Disagreements about applying resources to alleviating the suffering of poverty have deep roots. Two thousand years ago, in a oft-quoted passage from the Bible, Jesus told his disciples not to worry if they missed an opportunity to give money to the poor because “The poor you will always have with you,” and therefore there’s always another opportunity to give in the future. In the 18th century Adam Smith took a more proactive approach than Jesus, arguing that the best treatment for poverty was to increase the wealth of nations by allowing capitalists to increase their own wealth.
These two views continue to shape current conversation on the “bottom billion” of the planet’s population who are getting poorer or, at best, stagnating in poverty. Digital media devices have increasingly become available to populations that may be struggling with hunger, unsafe drinking water, civil war, or systemic corruption. In light of these basic challenges, the question of whether the global poor really need cell phones absolutely deserves to be asked.
When people ask this question, it’s a mirror image of the same question companies ask: What is the Return on Investment (ROI) of digital media?
As media professionals, we are accustomed to making the case that our specialty area can contribute to the profitability of our employers. We often just accept that the other end of the pipeline knows what it’s doing, and that digital media consumers can best judge that value they get from their cell phones and laptops. But there are two reasons why we can’t make that assumption when it comes to the emerging market of digital media users in the bottom billion countries.
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This is my Reflection Paper for week two of the Emerging Markets in Digital Media class.
In the first three chapters of “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits,” C. K. Prahalad proposes that the best path out of poverty in developing countries is the same path most of the developed world has taken: wealth creation through capital investment in supplying consumer goods. Prahalad recognizes flaws that have historically accompanied this route, such as wasteful use of resources, and even presents them as opportunities for progress that could pay off in developed economies as well. Primarily, however, the first part of the book is concerned with promoting the understanding that social, economic, and infrastructure conditions in the developing world mandate different business approaches from those that succeed in the developed world.
In their paper “The Case of the Occasionally Cheap Computer: Low-cost Devices and Classrooms in the Developing World,” an international team of researchers looks into computers in primary education in developing countries. They examine not only cost, but also form factors, technology, and social attitudes. In many respects, their conclusions mirror Prahalad’s point that solutions built for developed countries don’t necessarily meet the needs of developing ones.
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The first weekly reflection paper for the class I’m taking this quarter in the Master of Communication in Digital Media program. The class is Emerging Markets in Digital Media, taught by Anita Verna Crofts, Director of Communication and Outreach for the Global Health Leadership Program.
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In writing about the European front in World War II, it’s been argued that American troops were well-prepared for the realities of field warfare because they hadn’t been raised to be soldiers. By training, the GIs were farmers, mechanics, workers of all stripes. When a German tank broke, more often than not the crew abandoned it. When an American tank broke, the crew often figured out ways to get it running again using a boot lace and a tin can. The Germans waited for orders, the Americans improvised.
The Germans were excellent soldiers. The Americans were excellent doers.
In my experience, even the best-run companies I’ve worked for have had a built-in tendency to run like the German army. In fact, a lot of managers I know would define adherence to a hierarchy to be the very definition of “well-run.”
I disagree. In the media age, the weakest companies are those where management insists on being completely in charge. Or worse, where “rewarding individual initiative” is a mantra but is regularly undercut by actually rewarding the opposite. (Continued)
Months ago, I proclaimed my next blog post would be on the Semantic Web. I started writing it, then things got a little hectic. It’s been a very busy and productive summer for me, with a lot of different strands coming together in interesting ways.
It’s made me thing that too often when thinking about all this media stuff that I do for a living, it becomes an abstraction. There are a lot of mental exercises one can do to figure out how to make a great user experience, or utilize social media to boost sales, or markup HTML to optimize semantic value. But on a base level, it’s not that different from any other job.
Back in college and right after, during the recession of the early 90’s, I used to pick up food service jobs. I’ve been a coffee barista, a pie slinger, and a prep cook. But more often than not, I was a dishwasher. (Continued)
In case you’ve never heard of it, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of trying to raise your site’s placement in Internet Search Engines. Everyone wants to be on the first page of Google results, and preferably in the first five listings on that page. The increase in traffic that comes from better search rankings can be enormous and lucrative.
I might be called an “SEO skeptic.” That’s not because I think SEO has no benefit — In fact I think understanding SEO is essential to managing a Web site well. So how can I be a skeptic?
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This is the final paper for the Master of Communication, Digital Media program’s “Evolution and Trends in Digital Media” class, taught with enthusiasm by Ken Rufo. The assignment was to project the future of a chosen medium two, five, and ten years into the future. By the time I was finished prognosticating social networking, I’d come to feel my projections were conservative and the pace of change will likely be more rapid. I now feel we may see my ten year projections coming to pass in little more than five years. By contrast, In 1999 when I was at Disney doing a streaming media competitive analysis and making projections on the rate of adoption of broadband I was too optimistic in my assessment by about 50%. Moral: It can be hard to get the future exactly right.
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This is another short paper for the “Evolution and Trends in Digital Media” class. I chose this book because it came out during my undergraduate studies when I was first being exposed to the Orality and Literacy concepts that Walter J. Ong and others had developed. Havelock was recommended to me by the amazing Charlie Teske, but my studies were moving from media theory to media practice and I didn’t read him at the time. Even though “The Muse Learns to Write” didn’t quite fit the criteria for supplemental readings, Ken Rufo let me choose it because he had almost assigned it as a reading for the “Evolution” class. Anyone who really wants to understand what’s going on in media today has to go back to the emergence of literacy in Ancient Greece. Seriously. I wish more people in upper management over media properties would learn this stuff.
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I wrote this paper as an assigned topic for Ken Rufo’s “Evolution and Trends in Digital Media” class for the Master of Communication, Digital Media program. I chose this one because I had purchased a PowerComputing Mac clone during the period when they shipped with BeOS as well as MacOS, and I had followed the long saga leading to the eventual purchase of NeXT by Apple with considerable interest. The paper could use another editorial pass, as my last edit for length introduced some choppiness, but I think it’s a good read and a story that you don’t have to be too much of a geek to find interesting.
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Wednesday, December 3, 2008
This is a paper I wrote in Fall Quarter 2009 for the Master of Communication, Digital Media program’s “Research and Methodology”core class. The assignment was to propose a research project, with the grade being given on the form and thoroughness of the proposal. The CRED+STAMP metric I propose is one way to approach the problem of measuring campaign effectiveness through social media. I think it has value and could be pursued. However, I offer it with the caveat that more effort went into the form of the paper than the substance.
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