5 minutes of thinking yielded only one “next cell phone” candidate: an education system that actually works.
I’d need to research this, but my ignorant guess is that most funding for education in the third world has been aimed at making it more closely resemble first world education. If people’s pet theories about education being broken are correct then we should instead be researching education systems that work, especially those that work given constrained resources. And then fund those.
Not sure if this is what you were getting at, but it at least seemed worth jotting down.
If you’re specifically interested in education, the shortest route might be the Khan Academy—whose effect is amplified by cell phones.
Note that I didn’t say “What’s the next cell phone?”, I said “what improves the odds of the next cell phone?”
Math and/or science and/or engineering research? Free markets? Invent a lot of stuff rather than trying to identify the right thing in advance?
To my mind, the most interesting thing about cell phones is that they increased individual capacity in first world countries by making communication easier, but they increased individual capacity much more in third world countries because cell phones require less infrastructure.
Buckminster Fuller’s idea of ephemeralization (doing more with much less) might be a useful clue.
The other clue might be that people in third world countries may need to have their own capacities increased more than they need help—they have enough intelligence and initiative, they just need better tools.
Yes, I realise that I was interpreting your question at the wrong level. My 5 minutes of thinking were fairly unfocused this time.
My answer to “what improves the odds of the next cell phone” would of course be “create a thriving community of rationalists dedicated to self-improvement and making the world better”. If you’re asking what I’d do other than that then it’s a good question I’d need to think about.
5 minutes of thinking yielded only one “next cell phone” candidate: an education system that actually works.
Actually, I think cell phones will do that. They don’t yet, but as smartphones get cheaper and infrastructure improves, internet access will become a human universal; and at the same time, there are projects like Khan Academy that turn internet access into education. There is still lots of work to be done—the phones themselves are still too expensive, a lot of countries don’t have affordable wireless internet service fast enough for educational videos, and there aren’t enough good videos or translations into enough languages. These developments are probably inevitable, but they can also be sped up.
5 minutes of thinking yielded only one “next cell phone” candidate: an education system that actually works.
I’d need to research this, but my ignorant guess is that most funding for education in the third world has been aimed at making it more closely resemble first world education. If people’s pet theories about education being broken are correct then we should instead be researching education systems that work, especially those that work given constrained resources. And then fund those.
Not sure if this is what you were getting at, but it at least seemed worth jotting down.
If you’re specifically interested in education, the shortest route might be the Khan Academy—whose effect is amplified by cell phones.
Note that I didn’t say “What’s the next cell phone?”, I said “what improves the odds of the next cell phone?”
Math and/or science and/or engineering research? Free markets? Invent a lot of stuff rather than trying to identify the right thing in advance?
To my mind, the most interesting thing about cell phones is that they increased individual capacity in first world countries by making communication easier, but they increased individual capacity much more in third world countries because cell phones require less infrastructure.
Buckminster Fuller’s idea of ephemeralization (doing more with much less) might be a useful clue.
The other clue might be that people in third world countries may need to have their own capacities increased more than they need help—they have enough intelligence and initiative, they just need better tools.
Yes, I realise that I was interpreting your question at the wrong level. My 5 minutes of thinking were fairly unfocused this time.
My answer to “what improves the odds of the next cell phone” would of course be “create a thriving community of rationalists dedicated to self-improvement and making the world better”. If you’re asking what I’d do other than that then it’s a good question I’d need to think about.
If we had a huge community of those rationalists, what more would we need?
Actually, I think cell phones will do that. They don’t yet, but as smartphones get cheaper and infrastructure improves, internet access will become a human universal; and at the same time, there are projects like Khan Academy that turn internet access into education. There is still lots of work to be done—the phones themselves are still too expensive, a lot of countries don’t have affordable wireless internet service fast enough for educational videos, and there aren’t enough good videos or translations into enough languages. These developments are probably inevitable, but they can also be sped up.