Drew Cogbill | Thesis Blog

I used a Nico Muhly song in a public installation I did last year.  His new album, Mothertonuge, is beautiful.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, which I just finished reading, is also beautiful.

Additionally: my LastFM profile

A Primer on Smart Cards, David Pouge

via Carrie Mae

I need to get my brain thining in prototype mode, so I made myself make a look-and-feel and a role prototype.  Here they are:

Look-and-feel prototype for an SMS hurricane/tropical storm alert system for Belize.  It could be a national system.  It could be law that when a person buys a cell phone they must enroll or be asked if they’d like to enroll in the alert system.

There are huge technical issues here, but for me one big issue is how this would be made sustainable for the long-term.  Would it survive politcal transition?  What would it take to have people trust this as a reliable source of information?  Perhaps, who should the SMS come from for it to be trusted?  An NGO or the government?

Role prototype for an imaginary SMS based system which helps streamline micro-business operations.

In work I’ve done with volunteer groups looking into micro-business management, business-owners have had very low skills with money managment and other basic busienss planning.  If such a system were to exist, what would be most useful?  If fincancial information was being transmitted, what would need to be done for business owners to be comfortable with using the system?

More generally: what are tasks that people use computers for that mobile phones could replace, allowing greater access to people living in poverty who can much more easily (financially and logistically) purchase a phone versus a computer?

So, I’m working on my questions and my domains.

My (too general) thesis question: How can creative uses of (mobile?) technology improve the lives of those living in poverty?

This needs to be honed down with at least one more specification rather quickly.  This Venn Diagram show this idea a bit more neatly: