Photo: Will Weathersby/Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps and Google.org are linking up to change the Gaza Strip and West Bank, one peaceful IT solution at a time.

Thanks to the Arab Developer Network Initiative (ADNI), young Palestinians will have the opportunity to develop web-based technological skills, sparking a new generation of capable, creative entrepreneurs. With the help of training sessions from Google and Mercy Corps’ seasoned experts, and additional funding from Source of Hope, ADNI is expected to open up a new professional field for Palestine’s motivated, young, job-seeking graduates.

The Challenge: For many Palestinian youth these days, unemployment is standard—the majority are jobless, despite relatively high educations. This youth bulge, created by a large baby boom in the 1980s, has ballooned during a global economic lull and left thousands of skilled 20- and 30-somethings without work. The unemployment rate for youth between 20-24 years is 66 percent in Gaza and 34 percent in the West Bank. It’s a terrible time to be young and in need of a job in the Middle East.

Palestine’s tech sector is so far not keeping up with forward-thinking tech innovations, such as cloud computing and app software. Currently, the sector represents a small niche, accounting for only five percent of the Palestinian economy. The lack of harmony between technological innovation and economic development is compounded by the alarming fact that about one percent of online content is available in Arabic.

The Opportunity: With a $900,000 grant provided by Google.org (the philanthropic branch of Google) for the first two years, and an additional $1 million provided by the Source of Hope Foundation, ADNI will have a healthy nest egg to start developing its program. The initiative includes three major components: technological and business-specific training, local and international mentorships, and seed capital investments.

What are they coming up with? Ideas already proposed by Palestinian ADNI participants include an app that turns off when entering a mosque, hand gesture recognition software, and Gaza Places, the Palestinian version of Google Maps. Mercy Corps and Google hope that investing in ambitious, fertile minds will, in turn, create dynamic innovations with social impact and the potential to produce income.

Photo: Mohammed El Baba for Mercy Corps

The Obstacles: Mobility and location flexibility is a well-known headache for the territorially-conscious region. However, an Internet connection allows people to work anywhere and cloud computing has changed the way we think about physical IT resources and traditional bumps in the road to developing apps. The initiative sets up a win-win situation: Palestinians receive the toolkit they need to supply an unfulfilled demand, while Google expands its interests in the Arabic-speaking market, which is ripe for paid online advertisements.

While the results of this project appear promising, ADNI still has many valleys to cross before reaching the promised land. No 3G network currently exists in the region for wireless devices. Commercial goods and materials cost a pretty penny, approximately 50 percent more than outside the borders. PayPal is not available to most. In Palestine, the platforms the global tech sector is built on simply aren't in place.

The Hope: In spite of these inconveniences, both Mercy Corps and Google are optimistic about their joint venture. “Palestinians have such a unique position," says Gisel Kordestani, Google's director of new business development. "They're well educated. They have strong English-language skills. With 88 million people in the [Middle East and North African] region getting online, they have the opportunity to build something for the Arab world."

And so Google.org, Mercy Corps and Source of Hope seem to be abiding by a proverb from one of the most notable male figures from Nazareth, who once preached: “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.”

Get involved as a mentor, trainer or investor: arabtech@sea.mercycorps.org

RELATED CONTENT:What They're Saying at Startup Weekend in Gaza

Girls in Kabul use an OLPC laptop in the classroom. Photo: One Laptop Per Child (flickr)

Last week, two products were unveiled that may drastically change youth interaction with computing—One Laptop Per Child’s tablet computer and Raspberry Pi’s $35 Linux Computer.

One Laptop Per Child is already well-known for its campaign to provide any child who needs one with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, Internet-connected laptop. The new tablet, called the XO 3.0, will cost $100 in bulk and comes with an optional hand-crank or solar panel case for charging. Educators are already excited about its potential use in the classroom.

Surprisingly, quite a few iPad users are jealous of the XO 3.0’s innovative display—it features the usual glossy tablet display but also has an e-ink display that can be used in harsh sunlight or to conserve power.

Raspberry Pi‘s mission is also to produce low-cost computers, but its credit-card-sized product, intended to plug into a television, is designed to help kids learn computer programming in addition to providing a platform for easy Internet access. While the tablet and ipad discourage users from tinkering with the hardware, the Rasperry Pi promotes this kind of hacking.

The Raspberry Pi may not be as pretty as the XO 3.0, but—priced at $35—it is considerably more affordable. It will also be available directly from its website, whereas the tablet can only be purchased in bulk.

Between these two options, more children around the world will have a better chance at self-empowering, computer-based learning.

The use of technology in humanitarian aid planning is on the rise. Photo: Esther Gibbons (Flicker)

2011 is over, but the impact technology had on humanitarian aid planning last year could be just beginning to emerge.

Humanitarian issues demand immediate solutions. In 2011, a lot of solutions to crises placed heavy emphasis on technology. Here are three notable examples:

Disaster prone Bangladesh turned to GPS to provide early weather warnings to fishermen.

Airtel, a private mobile operator in Bangladesh will provide early weather warnings to fishermen using its global positioning system via cell phones in partnership with the Center for Global Change, the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods and two international NGOs, according to IRIN.

More than half on Bangladesh’s population uses mobile phones. Early weather warnings could prove to be a life-saving tool. "75 percent of the country’s population lives in rural, disaster-prone areas, an ideal environment in which to exploit the potential of mobile phones to mitigate disasters," IRIN reported.

Technology has helped put Kibera on the map, literally.

Finding Kibera, a district of Nairobi, on a map before 2009 was not an easy task because it wasn’t on one. The location of schools, medical facilities, water points and other basic information was simply not available. As a result, The Map Kibera Project was created in order to provide this information. The goal: to train nine Kibera residents in using GPS devices to gather geographical information in a "citizen mapping" project.

Now this information is available on OpenStreetMap, a global map anyone can view and edit. Organizers plan to continue adding information on the map and eventually start mapping other communities.

Mobile phones have turned ordinary people into extraordinary philanthropists.

This past year, one of the worst famines in modern history struck the Horn of Africa. Humanitarian aid and donor government assistance poured in from all over the world. One campaign, "Kenyans for Kenya," set a goal to raise $5.28 million dollars in one month. Within 10 days, the goal was met and a bigger goal of $10.56 million set. By September 1, more than $7 million was collected, $1.6 million through private donations.
Contributions, most of them from Kenyan citizens and organizations, were made through a mobile phone money transfer service operated by telecom firm Safaricom. The money collected has been used to send money to affected areas through the Kenyan Red Cross Society, IRIN reports. This has been one of the most successful humanitarian fundraising campaigns Kenya has ever seen, and its efforts are ongoing.

These are only a few examples of how technology has positively impacted humanitarian responses to crises. Technology isn’t the answer to all the world’s problems, but it’s proving to be an effective tool.

Adapted from a report by Lisa Hoashi, Mercy Corps Senior Internal Communications Officer.

Mohammed Gawdat.

Creativity means doing something new. Innovation means doing something differently.

Our world of scarcity needs both.

That's the argument mounted last week in Cairo, at Mercy Corps' bi-annual Global Leadership Gathering, by Mohammed Gawdat, Google's Vice President for Emerging Markets. The set of principles Gawdat laid out matter as much to social entrepreneurs and innovators as to more traditional ones.

Gawdat reviewed four types of innovation:

Product innovation, when someone improves an existing product. For example, Apple's iPod is a product innovation over the MP3 players that came before it.

Process innovation, when an existing process is improved to be more efficient. Toyota innovated when it began to use "lean manufacturing" to make cars.

Service innovation. With stores that feel like "home," Starbucks focuses on selling an experience, rather than just a product, coffee.

Business model innovation. This type of innovation focuses on improving the way that a product is delivered. Amazon.com's online store, which virtually sells everything, fundamentally changed the way that consumers shop and make purchases.

Everyone is born creative, Gawdat said, and has the ability to innovate. "Surprisingly, all you can really do to innovation is block it," he said. "Leadership just has to know how to get out of the way."

Google's nine rules of innovation

1. Start with a clear, simple vision. Gawdat's example was Google's: "To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

2. Hire the best. Gawdat showed this clip from the movie Ratatouille, where a rat tries to prove that he knows enough about cooking to be accepted as a chef. "Just because he's a rat doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's doing," Gawdat said. The "best" employees are whoever are "the best at the mission," he said, regardless of who they are and what credentials they have.

3. Find ideas everywhere. When you come up against someone or an idea that you don't like or find odd, ask "Why?" You never know where it might lead you.

4. Share. "Sometimes the truth hurts," Gawdat acknowledged, "but it's important to share it." At Google, information is thought to be better shared than hidden. Projects in development are shared across the company, and anyone can comment on them.

5. Morph ideas, don't kill them. Don't make the mistake of letting an idea stop at step one: let it shift. Google developed three social networking platforms before arriving at Google+.

6. Speed matters. Fast is better than slow.

7. Data trumps hype. At Google, Gawdat said, "every claim is backed up by data." Solid data drives all decisions.

8. Users come first. (And second, and third, and fourth...) Focus on what the customer wants, and then put resources toward addressing that.

9. Give permission to innovate. At Google, employees are encouraged to use 20 percent of their work time on any project of their choosing that's approved by their manager. "If [a Google employee] says they want to use that time to make a better car, then that's O.K.," said Gawdat. "No one is allowed to say, 'That is not what we do.'"

In closing, Gawdat showed Apple's classic Think Different ad, which ends by saying that "the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

"At most organizations," said Gawdat, "it is the few crazy people that are the ones that drive it forward ... If people are passionate about something, then you should allow them to move forward."

Medic Mobile works with the simplest of cell phones to help provide health care to those far away from their nearest hospital. Photo: Fabiola Coupet/Mercy Corps.

In rural communities around the world, the virtual doctor is in.

The distance between far-flung communities and their nearest hospitals can be fatal. Medic Mobile bridges the gap using a common household item: the cell phone. It’s not the same as a living, breathing doctor, but Medic Mobile comes pretty close, and it does so using a list of platforms that is strikingly similar to what you might find on a smart phone. These seemingly-sophisticated technologies can work on even the most basic of cell phones and computers, just like those found all over the developing world.

Medic Mobile’s Sim Apps, in addition to open-source platforms like FrontlineSMS, OpenMRS, Ushahidi, Google Apps, and HealthMap, allow hospital staff sitting at a computer to communicate with multiple health workers in rural areas. The health workers’ phones are basic, but Medic Mobile uses a tiny parallel SIM card that fits between any GSM phone and a carrier’s cell phone to allow these phones to run the necessary apps. The Medic Mobile website provides a more in-depth description of the many technologies it employs. In a 2009 interview with GOOD magazine, co-founder Lucky Gunasekara described Medic Mobile’s importance:

We can communicate need in real time. Say I am a community health worker in rural Malawi and one of my patients gets really sick. Before this system came along, for a lot of clinics, the patient would die, because even though I have some basic health training as a community health worker, there is nothing I can really do. They're still just as disconnected as the communities they live in. Now with our system clinicians see things in real time and they communicate back.

In addition to saving lives, the program saves time: its website says that in six months, the pilot program in Malawi “saved hospital staff 1200 hours of follow-up time and over $3,000 in motorbike fuel” and cut 900 hours of travel time for antiretroviral therapy monitors by eliminating their need to hand-deliver reports to the hospital.

Since its inception in 2009, Medic Mobile has expanded to Honduras, Haiti, Uganda, Mali, Kenya, South Africa, Cameroon, India and Bangladesh. The platform is adaptable to different situations: it was used in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake to link first responders and locals in need of help. As a result of its successes, Medic Mobile was recently named one of the Top 11 in 2011 mobile health innovators of the year by mHealth Alliance.

The proliferation of cell phones is sparking a revolution in developing-world health care. Innovators from all reaches of the globe have used the near-ubiquitous technology to increase health care affordability and access. By adapting sophisticated platforms to basic devices, they’re turning $15 cell phones into invaluable lifelines.

Editor’s note: For more information on the connection, check out A Medical Lab in the Palm of Your Hand, A Dose of Cell Phone Surveillance Helps Aid Workers Save Lives, and Paging Dr. Smartphone, to name a few.

Yesterday's news could be tomorrow's biofuel. Photo: Lisa Batty (Flickr)

Why not do something useful with those stacks of holiday cards languishing at home? Like re-charge your cell phone.

Japan has taken recycling to the next level: Sony recently unveiled a paper-powered battery prototype. How does it work? Engineers use the enzyme cellulase to break down paper matter into glucose sugar. Combine a few more enzymes with a dash of oxygen and you get a bona fide biofuel.

