Mobile Technology Transcending Cultures vs. Penetrating Cultures

Developing communities lacking access to information, really? It's the 21st century, and it's unfathomable. The reality is that we are in a technology bubble of sorts. It's intriguing to think how exposed we (in developed communities) are to technology and how intertwined it is in our state of being. To use a pay phone is almost taboo. Our expected response time to phone calls and messages has significantly decreased. 


USAID's grants initiative to support Haiti's 2010 electoral process or One Laptop per Child's aim to encourage exploration and make learning fun are without doubt, moving approaches that stimulate change and ease access to information. But the change is often short-lived, and tends to penetrate cultures. Do women in Haiti really have the inherent "right" to vote or do the teachers in Rwanda truly accept a new technology invading their existing, and quite effective methods of conducting lessons? 


Reading about mobile technology in "Dialing for Development" by David Lehr as well as "Mobile Mandate: UNICEF and frog, Together at Last" by Lauren Serota, makes me believe that there are certainly social innovations that are long-lasting, self-sustainable and self-modifiable for that matter, and can transcend cultures, not penetrate them. The Manobi Development Foundation's mobile phone-based services initiatives directly responds to the needs of the fisherman. Furthermore, I can't help but to compare the log in departure time and estimated time of return features to the log in departure time and estimated time of arrival features of the newly developed Tiramisu iPhone application. The application was developed at Carnegie Mellon University to predict bus arrivals. 


With the progress of these innovations, an open source platform is key and I would agree with the explanation that "These tools must be combined with a deep understanding of the human, social and cultural context and be designed and developed with an open collaboration model. This project is part of frog's Mobile Mandate and is the next step in an ongoing effort towards realizing this vision." 


The hands on, responsive nature of social innovation is ongoing.