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.