What is often overlooked is the disproportionate impact of mobile phones on different societies, which is why, as researchers, we increasingly prefer to spend time in places like Cairo and Kampala: there is simply more to learn. Each new feature brings new modes of use – unencumbered by my, and probably your entrenched (and increasingly outdated) notions of entertainment, the ‘right’ way to share experiences, the internet.

Most m-banking users have never owned bank accounts, but they have cellphones. Linking financial services to cellular subscriptions gives them use-anywhere, anytime banking. After the spread of the mobile propelled the continent into the global communications village almost a decade ago, this is the next phase in Africa’s mobile revolution.

Many countries on the wrong side of what’s been called the ‘global digital divide’ are seeing dramatic improvements in access to communications, and mobile phones are having a particular impact. The StoryBank project looks at ways of using them to enable technology-poor villagers to participate in and benefit from content creation and sharing activities.

Looking at infrastructure, resource distribution, organisational issues, culture and pedagogy suggests that rural communities, ethnic minorities and the urban dispossessed, whatever the setting, share many attributes of disadvantage with societies in sub-Saharan Africa. We should be conscious of what mobile learning there can teach us wherever we work.

The current mobile experience is designed for a literate section of the world who can expect interfaces in their native language. Another section of users have problems navigating text-based interfaces and need to reinforce links with the families they have left behind. What they need are alternative interfaces, social tools and better native language support.

Brazil finished 2007 with 121 million cell phones – a 63% penetration rate. The exponential cell phone increase in developing countries is a worldwide tendency. However, in a place with economic inequalities like Brazil, it is fallacious to think that cell phone use is homogeneous across different sectors of the population.

A range of profit-motivated enterprises are deploying innovative technologies, novel approaches and communication tools to solve some of the most pressing problems faced by the vast majority of the world’s population. Against such an entrepreneurial backdrop, the mobile phone is emerging as an unexpectedly effective and flexible tool.

Why has China become a center of passionate technology usage? There are two cultural explanations for the intensity with which Chinese have adopted the internet and, even more so, mobile phones: the single child policy of nearly thirty years, and the dearth of communication and entertainment alternatives.

When it comes to mobile innovation, the gap between developed and developing countries is not much of a gap at all. Mobile innovation in the West, largely technology-led, sits in contrast to that in the developing world where combating the geographic, economic and cultural constraints of users is considered a more sensible way to go…

Irad Lee’s Spamology, a representation of word frequencies in spam E-mail messages, aims at visualizing the links and interrelationships between the contents of spam, the user / individual and the society. It does so by revealing patterns in spam which may reflect cultural and social trends, behaviors and variations.

Issue 20 of receiver was designed by students of The Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. The Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing is a leading institution for modern art education in China. CAFA, the only art academy of higher learning directly under the Ministry of Education, was founded in 1950. It has six schools: The School of Fine Art, School of Chinese Painting, School of Design, School of Architecture, School of Humanities, School of City Design as well as the School of Continuing Education and the Affiliated High School of Fine Art. All schools provide academic, experimental, practising and multi-disciplinary training within a future-oriented educational infrastructure.