A New York Times report today here describes the use of cellphones and the internet to stimulate protests. The article includes these facts and a comment speculating on future protests:
About 27 percent of China’s 1.3 billion people own a cellphone, a rate that is far higher in big cities, particularly among the young. Indeed, for upwardly mobile young urbanites, cellphones and the Internet are the primary means of communication. “If people can mobilize in cyberspace in such a short time on this subject,” said Wenran Jiang, a scholar with a specialty in China-Japan relations, “what prevents them from being mobilized on another topic, any topic, in the near future?”
Hey, what if those topics include reading, writing and arithmetic for the kids of the young urbanites to learn? Or how about language tutors for there moms and dads? Why not? Lots of new stuff for cellphone little screens is roaring down the development pipe. Literacy along with ring tones would easy to provide by Nokia and the rest of the phone folks.
