Mobile Technology - Which Future Do You See?

Claire Melamed writes on the Global Dashboard: "What will happen if mobile phone use carries on expanding at its current rate in Africa, but literacy rates don’t improve?" http://bit.ly/gFBjWK

The potential future she sees where there are more mobile phone subscriptions outpace literacy rates, is a future where the gap between haves and have-nots widens. Where the illiterate and under-literate population are not able to take advantage of the data and information available through mobile. 

That is one view of the future, I see a different future, one that is more optimistic.

First, we'll leave aside the fact that the primary impact of mobile access in many of these countries today is access to voice communications and economic opportunities (i.e. micro-businesses). Plus, the graph is assuming a continued linear growth, which seems unrealistic.

The main thing I question about this commentary is that the mobile technology won't help with the problem of literacy. With mobile technology, and it's rapid evolution, I believe it will provide opportunity to close the literacy gap.

One of my favorite features of my Nexus S android is the voice-to-text anywhere there is a input box, as well as all the voice command features. Now, to really be effective, that will need to be paired with text-to-voice and screen reading technology to overcome the reading deficiency. But, that is well-developed technology and can be easily delivered on a mobile OS.

In addition, technologies such as World Lens and PicTranslator can be combined with text-to-speech technology to offer illiterate people with a mobile reader anywhere they go. Add to this the ability to deliver personalized literacy training programs, and you are looking at a very different future than the one in the article. 

These types of technologies, once more ubiquitous, could actually help close the literacy gap, not widen it. That is a future I can get excited about and would love to work to create.