Yesterday we wrapped the post by saying that perhaps there's some way that market indicators such as currency performance and basis rates could indicate the ripeness for a mobile money program in a country. This begs the question though about whether mobile banking actually leads to better economic outcomes for people, or just tells us … Continue reading An Unscientific Look at Stock Market Performance and Mobile Money, Pt.2
Politics
Post on the Lowy Interpreter!
For those who have been wondering what I've been doing with my writing, and why I haven't been as active on Espresso Politics the last few days, here's the excuse. My colleague Gerard McCarthy and I had a blog post on tech for diplomacy in the Asia/Pacific region published on the Lowy Institute's blog The … Continue reading Post on the Lowy Interpreter!
A Musing on Tech for Peacebuilding: Continued
So I started writing to shake off the rust before the grist mill of academia starts back up later this month, and writing becomes a demand instead of a pastime. Earlier I wrote a piece where I delved into my excitement and skepticism about how technology will lead to peace and stability. This not to that … Continue reading A Musing on Tech for Peacebuilding: Continued
A Musing on Tech for Peacebuilding
It's been ages since I posted, so instead of a targeted piece on some particular topic I thought I'd post something general. Consider it a shakedown post to get the rust off. A bunch of things happened this summer which have shifted my view on technology and peacebuilding. In some ways my belief that these … Continue reading A Musing on Tech for Peacebuilding
The Impact of Tech: Getting Past ‘Good Versus Bad’
The emergent theme from my travels this summer presenting academic papers on tech for social change hasn’t been “is it good or bad,” but instead “why are their good and bad outcomes, and can these be generalizable?” It’s this kind of question that motivates me as a political scientist. Yes, indeed technology can be used … Continue reading The Impact of Tech: Getting Past ‘Good Versus Bad’
Crowdsourcing Done Well: A follow up from yesterday’s post
Yesterday's post may have been a bit of a downer given the critical position on crowdsourcing that I took. While I think a critical eye is necessary to grow the space, I wouldn't want to leave out what's being done well. With that in mind I wanted to point folks to Patrick Meier's recent post … Continue reading Crowdsourcing Done Well: A follow up from yesterday’s post
Political Cartoons from Lake Geneva
So I mentioned earlier that there was a display of political cartoons along Lake Geneva set up as an installation while I was there. This post is just a selection of the cartoons that I photographed while walking along the lake front (there were about 100 total): I would love to hear comments on these, … Continue reading Political Cartoons from Lake Geneva
Wrapping up in Geneva
Greetings all! So I wanted to post something quickly before I head to London tomorrow, and then finally home on Tuesday. I'll have more to write, and some reviews of the papers from the Tech4Dev conference later this week when I can sit with the conference proceedings and give the papers a good review. I … Continue reading Wrapping up in Geneva
Some thoughts on James Mittelman’s “Hyperconflict”
As globalization increasingly impacts the global system of governance and statecraft, traditional analytic frames of sovereignty, power and risk are increasingly unable to account for the emerging challenges of the modern security environment. James Mittelman describes this new brand of risk as “hyperconflict”, driven by “hyperpower” and “hypercompetition”. While he does not use the same … Continue reading Some thoughts on James Mittelman’s “Hyperconflict”
So I felt like I should add something about tech…
So the last few things that went up were academic self-critique and a book review. Since "tech" is in the blog title, I thought I should put something up that touches on the digital world. For now, we'll revisit something a little older and I'll make sure I get something new up this week that's tech for … Continue reading So I felt like I should add something about tech…
Charles P. Martin-Shields 