A Critique to the Rise of Mobile Phone Technology In Developing Countries
Introduction
According to Daniel G. Bates, globalism is causing increased inequality and polarization in the distribution of wealth, and the economic and social disparities, creating the Forth World—a new face of extreme poverty that is gradually excluded from the rest of the world. Bates argues that the development of globalization and technology has enlarged the distance between the developed and developing countries, and that technology isolates people, thus resulting in a poorer infrastructure and economy. However, is the Forth World solely an inevitable result of globalization? In fact, the use of hands-on technology has boomed in the highly impoverished countries, and has lead to better trajectories for many aspects in the developing world. Through a concise examination of both the positive and negative aspects of mobile technology adoption, this paper argues that mobile phone are quickly becoming an affordable, germane, and accommodating tool and vehicle to many forth-world communities, in places like Africa, India and China, to create economic opportunities and strengthen social networks and knowledge.
Health Care
Firstly, healthcare and the spread of accurate health information have clearly been improved in rural areas such as countries like China and India through the positive influence of mobile technology. In some parts of the world, the patient-and-doctor ratio is one to 20,000. Therefore, there is a huge potential to use mobile health technology to close this astonishing health care gap. Because mobile technology is relatively cheap and easy to spread, it can connect the rural areas that desperately need health care with the large populations of doctors who live in the urban areas. Advances in wireless health delivery in Mexico, India and Rwanda called “mHealth” programs (Mobile for Health) provide potentials for remote diagnostics where nurses
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