The process is pulled right from nature, researchers explained: it's used by white ants and termites, which use digested wood as a form of energy.

The paper-fueled battery is still in the early stages of development, but even low-output experiments have big potential. If brought to market, the prospect of using paper waste to recharge mobile phones or run small devices such as fans or lights is a bright spot on the innovation frontier. Whether off-the-grid in rural Africa or struggling with energy payments in the U.S. or Europe, turning paper waste into usable energy can play a part in alleviating poverty.

Perhaps the newspaper industry can capitalize on this green initiative to generate a little green of its own.

Declaring Internet access a human right would dilute the rights that matter more, says Internet pioneer Vint Cerf. Photo: Veni Markovski (Wikimedia)

Get real: The Internet isn't a human right.

That's the message from a man often credited with inventing the Internet, Vint Cerf. Writing in The New York Times yesterday, Cerf, who now works for Google, argued that human rights are "things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives":

At one time if you didn’t have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were granted a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it.

Today's Internet—publicly developed but privately owned and financed—is a key tool in toppling kleptocracies and enriching millions of poor farmers. So Cerf's position is provocative. But it's a reminder that those of us who believe in markets' power to help solve poverty shouldn't cling too tightly to any single "market-based solution."

That wouldn't be market-based at all.

Could soccer help the developing world score more electricity? sOccket, a plug-in soccer ball that captures energy during a game and uses it to charge LEDs and batteries, could be a game changer.

Developed by four Harvard University students connected by their travels to Africa and other developing nations, the idea for the sOccket was originally kicked around for an engineering course assignment, explains the Harvard Gazette. Their ingenious concept involves inserting a soccer ball with an inductive coil mechanism that transforms the toy into an eco-friendly portable generator. The kinetic movement of the sOcket ball propels a magnet through a coil that induces a voltage to generate electricity.

The newest ball requires as little as 10 minutes of play time to generate three hours of energy on an LED light. "The beauty of sOccket is that a kid in a developing nation can play a game of soccer after school, leave the playground, take the ball home, plug a basic lamp into a built-in fixture and have enough light to do homework," observes the blog Social Innovation.

Currently most African nations use kerosene, an expensive and toxic substance, to power their homes. However, sOccket is sidelining the oil-based fuel. With over 46 million soccer players in Africa alone, soccer has become the continent's most electric sport.

A flourishing economy has enabled many Chinese citizens to climb the socio-economic ranks. Photo:xiaming (flickr)

The spirit of 1989’s Tiananmen Square is alive in China, except the swarm of charged students has been replaced by a disgruntled, expanding middle class.

Inadvertently, an economic boom has resounded with cries for change.

2011 has been an exceptionally rough year for government officials trying to maintain social complacency across China’s far-reaching borders. Perhaps inspired by the Arab Spring, Chinese civilians took to the streets in February to enact their own “Jasmine Revolution” (taken from the Tunisian movement of the same name), demanding greater accountability and transparency from their current one-party system. At least 54 activists, including lawyers and intellectuals, were arrested, and, the New York Times reports, the term “jasmine” was blocked on internet search engines. In recent months, labor strikes have swept the People’s Republic, resulting in street rallies filled with middle class voices expressing their frustrations with meager wages and unhealthy work conditions.

However, the butterfly effect of protests—originating from the Arab Spring and expanding into the Occupy Wall Street movements—reaches beyond income inequality. Much of the Chinese middle class will no longer play the passive bystander to haphazard industrialization. On July 23rd, a high speed train collision, killing 40 passengers, moved government-backed news broadcasters to risk publicly questioning the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to provide the public with safe, accessible infrastructures.

In early August, more than 12,000 people converged in the city of Dalian to stop the re-opening of a paraxylene plant (a toxic chemical used to make polyester) after a storm had exposed citizens to chemicals known to cause leukemia and birth defects. The plant’s closure provided a significant win for the protesters—the government agreed to the shutdown despite a reported $1.5 billion invested in the industry.

In a land where censorship and submissiveness are ingrained in the cultural psyche, why are so many compelled to take a stand now? It’s a complex question, but part of the explanation lies in the problem itself: the rise of China’s economy.

