Shirking Clay

Mar 22, 2009

One re-occurring lesson from our emerging markets research is that one person's micro-payment is another person's payment it's just a matter of scale and context. You can nearly always find someone who situation means that they are willing to take on a job for less, or take a tiny part of the job for the same - with a social infrastructure there to support it.

Something to bear in mind as you browse these solid essays by Clay Shirky on the non-future of newspapers and on why micro-payments don't work.

Bonus: Nathan Eagle's talk at eTech on crowdsourcing via mobile phone that touches on numerous examples of mobile innovation in East Africa, spanning give-away SIM cards, USSD and voice to speech transcription (via Eric Herman).

Photos: making books by hand in Ahmedabad.

Location:
 India »  Ahmedabad Keywords:
 micro-markets | micro-payment | newspaper