bad guy because he is a rich man who lives and make a fortune from his poor country, again, he is just a business man who is good at his job.

Slim’s case makes me think about those researchers who were trying to conduct varies of different projects in developing countries.  Maybe Slim’s biggest problem is he is not considerate enough to make himself stand at the same level with most of the people there, who happens to be poor. It is difficult to win in any situation if the person keeps thinking only from his/her own point of view. But from “Stories from the Field”, we see there was a researcher gave up her original target location (and people) because that village was too rural to reach. It shows an unfair truth that we must face – people from rural/developing world can not get what we can get, and that of course causes the reasons for dragging the “bottom billion” down.

Ling and Donner mentioned that mobile phones can change the developing countries by offering more opportunities, by making citizen journalists, by changing the way they communicate and connect with the world. I agree most of their arguments that mobile phones sure opens a different window and changes our daily life, and Iran’s recent protesting event moved me a lot, but all of these rely on a matured social system and environment. I don’t see the point of holding a multi-functioned mobile phone in a rural Uganda village if most of my daily basic needs can’t be satisfied.

This world still contains lots of unjustice and is still complicated, Internet and mobile phones can not answer everything, we can only hope by technology’s help, we can really step toward a bright future and a real global village.