MobileActive.org

This paper focuses on how this intermingling of lives and livelihoods, as mediated by the mobile phone, figures into the micro-processes of economic development. It neither broadly elaborates the core contributions of mobile phone use to economic development (synchronizing prices, expanding markets, reducing transport costs, etc.), nor suggests that one kind of mobile use is more important than another. Instead, it argues simply for a perspective on work and on livelihoods that is broad enough to account for (and perhaps even take advantage of) the social processes surrounding these activities. Analysts, policymakers, and technologists interested in the application of Mobiles for Development (M4D) should not ignore the way mobiles blur livelihoods and lives; the developmental and nondevelopmental uses of the mobile are not in competition, nor are they always distinguishable. Instead, the uses of mobiles for developmental and non-developmental purposes are often interrelated and sometimes mutually reinforcing. The social functions of the mobile (in matters of connection and self-expression) are helping drive its widespread adoption, and these same functions inform the very behaviors that make the mobile a tool for economic development.