Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/05/05/PDAs_and_Phones_for_Data_Collection

Ken Banks, founder of Kiwanja.net, discusses the long tail economics of producing cheap mobile devices to advance human rights. He demonstrates FrontlineSMS, which enables NGOs instantaneous two-way communication on a large scale.

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Recent innovations in science and technology have provided human rights advocates, journalists, and scientists with new tools to expose war crimes and other serious violations of human rights and to disseminate this information in real time throughout the world.

The Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley is pleased to showcase these recent developments and push new frontiers of applied research. – UC Berkeley Human Rights Center

Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 15 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, a field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organisations. Banks graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, and was awarded a Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. Banks’s work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Institute, and he is the current recipient of a grant from the Hewlett Foundation. Further details of Banks’s wider work are available on his website at www.kiwanja.net

Duration : 0:5:55

Technorati Tags: activism, activists, borders, internet, ngos, nonprofit, organisations, organising, organizations, organizing, orgs, tech, Technology, without

Comments Ahead

1. by blackiron60 on July 10th, 2010 at 4:58 pm

   This device and …
   This device and others like it have the potential to increase the impact of popular power and organization. To with trickle-down theories and market ideas, what matters is how the device is used.
2. by cherrymiss72 on July 10th, 2010 at 4:58 pm

   comment support =)
   comment support =)
3. by Slug99 on July 10th, 2010 at 4:58 pm

   Actually none of …
   Actually none of this would exist without the US government pumping in money into places like MIT where the grounds for most of this stuff was created. When the technology became cheap enough to be used to private individuals and corporations, only then did the rich early-adopters really adopt the stuff.
4. by Keylimedelight on July 10th, 2010 at 4:58 pm

   true
   true
5. by freesk8 on July 10th, 2010 at 4:58 pm

   Trickle-down works …
   Trickle-down works with technology.
   None of this would exist without rich, early-adopters.

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