Posted on 13th April 2011 by Judy Breck in Mobiles | Next | Politics
arabs, arab_spring
Gallup reports this week that: Young Arabs More Connected in 2010: Cell phone access jumps in low- and middle-income countries. The above chart is from the Gallup report, which begins:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Technology’s pivotal role in the change that swept the Arab world in late 2010 and early 2011 underscores how quickly its young people are gaining access to information and communication technology. Gallup surveys conducted before the unrest show 87% of 15- to 29-year-olds across the Arab League say they have cellular phone access, up from 79% in 2009. Home and community Internet access are up, too, but not nearly as much.
These facts and figures do not indicate how many of the young Arabs have internet access on their cellphones. Surely many do, and surely smartphones are flowing into young Arab hands. Smartphones deliver handschooling because smartphones browse the Web and the Web is now where the most authentic and up-to-date resources for knowledge are located.
While Facebook and other “social networking” dominate media stories about the role of connectivity in the Arab Spring, young Arabs have schooling of the future in their hands. Are they using the Web to learn? At the very least, the boys have a device by which to explore, challenge, and add to what they are taught in school and those girls who are denied school have a means to interact with knowledge.
Posted on 4th April 2011 by Judy Breck in Mobiles | Next
arab_spring, freedom, Islam, truth
Today PajamasMedia has an essay by Hege Storhaug titled: The Stifling Effect of Muhammed’s Life and Teachings on Muslim Society: We need a constructive and fact-based debate about Muhammed’s life and his meaning for society today.
Beyond the school subjects that mobile browsers are increasingly providing to students across the world, the full sweep of Truth is becoming available to each individual. That astounding fact holds enormous hope for the decades and centuries that lie ahead. That is the topic of this comment that I wrote in response to Storhaug’s essay:
There is a new, fascinating, inexorable cause for predicting the turning the tide against the centuries of oppression of individuals by Islam: the mobile Web browser! The devices are even small enough for a woman to conceal in her burqa. A lot has been written about the role of social networking in the Arab Spring: truth networking is powerfully part of this and its impact is only beginning. Within a very few years essentially every person on earth will have a way to view the broad world through his/her own browser.
Jesus told his followers at the Sermon on the Mount: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32) The new global networking of Truth is a glorious dawning hope for humankind.
