Global Wire Associates is finally ready to take requests for trainings and consultations for late May, June, July, August and early September 2012!
Check out our updated Services page to see how we can best serve you. Based on the requests and ideas we have been receiving lately, a good number of you are interested in us focusing more on mobile activism, basic social media training and especially innovative entrepreneurship. We are available to do both in-person meetings and web conferences conducted in English with non-English translation when possible.
All we need you to do is send us an email at info (at) globalwireonline (dot) org with training/consultation summer requests and fee schedules by April 30, 2012. Any training/consultation requests received after that date will be looked at on a first come, first serve basis based on time availability and other logistical concerns.
While many attendees at the Mobile World Congress have focused mainly on all the latest and greatest mobile tools, a discussion that has gone largely under the radar is the so-called “digital caste system.” Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt said in his keynote before MWC12 that for the “aspiring majority” of five out of seven billion global citizens, “the web is still a scarce resource.”
“For most people the digital revolution has not arrived yet. Every revolution begins with a small group of people. Imagine how much better it would be with another five billion people online,” he said. “Smartphones are part of the solution, but having a smartphone is not enough to get you online.”
The International Telecommunication Union — the U.N.’s specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICT) — launched the Broadband Commission for Digital Development to help evaluate how to not only make mobile broadband more accessible worldwide, but also how to better incorporate such policies into the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
Target 1: Making broadband policy universal. By 2015, all countries should have a national broadband plan or strategy or include broadband in their universal access/service definitions.
Target 2: Making broadband affordable. By 2015, entry-level broadband services should cost less than 5% of average monthly income.
Target 3: Connecting homes to broadband. By 2015, 40% of households in developing countries should have internet access.
Target 4: Getting people online. By 2015, internet user penetration should reach 60% worldwide, 50% in developing countries and 15% in least-developed countries.
The digital gap is particularly wider for rural women who face the barriers of poverty, illiteracy and language. The UN General Assembly Resolution 58/146 of 2004 recognized the need to provide rural women with better ICT, which has led to the growth of UN-supported ICT programs in rural communities.
There is significant evidence of how this resolution has improved the lives of many women, particularly in Latin America. According to Martin Hilbert, researcher at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the programs help women become leaders in their communities, by allowing them to search for jobs, access education through online trainings and software, and increase their income. “ICTs are a tool to fight discrimination against women in a holistic way,” he said.
Women accessing mobile technology can also become citizen journalists in their communities. Mobile journalism played a large role in the Arab Spring. Yemen’s Nadia Abdullah became an unlikely reporter covering events in her country.
“I didn’t imagine that my father, brother or the family would accept that I go out and do an interview on camera” Abdullah said to Voice of America. “This was almost impossible to do because of the norms and traditions. They are closed and conservative traditions. It is not proper for a woman to appear in public.”
Eventually with the approval of her family, Abdullah used an amateur video camera to document events throughout Sanaa, ranging from crackdowns by government troops to a man cradling the dead body of a loved one. She not only helped to topple Yemen’s long time ruler, but she is now also seriously pursuing a journalism career.
“With a camera and a picture,” she said, “you can silence anyone.”
A recent New York Times article puts the issues of labor rights, innovation and the future of the American economy on the table. Like many other American-based tech companies, Apple employs foreign workers to manufacture its products. As a matter of fact, “almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas,” according to the article. Apple employs 43,000 workers in the United States; however, there are many more Apple contractors worldwide, including 700,000 people who actually engineer and assemble iPods, iPads, iPhones and other “iThings.”
Apple and other tech companies claim to send business overseas because America is not producing enough people who are capable of doing the jobs at the speed and efficiency needed to compete in the global market today. However, human rights advocates claim that these companies are looking for the cheapest way to create products while making more money for themselves at the expense of foreign workers. With more NAFTA-like free trade agreements, such as the South Korea FTA, getting passed by the US Congress, even more jobs will only be shipped overseas.
…One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”…
Apple works with Foxconn Technology, a firm that ” assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung and Sony.” Apple assembles its products in the Chinese assembly plant “Foxconn City.”
“[Foxconn] could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”
1. Should American-based tech firms be obligated to provide more good jobs (meaning decent wages, benefits etc) to American-based workers, especially during a down economy?
2. Or should the pursuit of the “American dream” and the virtues of capitalism go where an American business can make money anywhere in the world?
3. Why isn’t America taking innovation and creating a job force competitive enough for the impending global market more seriously?
4. If jobs do go overseas, what is the company’s obligation to provide good jobs for its foreign employees?
5. Should Americans protest companies not supporting the American economy and/or their unethical employment practices overseas?
We think the last question would be hard for most Americans. How likely will they dump their iThings to protest Apple? But then again, maybe a little protest could at least inspire a larger conversation.
As many of you are still gushing over all the new tech gadgets you received over the holidays, you probably didn’t give a second thought about the “old” gadgets you just threw away. According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, it is estimated that 20-50 million tons of discarded electronics – electronic waste or e-waste – are dumped into landfills around the world, mostly in developing countries, every year. Electronics include old mobiles, televisions, microwaves, computers and more. However, most of the time it’s not because these gadgets are broken; they’re being dumped in favor of newer versions.
For example, many of you may have traded in your iPhone 4, which came out in June 2010, for the iPhone 4S, which was released just last October. According to Greenpeace, “the average lifespan of computers in developed countries has dropped from six years in 1997 to just two years in 2005, and mobile phones have a life-cycle of less than two years in developed countries.”
Landfills with e-waste create serious problems in the long run. Toxic chemicals in electronics can leach into the land over time or are released into the atmosphere, creating severe health and environmental hazards in nearby communities.
Global Wire Associates is launching a new awareness campaign called “Recharge E-waste.” Throughout the year, we will have special posts about the problem and possible solutions – reduce, reuse and recycle. Check back here for more discussions about proper recycling, donating and/or selling of used electronics, turning electronics into art and design models and, most importantly, why you should resist the urge to buy any of the latest gadgets featured at the Consumer Electronics Association’s (CES) trade show this week in order to extend the life of the gadgets you already have.
We believe environmental hazards affecting marginalized communities is a social justice concern for all. Also, because we take green business very seriously, we are going the extra mile with this e-waste campaign. Over the years, we have spoken to many of you through our trainings about the problems you are having with e-waste and other tech disparities in your communities. We will be launching our own e-waste management program later this year with some other like-minded groups on how to effectively deal with this problem and bridge some gaps within our network. More information will come on this program in the next few weeks.
