Crowdsourcing to Boost the Developing World

Technology Review published an article a couple days ago called Crowdsourcing the World, about a project that would outsource certain types of work to the developing world using mobile phones. The article says:

Now Nathan Eagle, a research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, in New Mexico, is launching a project similar to Amazon's Mechanical Turk but that distributes tasks via cell phones. The goal of his project, called txteagle, is to leverage an underused work force in some of the poorest parts of the world.

Eagle says that distributing questions to participants in such developing countries via text messages or audio clips could make certain tasks more economical, such as the translation of documents into other languages, or rating the local relevance of search results. It could also provide a welcome source of income for those involved.

This is the kind of project I love. The American Way of Saving the World is to implement grandiose, top-down plans with giant footprints, soaring budgets, and cumbersome bureaucracies, but the most effective means of building societies are often organic grassroots projects. Countries generally flourish when they empower their citizens to express their creativity, talent, and hard work in economically meaningful ways. I love seeing projects that empower citizens to develop their countries from the bottom up. That's exactly what this project does: it allows citizens of the poorest countries to bring their unique skills, such as their language, into the global marketplace.

The Economist has printed many stories in the past few years about the promise of mobile phones for empowering citizens, improving the efficiency of both business and aid, and ultimately alleviating poverty. More than 3.3 billion phones are in existence (over half the world's population), and one study forecasts global penetration of mobile phones to reach 75% by 2011. Mobile phones allow geographically separated villages and towns to integrate markets and better match supply and demand. They can connect aid donors, recipients, and governments. They can even be used for early warning systems for national disasters. Mobile phones also provide even the most remote villages with a link to the world.

Now we can add the txteagle project to the benefits. If the project works, it will make markets more efficient for everybody, tap into a vast reservoir of global talent, and provide a means of income for citizens of the developing world. I wish Nathan Eagle the best, and am eager to see what fruit the project bears.