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Join us on Tuesday for the first Change seminar of the fall quarter. We're excited to have Jonathan Donner from MSR speak about Mobile Internet and Digital Inclusion in the Developing World. What: Jonathan Donner (MSR): Everybody’s Internet? Mobile Internet and Digital Inclusion in the Developing World When: Tuesday, October 1st at 12 noon Where: The Allen Center, CSE 203 Wireless broadband will soon cover 85% of the world’s population. This talk, taken from a book in preparation, details the growing importance of ‘mobile-centric internet use’ in the developing world, raising questions and challenges for policy and design In the talk I describe studies illustrating the remarkable potential of the mobile phone in three domains of socioeconomic development: microenterprises and livelihoods, citizen journalism, and secondary education. Yet, in each case, I use a ‘digital repertoires’ lens to illustrate how the capacity to generate and manipulate digital information remains concentrated among those with access to digital tools beyond the mobile phone. Some of these persistent digital stratifications can be reduced with combined inputs from technologists, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. From natural user interfaces to language support to bandwidth pricing, there are concrete ways in which more empathetic design and policy can help a greater proportion of the world’s inhabitants participate in the information society, even if, for many, the primary device will remain an inexpensive mobile phone. Jonathan Donner is a researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets Group (TEM) at Microsoft Research. For the last decade, Jonathan has published research on the growth in mobile telephony in the developing world, focusing on its implications for socioeconomic development and its uses in everyday life. His projects at TEM include Microenterprise Development, Mobile Banking, Citizen Journalism, Mobile Health, and Youth and New Media. Prior to Joining Microsoft Research, he was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and worked with Monitor Company and the OTF Group, consultancies in Boston, MA. In addition to dozens of scholarly articles, he is the author, with Richard Ling, of Mobile Communication, and co-editor, with Patricia Mechael, of mHealth in Practice: Mobile Technology for Health Promotion in the Developing World. His Ph.D. is from Stanford University in Communication Research. Jonathan is based in South Africa and is a visiting academic at the University of Cape Town’s Centre in ICT4D. Further details on Jonathan’s research are at jonathandonner.com and via twitter as @jcdonner.
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