Globalization, specifically global export trade, has upshot China into a leading economic powerhouse. Now the fulcrum of production in the globalized world, many Chinese workers are finally transitioning from poor to middle class (defined by The Brookings Institution as households that spend $10 per person daily).

By 2015, the Brookings Institution estimates that for the first time in 300 years, "the number of Asian middle class consumers will equal the number in Europe and North America. By 2021, on present trends, there could be more than 2 billion Asians in middle class households. In China alone, there could be over 670 million middle class consumers, compared with only perhaps 150 million today.”

The Chinese Communist Party has come to rely on the middle class for support; in the past they have served as a relatively quiet buffer between a populous but powerless poor class and a power-driven rich minority. The Economist observes that China has “kept themselves to themselves as a result of the implicit social contract offered by the Communist Party: you let us rule and we will let you get rich.”

China's middle class wants to renegotiate this contract, demanding more environmental and wellness security from their political leaders. “As many previously poor people adopt middle-class lifestyles in the decades ahead,” Brookings researchers observe, “they may find themselves not only consuming more but also more forcefully advocating for less pollution and lower emissions.” In other words, more money means more demands.

If the party chooses to reinvest its money into the people’s pockets through increased incomes, subsidized health care, lowered taxes, and environmental protection, the middle class is expected to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years. However, one only needs to look back at China’s Great Leap Forward to see that blind fixation on economic prowess can result in a neglected, damaged social sector. Looks like China will need to take a middle-road approach if it hopes to flourish.

PepsiCo and Cambridge University recently unveiled the i-crop, a web-based system that could reduce agricultural water waste by 50 percent. Photo:zekasaur (flickr)

This article was republished in The Christian Science Monitor.

"More Bounce to the Ounce.” In the 1950’s, it was a cola slogan; thanks to a new partnership with Cambridge University, it could become the catch phrase of PepsiCo’s i-crop, a web based program that helps farmers reduce water waste.

Here’s how it works: data systems collect information on local weather conditions, farming activity, and soil moisture from underground probes and compiles them online. With a few keystrokes, farmers can eliminate the guessing games about water consumption, resulting in more precise and environmentally-friendly farming. In October, PepsiCo publicly announced its goal of reducing carbon emissions and water usage from their largest UK farms by 50 percent in five years. So far i-crop is testing well: preliminary reports from 22 farms in the UK show farmers have achieved 90 percent efficiency in water usage.

"Farming is in the DNA of our business - we rely on fresh produce everyday," said Richard Evans, President of PepsiCo UK and Ireland, according to PR Newswire. "Finding ways to produce more food with less environmental impact is essential to our future." He added, "i-crop has the potential to revolutionize the way we farm, enabling our farmers to save costs and [reduce] water and carbon consumption, while at the same time improving their yields.”

PepsiCo’s potential to revolutionize water efficiencies in farming is sizable. Netting approximately $43.3 billion annually and employing more than a quarter million people, PepsiCo is the second largest food and beverage business in the world.

Ever enjoyed Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Lay's, Gatorade, Tropicana, 7Up, Doritos, Lipton Teas, Quaker Oats, Cheetos, Ruffles, Aquafina, Tostitos, Sierra Mist, or Fritos? If the i-crop can deliver as hoped, those products will soon be made with less water waste than most competitive grocery items (and who doesn’t want something positive to hold onto after downing a bag of Cheetos?).

Although the i-crop is only accessible to UK farmers, PepsiCo hopes to introduce its technology to farms in India, China, Mexico, and Australia by 2012. However, speculation about i-crop’s availability has raised some eyebrows and provoked the question: Will the i-crop technology, owned privately by PepsiCo, be withheld from those who most need it?

Brain Pickings editor Maria Popova argues that owning such coveted technological rights will put PepsiCo in the middle of an often tense relationship between profiteering and humanitarianism. “The technology is currently only available to PepsiCo-affiliated growers, which raises interesting questions about the relationship between corporate interests and social good in innovation, as well as bespeaking the disconnect between the value of open-source software and the fact that the best-funded research initiatives, most competent scientists and highest-grade technology tend to be subsidized by private corporations.”

If, how, and with whom PepsiCo shares i-crop technology has yet to be determined. In any case, PepsiCo has taken corporate social responsibility by the horns, hopefully luring other influential corporations to recognize that being green is achievable. "Every Generation Refreshes the World," Pespi ads claim. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that PepsiCo can do so for the next generation’s water supply.

