Next Decade of Social, Economical and Ethical Challenges Perspectives of a Networked World

In his seminal book "The New Asian Hemisphere - The irreversible shift of global power to the East" Kishore Mahbubani, the famous Singaporean diplomat and professor at the National University of Singapore gave an in-depth analysis about the changes which are implied by the use of mobile phones in developing countries. Three of his examples should illustrate this: (1) "The Bangladesh economy has gone up because of mobile phones by 2 percent. That surpasses the money given to Bangladesh through aid" , (2) "For less than one penny per minute the world cheapest cell phone call ratesIndian farmers in remote areas can check prices for their produce. They also track global trends using cell phones-based Internet services that show the price of pumpkins and bananas in London and Chicago." and as a third example (3) "Indian farmers use camera phones to snap pictures of crop pests, then send the photos by cell phone to biologists who can identify the bug" . He cited also the famous Indian born business professor C.K. Prahalad at the University of Michigan that one element of poverty is the lack of information and that cell phones give s poor people as much information as the middleman. For many fishermen in India who work off India\´s 4,350 miles of coastline monthly income has been tripled to average 150 US-Dollars since 2000 when cell phones began booming in India. The dealers are now forced to give more money because of competition.