As cellphones spread rapidly around the world, activists and truth lovers are turning to them as tools for organising and communicating.
Scientists and do-gooders sharing innovations and ideas on Wednesday at a Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference, repeatedly pointed to cellphones as weapons in battles for better lives.
TED is known for eclectic, brain-stimulating presentations delivered in rapid-fire succession.
”Technology has gone from something that is intimidating to something that is empowering and liberating,” said Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, who is credited with ushering India into the information technology age.
”The cellphone has become an instrument of empowerment.”
In conflict-ravaged Gaza, Arab-language TV network al-Jazeera has enlisted fledgling African technology platform Ushadidi to let citizens report happenings.
Ushadidi was created in Kenya about a year ago during post-election violence as a ”crowd sourcing” cellphone platform people could use to report about what was happening in their communities, said co-founder Erik Hersman.
The technology spread quickly to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and was put to use by al-Jazeera beginning last month in Gaza to glean news from citizen journalists, according to Hersman.
”If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere,” Hersman said.
Ushadidi is creating a ”crowd-source filter” that uses feedback from readers and contributors to gauge which reports are most believable.
”We have the capacity to report eyewitness accounts in real time,” Hersman said. ”There is information overload. We think we can tap into the crowd to get a better understanding of the probability of something being true.”
Cellphones are proliferating at ”astounding rates” with an estimated 3,5-billion of them worldwide by the end of 2008, according MobileActive.org, an online organisation devoted to using mobile technology for social change.
Mobileactive.org has used cellphones for goals ranging from connecting people during disasters to using computerised smart phones as microscopes for medical research.
Organisations have used cellphones to swing elections through get-out-the-vote activities; monitor voting; send health alerts to dispersed populations; document political abuses, and lobby for environmental laws.
Bright Simons co-founded mPedigree, which offers ways to thwart medicine fraud in Africa or India by enabling people to use cellphones to check that prescription drugs are authentic. — AFP
