Life in the Digital Age

This is one of the most difficult questions asked all class. Could a fish blog about the sea? I would love to go on about my disappointment with the technology that didn't show up as promised.

The jet packs, the skycars, the end to poverty and world hunger, free electricity. Peace in my life time. A cheaper phone bill.But I have chosen not to get too personal (always a pit fall for the blogger) and to look at what has changed for poor people in general on the planet. I will try to keep it positive, and not go on a rant about cadmium mines in the Congo. Oops!

I really like Micro loans. Micro loans are small loans, usually less than $20.00US that individuals can make to help others in achieve their goals. The goals can be anything from buying a goat to getting a college education. In 2006 Mohammed Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist, won the Nobel prize for pioneering the concept with his Grameen Bank in Bangladesh which helped thousands of people. He began in 1976 when his country was suffering terrible famine, and by 2004 there were more than 3000 micro loan institutions world wide and 92 million micro lending clients.
Yunus might still have won the Nobel Prize, but without the internet and other digital communications his idea would have stayed in Bangladesh and not reached the middle class around the world who could easily afford the $10 or so that would save a family's livelihood in the developing world. If it did get out, it would not have spread or been the success it is today without the internet making a charitable loan as easy as one mouse click. You can help people go to school all over the world for the price of a cup of coffee and a scone at Starbucks using Kiva. How cool is that?

I also think that cell phones, which are either the bane or the boon of our existence on any given day out here in the West, are changing lives in a dramatic way in other places. All over the world, farmers are benefiting from cell phone technology and none so much as the farmers in the poorest parts of the world.
In rural China, India, Africa and North and South America, farmers are using cell phones to diagnose crop diseases,get the best prices for their crops and see the status of crop futures on their cell phones. Even if they don't have running water or electricity in their own homes.

Finally, while we are despairing at what the digital age is doing to literacy, digital libraries are taking books to the developing world in unprecedented numbers. Educational Exchanges like Zunia , and even UNESCO are providing much needed information to students and teachers all over the developing world. Of course, the intellectual property battles are vicious and seemingly never ending, but at least for now the information is out there and it is free.