Mobile phones, cheap laptops, Open Source and ODR – The killer trio

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For the past couple of years I’ve advocated that ODR service providers, practitioners and thinkers should take note of mobile devices as a means to not just spread the use of ODR, but also to make it more accessible and cost effective to the millions (even billions) of citizens who will never be able to afford a PC in their lives. Interestingly, as I noted several years ago on a trend that has held, many of these citizens who don’t own PC either own, are going to purchase, or have access to, a mobile device such as a mobile phone. Commentators are already saying that in Africa, mobiles will leapfrog fixed internet points.

In my paper Mediation from the palm of your hand: Forgining the next generation ODR systems on your hand, I pointed to technologies such as the rapid miniaturisation and development of smart phones and PDA that could be used, along with technologies such as Skype and Portrait, to take into the field multimedia tool hitherto chained to the PC.

Apple Inc.’s sickeningly gorgeous iPhone is a case in point as to how much phones will evolve this year. Available from June 2007, this phone is a harbigner of models from other manufacturer’s that will emulate the functionality & features pioneered by Apple.

What is even more promising for the future of ODR, especially in the developing world where it can be, as I’ve proposed, be used for complex ethno-political dispute transformation, is that along with new phones, the $100 laptop (that I’ve written about extensively earlier) will become reality this year. News that individual laptops can be bought makes it a viable opportunity for small foundations or NGOs to purchase them.

Supporting this trend of cheaper, more powerful and accessible hardware is news of open source developments such as the recent announcement by Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life, that it has released client source code for Second Life under GPL. I can only echo the words of one of my mentors, Colin Rule:

This is a bold and audacious move, and I applaud the Lindens integrity and foresight in making it. In the choice between changing the world and enriching themselves this feels like they’ve leaned toward the former, and I believe that deserves a lot of respect. I can’t wait to get in there and play with it myself.

Smart phones, cheap laptops and open source. The killer trio that will ignite ODR this year.

Published by Sanjana

An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance. I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002. I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents. Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs. Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts. I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.

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  1. Pingback: Virtual Diplomacy Workshop at GKP GK III: A missed opportunity « ICT for Peacebuilding (ICT4Peace)

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