IT and the world’s ‘bottom billion’
Richard Heeks reflects in the latest edition of “Communications of the ACM” on how information technology can be best applied to address problems and provide opportunities for inhabitants of the world’s poorest countries.
“In terms of IT, the three key priorities are mobiles, mobiles, and mobiles. As indicated earlier in this column, cellphones are now reaching far down into the bottom billion. At present, development solutions will need to be based around voice and text. But other possibilities are rapidly opening up.”
The article is published online on the wonderfully redesigned Communications website.
The new site complements the magazine by providing an easy access point to all the content found in the magazine’s print pages, but perhaps more importantly the site extends beyond Communications’ current reach and helps bring us closer to fulfilling the flagship’s original promise as the primary “communication” tool in the field of computing.
Here is some more on the philosophy behind the new site.
We at Experientia are proud to say that Putting People First made it to the site’s blogroll, together with some other important players in the field. Here are some other articles that caught my attention:
Crowd control
Using crowdsourcing applications, humans around the world are transcribing audio files, conducting market research, and labeling data, for work or pleasure.Reflecting human values in the digital age
HCI experts must broaden the field’s scope and adopt new methods to be useful in 21st-century sociotechnical environments.
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