Mobile phones are weapons of mass information

CALLING ALL ACTIVISTS. Apparently the mobile phone is the way forward for political protest, citizen journalism and empowerment. At least according to the clever boffins waffling on at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference.

One after another, TED speakers seem to be trying to convince us our mobiles are actually so much more than flashy little devices we play Snake on, or send pictures of recently built snowmen with, they can actually be used as weapons of information. A mobile rocket-in-your-pocket, if you will.

Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of technology service provider, Infosys, noted "The mobile telephone has become an instrument of empowerment." And with an estimated 3.5 billion of them worldwide, that's not surprising.

A good example of that empowerment was demonstrated by Palestinians under siege in Gaza last month, where Arab news network Al Jazeera spread African technology platform Ushadidi around to help the entrenched population report directly on the crisis.

One-year-old Kenyan creation Ushadidi, which was launched during post-election violence as a 'crowd sourcing' mobile platform, turned many a Gazan resident into a citizen journalist, reporting the news behind lines which the regular media was not allowed to cross.

Ushadidi's 'crowd-source filter', which is able to gauge 'believability', has also proved useful in the 'Democratic' Republic of Congo, according to its co-founder Erik Hersman.

"We have the capacity to report eye-witness accounts in real time," Hersman noted, adding, "there is information overload. We think we can tap into the crowd to get a better understanding of the probability of something being true."

Also showcased at TED were Mobileactive.org, which promotes mobile use for anything from connecting people during disasters, to using smart phones as microscopes for medical research and mPedigree, an organisation which lets people in the developing world use their mobiles to check whether prescription drugs are authentic. µ

L'Inq
AFP