MobileActive.org

The Meek Shall Inherit the Web -- via their mobiles, no less

MobileActive is a member of a new working group on the 'mobile web' for social development. (Discloure: we underwrote a recent event in Brazil of the group). Now the Economist has written a piece on the working group. Here are some excerpts and some thoughts and critiques of this effort.

The Economist states the case:

MobileActive in the Economist, NY Times, and Canadian Broadcasting Service

MobileActive has been in the news this week, including in a special section on 'mobility' in the Economist, titled "A World of Witnesses." The article discusses various ways that mobile phones have been used for social good, including in health, election monitoring, and recording human rights abuses. From the article:

Of Cats, Mice, and Handsets: MobileActive in the Economist

MobileActive's last event in Brazil is over but the coverage continues:  Evgeny Morozov writes in the current issue of the Economist about the pioneers of using mobile phones in advocacy and civil society. 

He writes: "At a recent conference in São Paulo on “mobile activism”—a term that embraces humanitarian work as well as protest—there was much talk about how to “go beyond text” when using mobile phones. And it became clear that exuberant practice was galloping ahead of theory.

He notes rightly what MobileActives already know:  "Mobile activists have never lacked imagination, and many of them are already hard at work, thinking of clever new uses for those little devices—mostly rather crude, five-year-old models—that have become part of daily life in the poorest parts of the world."  Read the article.