from Hacker News

What are the full implications of 2/3 of the world pop using a mobile phone?

by plainspace on 8/26/09, 4:00 AM with 3 comments

• by DanielStraight on 8/26/09, 4:06 AM

  Lots of numbers, but as usual none of them are relevant. The author is trying to make the point that "we are all connected". Not only do they not provide any evidence for this claim, they don't even explain what they really mean by it. This is pointless journalism at its best (worst?).

• by akd on 8/26/09, 9:38 AM

  Business which are based on restricting access to information are threatened, even in the developing world. Information velocity among, say, Vietnamese shrimp fishermen has increased in the last 10 years by an absolutely astonishing amount.

• by Perceval on 8/26/09, 5:33 AM

  Given the importance of mobile phones to civil unrest from the Orange Revolution, to the Tulip Revolution, to the recent Iran protests, I think there are some very important political implications for the 2/3rds of the world that is now connected and living in an information-restricted society.

  Even North Korea has had to deal with cheap Chinese mobile phones being smuggled in across the border, briefly allowing families separated by the Korean Civil War to contact one another.