Social Networking at the bottom of the pyramid..

                

Are you the sort of person who feels an instant sense of fatigue while reading the newspapers? Are you disturbed by the rising number of scams even as you read about them day after day? No, the number of scams haven’t gone up drastically. What’s happening, dear reader, is that you are getting faster and greater information flow. And promoting the “flow” are the multiple media platforms; so, from reading the news in print, you have access to the same news on the Net and also on television news channels. 

Just how can media promote innovation in government sectors that demand immediate attention? This was a question raised at the session, ‘How media can promote design and governance Innovation’, part of Design!Public, a day-long conclave to study ways of promoting governance innovation. 

For starters, the government needs to design and create websites in the digital media space that enables citizens to react and respond. Think about it. The often staid and rarely updated government websites can undergo a drastic change if only they are created as interactive platforms encouraging people to come aboard, interact directly and put forth their point of view.  Design, after all, is not about structure alone. It’s about information. 

Simply put, what we can start through media is digital activism. A case in point: Tata Tea’s Jaago Re campaign, an example of not just a commercially sustainable advertising campaign but also one with a public message to curb corruption. The brand was promoted through an interactive website even as the television commercials made us sit up and take note of the brand and what it did through innovation.  

An example of technology “convergence” discussed at the session was an NGO in Maharashtra dealing with nutrition and education issues for the underprivileged. From creating dedicated telephone lines for “anganwadi” workers to emphasizing the NGO work through television programmes to even starting a dedicated website to allow a process of interaction, the NGO was doing its bit in not just promoting its work but also getting feedback for what it was doing..

Now If cybercafés brought to those who did not have home PCs the power of the Net, a new class of handphones, called "smart feature phones" are marrying low-end hardware and software in a way under which the cheaper feature phones - which do not allow third-party applications -can be enabled for selected features of the Net, such as news, content or applications such as social media sites Facebook and Twitter. And that is what is powering what I call the "Networking at the bottom of the pyramid" (This is also aided by SMS-based communities linked to the Web).

 

 Facebook is making this happen through the integration of technology from Snaptu, a company it acquired. Media giant Yahoo is working with telecom service operators on the one hand and chip designers on the other, to make this work.

Yahoo plans to offer its services, such as its Yahoo Messenger, news, finance, weather, mail and Flickr embedded in MediaTek chips.

This is not really a browser interface that helps you take on the big big world of the Net, but what I call "Internet in a sachet" - to borrow an expression consumer goods companies used to proliferate the shampoo. "We are able to provide optimised Yahoo experience on very low-end devices," said Maheshwari. "It is going to give us reach."

The bottomline: we are heading for a future in which a Rs 1,000 handphone can access and interact with limited Internet features.

Last week, MediaTek announced an investment of $20 million in Spice Digital, a mobile value added service (VAS) company of the Modi group. MediaTek powers the chipsets for many feature phones in the market - companies like MicroMax, Lemon, Karbonn, Olive, Videocon, Intex etc.

By marrying content services with low-end handsets, design firms like MediaTek are doing to the Internet what microfinance is doing to banking

There is a lot to written on this.. and a gallons more to be shared..
I would love reading your views - guruism@aol.in

The Treasure cries.. :(

 You know about the $22 billion treasure in Trivandrum. So I am not going to recap the story about how the erstwhile—Indian royal families are always ‘erstwhile’ no?—royal family of Travancore and the Shri Padmanabhaswamy temple accumulated pots of gold over centuries in the form of taxes, gifts and bribes.
While the sheer volume of riches unearthed continue boggle minds and pop eyes, there is now a debate swirling up about what should be done with this astonishing wealth. Should the temple keep and treat it as personal wealth? Or should the government take it over and use it in some manner beneficial to the public? Trivandrum MP Shashi Tharoor wants to retain the treasure within the temple premises.
The pro-temple—or is it anti-state?—faction seem to be rallying around the idea that no one has the right to spend someone else’s money. That this is private property and should stay that way.
My views are irrelevant here.
(But since you ask: I am deeply saddened when religious institutions in one of the flagship “poor” countries of the world hoard so much wealth. $22 billion is an astonishing, game-changing amount of money that can be used to build sustainable institutions from scratch. Sure, the government is no white knight of fiscal transparency and prudence. But religious institutions are no safe havens either.
Maybe institutions should commit to spending a certain percentage of their wealth each year on social projects.
Wait. I know what some of you are thinking. Let me save you the speculation. I am a Hindu born , studied at a Roman Catholic school since by birth and graduated at sikh college,  But my only god is Mark Knopfler. Yes, churches/mosques/temples hoard wealth too. Yes, I think they should give it away too. No, I can’t make them do it first before your temples or mosques have to. Relax. I am not the enemy.!
There is the history of the hoard. Which will take much telling. I vividly remember watching Gharwali films of the 1980's- 1990's that dealt with such hordes of treasure being found under temples, inside wells and in cemeteries. I loved those movies, even if some of them did often end up being slapstick, dash-for-the-cash comedies. Let us all sincerely hope this latest find does not.
Also this comes at a time when a number of period Gharwali movies seem to have revived interest in local history.
But what is depressing is how the debate from the very beginning is skewed heavily in favourite of status quo. And status quo, as we all know, is India’s favourite solution to problems. Now I don’t mean to say that doing nothing is always the sub-optimal solution. Sometimes, for instance if Ghulam Nabi Azad says something, it is best to act as if nothing happened and carry on.
Yet somehow I get the feeling that all sides of a debate prepare for it by practising the word ‘No’ many times in front of a mirror. The sum total of what I have read on blogs, tweet and in columns so far:
1. Should the government take over the treasure? No. The government is full of thieves. There was something about spectrum…
2. Should the treasure be used for the public? No. Why do you want to spend other people’s money? This is private property.
3. Should be allow the temple to do something with it? No. What if they steal it? Maybe they already are?
4. Surely we can put it in a museum? No. Remember Gandhi’s glasses? Definitely thieving will happen.
5. Maybe the government and temple can somehow use it to help the poor? No need. First you tell all the churches and mosques to give up their wealth.
So what do you do? Count it, videotape it, photograph it and put it back in a hole in the ground. And put policemen all around it all the time. But by no means do anything with it.
All of those arguments have merits of course. Our government steals with aplomb, it probably is private property, temples are not above the occasional pilferage, our museums suck, and yes everybody else has treasure in their chambers as well. Perhaps all this negativity is symbolic of the general moral malaise that the nation has been plunged into ever since, what, the Commonwealth Games. People have written about the paucity of genuine good news from India.
I fear that all this bad news has plunged us into a permanent “worst-case scenario” frame of my mind. We go into a debate or a problem assuming that everyone will behave in the worst possible way. I already assume that all horrible news about female feticide is true, all government data is false, everything BCCI does is bad for cricket, and any positive news coming from India has a heinous evil side which will reveal itself soon enough and embarrass us all. Like a negative dope test.
Maybe I am just over-thinking this, reading the wrong columns and swiping through the most cynical tweets. But now I find myself in a bitter, cynical place. And I dislike it very much.
Do you think there is room in that secure, quiet vault under the Shri Padmanabhaswamy temple for a perturbed blogger? It seems happier down there than up on the ground above.