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Trucking the dream.
Hello all, i thought I’d bore you with some tails of the road and why trucks are cool.
The theoretical blurb, come waffle;
Recently I’ve been doing some work in Ghana, a tricky situation after …

Recently I’ve been having quite a few conversations about social media where people are expressing quite a high level of scepticism. A common view is that we should be careful when promoting social media because not everyone has access to the necessary technology to use it.

Knowledge works in mysterious ways. So just to give you Carouselians an idea of what is going on, here is a recent conference proposal I will probably submit for the IAMCR conference in Braga, Portugal this summer (together with a friend of mine). The abstract below:

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(UPDATE!  The continuing discussion in NYT has made me edit my post a bit.  Please note that I have specially erased references to the comment that I referred to as I know now a bit …

During the past month I have been working on a pilot project in Ethiopia that combines two unusual bedfellows: mobiles phones and climate change. The idea has been to develop a system that would channel carbon sequestration funds to hundreds of thousands of rural farmers in Ethiopia in support of their reforestation efforts. A simple concept: more carbon tied to biomass through growing trees; more money produced. All of this would be then mediated by the mobile phone from data gathering to calculating biomass patterns to remuneration. This talk will present some of the problems and challenges the use of mobile phones raises in a country such as Ethiopia. It will look explain the current stage of the pilot project, describe some of the technical and political challenges we have encountered as well as extrapolate some broader theoretical implications of trying to leapfrog the digital divide through the use of mobile technology.

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As some of you may recall a few months back when we set up the website, I said that at least a familiarity of new social media such as Twitter should be mandatory for all …

We have been tossing around a lot of theory this term, both in the Thursday group and in the many classes I have had the pleasure of having a role in. One question that is often asked: what use is all this complex theory and philosophy? That is, once you get into the messy world where you have to actually get things done, how do you then instrumentalize some of the ideas that we enjoy reading and debating? Why the extra headache?

Last September we hosted Ken Banks from Kiwanja.net as a part of our weekly seminar series at the Centre for Media and Film studies at SOAS. He is one of the key figures working on the emerging field of mobile activism that is becoming increasingly popular especially in Africa. Ken has since done quite a lot of interesting work and is constantly writing about his work in mobile activism on his blog. Recommended reading. As I recall, the discussion at the seminar was rather lively: the critical questions focusing on the potential problems of such a developmental and technology-based approach to solve some of the problems Africa faces. The discussion continued and trickled down on his blog even after the event was over. I briefly quote Ken: