The Five Dollar Comparison
Photos below pulled in from the fivedollarcomparson.org site - they make more sense with the notes here. Related Future Perfect entries can be found here.
You're on your way to meet up with friends and only realise after a few minutes that you've left your mobile phone at home - what do you do? If you're like me you mutter a curse under your breath, retrace your steps and retrieve your phone. But what the cost of obtaining a new phone was radically different than today, what if you could pick up a new phone at the convenience store or from a vending machine for only $5 - and painlessly sync your contacts and other personal data from the network? Now what would you do?
Today over half the world's population has a mobile phone, and for the remaining 3.3 billion cost is the primary barrier to personal ownership. Advances in technology and manufacturing allow us to imagine a world where the price of a mobile phone is radically lower, and the spread of low cost personal connectivity will continue to have a profound impact on the world around us: for you its a device that is disposable on a whim; for someone else it means access to personal banking for the first time.
To explore the impact of low cost personal communication my colleagues have started by asking a simple question: what can you buy for the equivilent of five dollars?. We've been sharing our photos online at fivedollarcomparison.org and now we invite you do to the same. It's easy - instructions for uploading your own photos are here.
The photo above? One of a kind auto-rickshaw mud flaps from our recent Ahmedabad study price only 250 rupees.