The "Fight Back" application will allow woman to report attacks anonymously. Photo:MissMessie (flickr).

Reporting a rape can be as easy as sending a text message.

Women in New Delhi will soon be able to fight back against attackers with the use of a phone application that alerts friends, family and police, and sends a message to her social networks with a GPS location.

One in four Indian rapes takes place in New Delhi, according to The Christian Science Monitor, making it one of the unsafest cities for woman in India. Women are exposed to constant harassment and many incidents go unreported because of shame and lack of response by authorities.

"Safety for women has become such a huge issue here and we felt that citizens of Delhi, where possibly the problem exists the most, could use this type of technological intervention," said Hindol Sengupta, co-founder of Whypoll, which created the application and touts itself as "India's only open government platform."

The “Fight Back” application will be available for a small fee through the Whypoll website and is compatible with cell phones such as Nokia and Black Berry. SOS alerts will cost the same as an SMS.

The stigma and dishonor of rape leads women to not report the crime. Whypoll willrecord and reflect incidents on its website, but ensure users remain anonymous.

Recording what types of crimes occur and where will provide important information to help push for action in the places it is needed the most.

Reporting crimes against Indian women is on the rise. As more women attain political power, gender-related issues are brought to the forefront and action is taken. The “Fight Back” application will provide a new platform for women to be heard.

Men in traditional Maasai clothing using their mobile phones. Photo: Mark Kelley (Flickr)

Envy Jared Cohen. At 29, the man has advised two U.S. presidents, shaped relations between countries, and now leads his own think-tank at Google. But his take on technology suggests you could do this, too.

Cohen, at a recent Mercy Corps-sponsored talk in Portland, OR, wowed the audience with personal anecdotes about how technology is changing international affairs. Cohen has seen firsthand the effects of communications technology and understands the potential it holds for the world’s future.

Cohen, a security expert, spent much of his talk describing the effects of communications progress on modern states and their rule of law. He spoke of technological literacy in Iranian youth that was instrumental in coordinating the June, 2009 Green Revolution. He spoke of an unemployed Colombian activist who used social media to coordinate the anti-FARC demonstration, the largest protest against a terrorist group in history.

"The 21st century," Cohen said, "is a really terrible time to be a control freak." But that applies whether you're trying to control peaceful demonstrators in Cairo or violent drug cartels in Mexico. Government control is proving ever more elusive as groups find out just how empowering technology can be.

Jared Cohen.

He painted a picture of exponentially growing networks that are bringing people together from around the globe. This interconnectedness makes it difficult to control and contain groups that are finding ever more ways to use technology that is itself rapidly progressing. These groups tend to be made up of young people, as the empowering effect of these new forms of communication is most potent for those who understand how to use them.

Each of Cohen’s points seemed to return to a basic theme: technology is eroding the barriers to entry to all sorts of games, markets, and movements. And while technology is getting better, people, especially young people, are getting better at using it. Cohen argues that “those who don’t have information technology today will be the most active users tomorrow.” Ten years ago, 361 million people had access to the Internet. Today, that number has increased to 2.1 billion, with the fastest growth in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. “Pakistan, in the year 2000, had 300,000 mobile phones. By 2010, it had over 100 million. That's in a population of 165 million,” Cohen explained. Technological growth will have the biggest empowering effect on those who currently find themselves with the least power.

Cohen’s opinions on this topic have authority because of the life he's led and the movements he's witnessed. He’s travelled the world and met with leaders of insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, democracies and autocracies. His own story is a case in point that technology is empowering those who know how to use it.

Technology, according to Cohen, is driving the changing tide of the times and youth tend to have an inherent advantage in understanding and deftly using these innovations. Cohen rode the wave of technology into the most exclusive circles in Washington. And he says we should all be using technology to find our own wave to ride.

Ben Osborn is a 2011 graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

Eye scans and finger prints could be the first step to bringing India's rural population out of poverty Photo: Adib Roy (flickr)

No birth certificate, no bank account. No government ID, no loans or assistance programs.

In India, many rural poor don't formally exist, and can't access the very programs designed to help them.

