A recent World Bank report, Maximizing Mobile, offers some startling facts on the spread of mobile technology.
“…in some developing countries, more people have access to a mobile phone than to a bank
account, electricity, or even clean water. Mobile communications now offer major opportunities to advance human development—from providing basic access to education or health information to making cash payments to stimulating citizen involvement in democratic processes.”
There are now over six billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world: even allowing for the many multiple subscribers, it’s feasible that everyone in the world who wants a mobile device will have one in the near future.
It is more appropriate to say “mobile device”, because the days when these things were used mainly for the making and receiving of phone calls is long gone. “Phones” are now used for a variety of purposes. This is particularly true in the developing world, where, in large swathes, desktop technology has been bypassed, and feature phone and smartphones now fulfil a huge amount of functions.
Smartphone sales were up 43 per cent in the second quarter of this year, despite a 2 per cent decrease in the overall sales of mobile devices.
While this boom is happening all over the world, a debate is raging in the UK which could have a significant effect on access to information in the developing world. Mobile phone companies here routinely filter web content considered “sensitive” for under-18s. Earlier this year, the Open Rights Group report Mobile Internet Censorship: What’s Happening and What We Can Do About It noted:
“We think there are a number of serious problems with how these systems work. These include a lack of transparency, mistakes in classifying sites the difficulty of opting out of the filtering. Together, these problems mean that people often find content blocked when it shouldn’t be.”
Well quite. On my own previous phone contract, I was unable to view this very site, which, while occasionally discussing controversial topics, is not exactly a hotbed of vice.
Sensitive information we now can get blocked also includes health advice, a massive issue in the developing world. If we accept the blunt instrument that is smartphone filtering, then there is no reason why phone companies would not make the technology universal. Which may be acceptable in the developed world, with our myriad ways of accessing information. But in parts of the world dependent on the mobile device, we could be denying information to people who need it most.
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Letter to the free world
I am an average hard working Canadian and this is a plea to all countries of freedom. With most faiths in the world comes the belief in freedom prosperity and love for one another. With the muslim faith seems to comes hatred and violence for anyone with a differing opinion.
I am not picking on the Muslims for any other reason than the fact that With the Muslim faith comes hatred and violence, you just have to turn on your TV or pick up a newspaper to see that. They hate the free world and chant death to the Americas and other free nations on our television screens yet we still give them billions of dollars each year in aid. That needs to stop now! Everyone living in a free country needs to write their government letters, take part in non violent protests in front of government buildings and do whatever it takes to stop this muslim movement. The self proclaimed muslim goal is to take over the entire world and eliminate anyone who is not on board with them. (Remind you of anyone) We must stand together and stop this in it’s tracks. We have to rid the Muslim faith from our countries. Sure our countries believe in freedom of faith but not when that faith believes in harming everyone that doesn’t follow it. I know the muslims living in our countries say that there are just a few bad ones, What the heck, just watch the news and you see millions of them wishing us dead. Anyone that wants to practice the Muslim faith should leave and live in one of the countries of Muslim faith. If it was so good there why did they come here bring all their hatred and violence with them? Oh ya they came to our countries for a better life, well that better life they seek had no muslim religion. But they want to change all that and turn our countries into what they ran away from. If they don’t like what we are all about then they should return to their country of origin. It is really hard to understand that their belief in allah causes them to bring their children up to hate others who don’t follow their beliefs, even teaching it in their schools. No other modern day religion that I am aware of has followers that hate and kill others in the name of their god. Our aid to these muslim countries should not be in the way of billions of dollars but in the way of computers so that the children can educate themselves and one day be able to make decisions based on their own understanding of the world instead of only having the one-sided knowledge of their parents. We have to stand up now! Our governments can’t do this on their own without the pressure of the surrounding world, but if we the people from all the free countries can all come together and stand strong (these are our countries) we can make a better world for our children to grow up in.
smartphones…very common word we here daily..I think in today’s fast generation without smartphone difficult to handle regular tasks..
Thanks