On this week’s show, Nora chats with Nathan Eagle about designing mobile phone applications in Africa. Nathan is an MIT research scientist and postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute.
In October, Nathan plans to launch txteagle, a project that sends people small, simple tasks to do on their cell phones. Nathan observed that you can spend a lot of time waiting in Africa, and that people could put that time to better use by working on their mobile phones. What kind of work are we talking about? Nathan has posted some samples on the txteagle site.
He goes on to talk about some of the genius ideas for new mobile phones apps he’s seeing in Africa and highlights one example where mobile phones are changing the way Rwandans pay for their electricity (9:05 in the audio below). He also gives his two cents on what the future holds for mobile tech.
An edited version of this interview will appear on the Oct 1 and 4 show, but you can listen to the extended interview below, or download it here.
Play audio:
Wow! I can’t wait to tell my high school students about what people in Africa are doing with their cell phones! Great interview Nora.
"The basic idea is to let people with cell phones to perform certain small paying jobs, to supplement their income". This idea is interesting.
Interesting point. It is good to see that you follow up about these important african questions. But frequently I have the impression that it is nonsense to think about it. The contientn of Africa is somehow gone from our mindes and from television. There seems to be only killing and disputes in a large range of African countries. So why to look at it? … Your are right: Better to look at it than to leave African questions alone. Go on please!.
i guess mobile phones in the future will feature more processing power and great graphics-~~