hyder_CCT333_Lab3

Question 1: There are many instances where owning a cellphone can enable its user to make their lives more convenient – especially introducing it in a third world country. Being able to connect to your doctor or any health services in case of an emergency can be very benefitial in many situations. For example, the articles mentions an instance- connecting to “just in time”- where a mother uses a cellphone to connect to a doctor, “..to a mother in Uganda who needs to carry a child with malaria three hours to visit the nearest doctor but who would like to know first whether that doctor is even in town. It looks different, too, to the rural Ugandan doctor who, faced with an emergency, is able to request information via text message from a hospital in Kampala.” This enables the patient and the doctor to communicate common problems and make the meeting more productive while saving time. This concept is also implemented in Canada. Patients are able to call a line, in any emergency, and the operator will remotely walk them through step by step through the problem and potentially save a life.

Polak says “You don’t even need to own a cellphone to benefit from one”. People who don’t have a phone(first person) can talk to the ones who do have a phone(second person) and build a communication bridge between the two people (second person and third person). Various everyday uses come to mind when looking at this concept- parents asking one child to text the other child to confirm the childs location. The article shares a clever instance of this concept, “…where farmers would bring their vegetables to a local person with a mobile phone, who then acted as a commissioned sales agent, using the phone to check market prices and arranging for the most profitable sale”. This is a very intelligent as the farmer does not have to rely on the sales agents’ prices, but rather get the prices directly from the buyer. Polak mentions that “People making a dollar a day can’t afford a cellphone, but if they start making more profit in their farming, you can bet they’ll buy a phone as a next step,” Polak

One other convience of having a cell phone is being able to use it for navigation purposes. the example used in the article discusses the author of the article trying to find the researcher in a place where he has never been. “Chipchase used his phone to pilot me through the unfamiliar chaos, allowing us to have what he calls a “just in time” moment….. And now, on foot, if I moved in the wrong direction, it could be quickly corrected. Using mobile phones, we were able to coordinate incrementally. “Do you see the footbridge?” Chipchase was saying over the phone. “No? O.K., do you see the giant green sign that says ‘Believe in God’? Yes? I’m down to the left of that.”’ One can use a cellphone as a communication device to dictate direction for the other participant and meet at a randezvous point.

A final instance of having a cellphone is having the convience of information. From calling to texting, and now on smart phones even searching it online for something that you want to know. In a farmers scenario the sales agent made a call to the buyer to find market prices of the item that he is selling. In the mother scenario, the doctor is able to communivate information to the patient depending on what the problem is. In the modern society, trying to find out the distant from the moon to the earth is just as easy as dictating the question to Apple’s Siri and it giving you the answer.

Question 2:

As mentioned in the article, one of the benefits of having a cellphone is that it enables the user to dictate direction to the other user. But, even better is that manufacturing company can use this comcept and join it with JIT, Just in time. An inventory method which enables manufactures to save warehouse costs. Because of this “the process becomes less centralized and more incremental”. Owning a cell phone can also enable the economy to float and grow with in under developed country. In the last lab we learned that the people who had cell phones had credits ontheir phones and they were able to cash out their credits. What many did was by the credits from one end and sends them to villages and homes to their relatives as a mean of money transfer. One other economic uses of cellphones is the use of Texting internationally. People are able to communicate with their loved ones and send messages on various significant occasions.