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Interesting piece in the NYT: Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty? by Sara Corbett. Interesting newish career: user anthropologist.

Alright, if you only read the previous excerpt you may have gotten the wrong impression, so I’ve digested the article for you. The point being that cellphones, like most technology, may be put to the most stupid uses, but they are beneficial.

“In an increasingly transitory world, the cellphone is becoming the one fixed piece of our identity. Having a call-back number is having a fixed identity point, which, inside of populations that are constantly on the move — displaced by war, floods, drought or faltering economies — can be immensely valuable both as a means of keeping in touch with home communities and as a business tool.”

Cellphones “have an economizing effect”–for instance, you don’t have to waste time waiting at a designated time and place, you can coordinate with each other incrementally. “Even the smallest improvements in efficiency could reshape the global economy in ways that we are just beginning to understand.”

“Something that’s mostly a convenience booster for those of us with a full complement of technology at our disposal can be a life-saver to someone with fewer ways to access information.”

The cellphone has the “ability to increase people’s productivity and well-being, mostly because of the simple fact that they can be reached.”

“Mobile banking (GCash is cited as an example) will bring huge numbers of previously excluded people into the formal economy quickly, simply because the latent demand for such services is so great, especially among the rural poor.”

Communication is “quite viable as a fundamental right. The phone represents what people are aspiring to.”

I want a cellphone that’s a tricorder and a phaser.