story of a Nigerian baker who started taking orders for cakes via SMS and quickly expanded his presence beyond his immediate neighborhood. He experienced a 30% increase in sales.

In fact, microfinance may represent the most significant aspect of mobile phone use around the world. So-called “inclusive capitalism” is making waves and changing the nature of some societies. In Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries, Grameen Bank uses microcredits to put mobile phones equipped with long-lasting batteries into the hands of women. They become a village phone provider and collect small commissions from their customers. Already, more than 250,000 “phone ladies” exist and Grameen Bank has grown into Bangladesh’s largest telecom provider, with annual revenues approaching $1 billion. Similar programs have popped up in other countries, including Indonesia, Rwanda, and Uganda.

Healthcare is another area attracting attention. A program piloted in Nicaragua monitors tuberculosis patients via their mobile phones. Because compliance is critical and any break in treatment can result in a relapse or others becoming infected, patients must urinate on a reactive strip every day to reveal a code. However, the process of monitoring patients and sending a healthcare worker to collect results on a daily basis is both costly and time-intensive. Instead, officials now ask patients to send data via SMS and then reward them with free cellular minutes.

In some cases, the technology is bridging the gap between the Internet and phone messaging, and improving education. In South Africa, for example, a program allows students to

query Wikipedia via SMS and receive audio text that they can record on their handsets and play back anytime they desire. The hybrid nature of the application achieves something relatively rare, Donner notes. “It breaks down the walls between Web content and SMS content. In doing so, it demonstrates a way in which rich, dynamic Internet content can be made accessible to— and can be created by—communities using relatively affordable and common basic mobile handsets.”

Ledlie says that enterprising minds have created a slew of other mobile solutions, incorporating ideas as diverse as M-journalism and classified advertisements. The latter includes apartment listings and “available for work” postings that serve as a simplified form of Craigslist. “For people and societies without access to computers, these types of phone-based systems offer revolutionary capabilities,” Ledlie explains. “They are likely to improve lives in significant ways.”

Designs on the future

Mobile phones have followed a predictable evolutionary path, says Minoru Etoh, a researcher at NTT DoCoMo’s laboratory in Tokyo. The first stage of development was speech communication, the second stage was data communication (Web and email), and the third stage is life assistance. “SMS-based money transfers in places like India represent real life assistance,” Etoh says. More importantly, “mobile phones may fill the digital divide between PC owners, who are typically more affluent, and non-PC owners.”

For minorities and the disabled, mobile phones can provide critical capabilities as well as social networking oppor-

tunities that haven’t previously existed. The technology also breaks down social structures and class divisions. “For the first time in history,” Rotberg observes, “information is no longer the exclusive domain of the powerful and the rich. The ubiquity of mobile devices is changing the political and economic dynamics around the world. The technology is empowering people that have in the past been disenfranchised.”

Those in more affluent regions are also altering the way they view the world. Social networking—through text and photo messaging, games, and sites such as Facebook and Twitter—are creating opportunities to interact in entirely different ways. “Social networking allows people to create distinct networks of friends, family, and colleagues and to broadcast what they are doing along with short updates about their lives,” Ledlie says. In the coming years, he notes, phones are also likely to replace subway cards, parking passes, and credit and debit cards.

The challenge for engineers and designers is to build devices and interfaces that meet the needs of diverse populations. So far, most mobile phones have undergone a “trickle down” process of moving from more demanding and affluent users in developed nations to individuals in poorer countries. However, the situation is beginning to change, as Nokia and other manufacturers introduce phones that are sand-proof, incorporate flashlights, and use easily replaceable parts that better fit the needs of those who live in places where phones cannot be easily repaired.

Designers such as Etoh and Ledlie say that, in the future, it is vital to adapt user interfaces to better match the needs and requirements of specific

artificial Intelligence
MIT Develops Autonomous Wheelchair

Mi T researchers have created an autonomous wheelchair that has the ability to learn about locations inside a building and take its occupant to a specified place in response to a verbal command.

a wheelchair user need only say “go to my room” or “Take me to the cafeteria” and the

wheelchair, based on a map stored in its memory, will take its occupant to the desired location. The robotic wheelchair learns about an environment similar to how a recently hired employee learns about a new work environment—by being taken on a tour of the space and notified

about the most important locales.

The robotic wheelchair was developed by Mi T assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics Nicholas ray; bryan reimer, an Mi T agelab research scientist; and seth Teller, a professor of computer science and engineering and

head of the robotics, vision, and sensor Networks (rvsN) group at Mi T’s computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory. Teller says the rvsN group is developing other machines with situational awareness, ranging from a mobile phone to an industrial forklift.