communication « Many Possibilities

Africa, Innovation, and The Incredibles

By Steve Song, on April 9th, 2010

Philip Auerswald recently took advantage of arch-villain Syndrome (from the Pixar movie The Incredibles) to paint a tongue-in-cheek picture of his relationship with Bill Easterly. Entertained and emboldened by this, I was reminded of my own insight from watching (more than once I’m afraid) The Incredibles with my sons. Mine was not a Buddy Pine [...] [...]

Mobiles in Africa – We Need The Eggs

By Steve Song, on April 29th, 2009

At the end of the movie Annie Hall, Woody Allen says, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy, he thinks he’s a chicken,’ and uh, the doctor says, ‘well why don’t you turn him in?’ And the guy says, ‘I would, but I need the eggs.’ Well, I guess [...] [...]

South Africa: Income Spent on Communication

By Steve Song, on March 12th, 2008

The conventional wisdom in the ICT4D community is that people in developing countries spend a higher percentage of their income on communications than the global average. For South Africa, this notion became is widely accepted (I think) thanks to the Vodafone study on mobile usage, in which Diane Coyle of Enlighenment Economics says: “Expenditure on [...] [...]