A new initiative to assign ID numbers to every Indian resident in order to provide equal access to economic assistance programs is just taking off. The program is unprecedented in size, attempting to gather iris scans, fingerprints, and residence data on 1.2 billion people. The biometric data would be used to assign foolproof ID numbers, similar to social security numbers in the US. The Unique ID project would allow those most in need to access the government programs aimed at them. It would also open doors for people to move freely to find better jobs or education.

The current identity system often shackles rural residents to their homes. Without any formal identification, they must work with the go-between of a local official. They are unable to move away because without ID, nobody could verify their identity. By cutting out the middle man and providing official identification, you cut out potential corruption and pay offs while increasing opportunities by opening the doors to banks, subsidies, not to mention the rest of the country.

The Unique Identification system is a unique example of private corporations and government working together to benefit society— a relationship that makes many Indians uneasy. However, the program is voluntary and the use of fingerprints and iris scanning is meant to minimize fraud and corruption. The program does not require users to be Indian citizensand the demographic information collected is no different than what would be found on a US Census form.

However, while potentials are undoubtedly huge—opening doors to government subsidies, loans and banking systems—the drawbacks and criticism drawn are also worthy to note.

• The program is billed to be as much about poverty alleviation as national security, which raises the question, who will have access to this data and to what end?
• A biometric data collection of this scale has never been attempted. The second-largest program after this one is the US-Visit visa program, which has data on only 100 million people.
• Much of the benefit has not been adequately proven or assessed, or could be solved with more cost-effective, low-tech solutions like improving assistance programs already in place

With the UID program, India's rural residents can, for the first time, formally exist... and may be able to access new levels of economic freedom, just by getting a set of digits.

Some say a transaction tax could put humans back in charge of financial markets. Photo: RoGb77 (flickr)

As lightning-fast computer programs replace human brokers on Europe's virtual trading floors, anti-poverty warriors want to slow things down.

There's never been a better time, they say, for a redistributive "Robin Hood tax," which would slap a fee on each financial transaction, deterring meaningless trades and putting the revenue toward fighting poverty and climate change. The center-right leaders of France and Germany called for such a tax last month, Reuters reported, and leftish outlets like The Guardian have happily joined their choir: "Even if such a tax was levied at just 0.05%, it could raise hundreds of billions of dollars, which could be ploughed into development projects," the paper wrote of a petition signed by 1,000 economists from around the world. The EU plans to gather support for a tax at November's G-20 summit, says Reuters.

Political attacks on money-changers are nearly as old as money itself. What's new is that the usual arguments against such a tax – that it'd reduce trading volume and hurt the economy by making financial markets more volatile – may be getting weaker. In fact, people like former London Stock Exchange executive Martin Wheatley now argue that computer-driven trades make volatility worse.

Exhibit A: Wall Street's May 2010 "flash crash," in which computer algorithms temporarily wiped 10 percent off major stock indexes in a squall of rapid transactions, apparently because they saw one another doing the same thing.

On the Robin Hood Tax website, spokesman Richard Gower called this "casino capitalism cyborg-style" and suggested that humans could tax irrational computer programs out of the market.

Others use less colorful language.

"For the first time in financial history, machines can execute trades far faster than humans can intervene," Bank of England executive Andy Haldane said in July, according to The Telegraph. "Grit in the wheels, like grit on the roads, could help forestall the next crash."

Haldane was speaking in favor of internal or regulatory changes, not a redistributive "Robin Hood" tax. But with Western economies in a skid, some think financial markets might be safer with Robin behind the wheel. After all, at least he's human.

Check out what over five years of Kiva microlending looks like:

The video was put together by Kiva’s staff, who cleverly termed it “Intercontinental Ballistic Finance.” It’s pretty neat to see how microfinance can cross geographical and political borders to connect far-flung parts of the globe.

As time passes, you see that more and more parts of the world join in the lending game. And it’s not just the Western world; loans come from cities all over, including Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai. You can also see through the nifty color-coding system that the types of loans come in waves: the screen flashes blue, red, and sometimes it’s a multicolored hodgepodge.

Kiva Microfunds is an American non-profit organization that allows anyone to make microloans to entrepreneurs around the world. The loans are then repaid over time. Since its launch in 2005, Kiva has loaned $241,348,975 to 625,153 people in 60 countries, and its repayment rate is 98.86 percent, and The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof included the organization in a 2010 list of the best ways that individuals can make a difference in the world.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.