Rites of Passage
E156: Leap-frogging with technology to create fresh opportunities
There is a moment—just after holding my pee and biting my knuckles—when the coding Gods finally smile down on me. I see the red, blue and green wheels whirr successfully in sequence, delivering data into the cells on my table. My hands do their jubilant happy dance, and all memories of the frustration of the past few hours are forgotten. Ohhh! That secret thrill of coding again.
Diving into the world of prompt engineering, automations,1 and AI took me back in time. I'm again reminded of how different communities and cultures approached the Internet, the cell phone, new technology and progress. And of the immense power for transformation that awaits once we embrace this opportunity.
It started with a round-the-world 16-country journey my family and I took from November 2004-July 2005. [Side note: I am concurrently rewriting my upcoming book (working title) "On Routes, Roots and Ripples" based on that trip, and the ripple effect on our family and children since then.] As I am busy with the tech+re-write project, I thought I’d pull this pertinent chapter for you this week:
The Power of Perspective
Travel has a unique way of shifting our viewpoint, allowing us to see life and opportunity through a different lens. To quote Seth Godin, "We assume that our neighborhood is like every neighborhood, that our situation and experience is universal. That is rarely true."2
Technology Leapfrogs in Emerging Markets
As we traveled through South East Asia and Africa in 2004-2005, I started collecting little data points. I observed how emerging markets were embracing mobile technology in ways that could soon revolutionize banking and communication...
Dot 1: The rites of passage
Everywhere I looked in SE Asia, I saw young people with their little flip phones. It was as if getting a phone was your ticket to independence once you graduated from school/university - the way that getting a driver's license would be your ticket to freedom in the West.
The next big milestone was the moped.
An affordable vehicle for travel:
Young women gained their independence to work AND didn’t have to travel on public transportation in squashed close quarters.
Young men could find some privacy and take a young lady out on a date.
As you started married life, sharing a room in your parent’s home, sleeping on a mat, you and your young bride had the freedom to spend some time at the beach together, to escape your daily drudge.
As your family grew, this became the family transportation. We often saw the father driving with one little standing in the foot space in front of him alongside the groceries, two littles sandwiched between the dad and the pregnant mother carrying yet another toddler in a sling.
I saw mopeds used as the original mobile food trucks, with vendors selling everything from fresh bread to fresh fish from them. Once I saw a butcher haul ing a squealing pig who clearly knew his fate strapped to the back! (Or maybe it was just the first time it had seen a roundabout from that angle?!)
These are communities of people who have figured out how to make things work for themselves. They find their smiles and their opportunities in places we haven’t thought to look. They squeeze and leverage every last ounce out of the technology in front of them.
Dot 2: Leapfrogging with technology
Many of these emerging markets were searching for ways to access and participate in the Internet. They were hungry for connection to other young people across the globe.
But a combination of bureaucracy and lack of infrastructure meant that these young people often had to wait their turn in line—a wait that could run into multiples of decades—delaying the opportunities that they knew were waiting for them.
These were ancient societies in the throes of redefining themselves and gaining access to a global market - and they had flat run out of patience.
Rather than wait their turn to connect with the outer world in an infinite line waiting to have a landline installed to run a modem, they’d innovatively played leapfrog and leveraged the age of the cell phone.
Dot 3: Serendipity & texting
It was on one of those very long flights in November 2004 - Vancouver to Hong Kong to Bangkok. I stuck my hand into the plane pocket in front of me and started flipping through the boring airline magazines.
I landed on a most intriguing article.3
Once a month, 24-year-old Jane Manarang drops by the McDonald’s (MCD ) in her busy Manila neighborhood. But she’s not there for a burger and fries. Instead, she is stopping by to cash an electronic check. Her husband, a teller at Forex International in Hong Kong, sends a portion of his salary to Manarang using a new mobile-phone-based cash remittance service called Smart Padala. His Hong Kong remittance company sends a text message to Jane’s phone, crediting the money to her account. Then she transfers the credit to McDonald’s cell-phone account through her phone, and Mickey D gives her the money, taking a percentage of the amount cashed as a fee. It’s a great deal for Manarang and her husband, Glenn, because it costs much less than the $5 Glenn would pay for a wire transfer. For amounts above $180, Manarang gets a free Big Mac meal to boot. ‘It’s so fast,’ marvels Manarang. ‘I receive a text message, and I can quickly get cash.’
That’s ingenious, I thought.
Connecting the dots
Ding! Ding! Ding!
The bells rang in my ear as I watched the young drivers with cell phones tucked into their hijabs and helmets as they navigated lanes of traffic on the roundabouts. The dots connected.
Wow! A land with a lot of flip-phones and pre-internet SMS text messages, creating ROFL acronyms to leverage those precious 160-char, bartering in airtime minutes, and a need to process remittances.
Emerging markets weren’t going to wait patiently for technologies to be dripped out to them. They were unfettered by the restrictions & constructs of archaic Western-world telecom behemoths and expensive 3-year cell phone contracts. Desperately understanding the value of education - something we take for granted in the West - for their young children these hard-working locals would leverage every penny they’d earned to help them climb the rungs of the social ladder.
Whether it was the crowded streets of Bangkok, the noisy intersections in India, the vegetable markets on the Kenyan Mara, or the taxi driver in Nepal, we had watched these young families do everything they could to offer their young children a better life.
And it made sense that rather than photocopy the success map of the Industrial progress in the West, they would leapfrog using the latest technologies and create a framework that was leaner and more agile.
By standing close to them, I now understood their why and their how.
Years later, when M-Pesa came on the horizon, where bartering airtime-minutes launched a world of digital finance, I understood the serendipity that led to the birth and adoption of that new industry.
From Past Observations to Future Possibilities
Now—as I explore custom ChatGPT and automation—I'm reminded of the innovative spirit I witnessed in those emerging markets. Just as they leapfrogged traditional banking systems, we're now on the cusp of transforming various industries through AI and automation.
And I am optimistic about what is ahead.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Join the conversation …
Related read:
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Until next week …
Karena
“How Many Moons?” Seth Godin blog post.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2004-11-21/filipinos-are-getting-the-message
The final Write of Passage Cohort will run from October 7, 2024 - November 20, 2024. Enroll here. Edition 1 of this newsletter was launched with my first experience of Write of Passage in September 2021. You gain access to an exclusive think-tank of beautiful souls and intriguing minds, besides the confidence to publish in public.
I like the way you connected those dots, Karena. It certainly brings forward the ideas of "innovation waits for no one" or "where there's a will, there's a way." It seems our innovative spirit always finds a way to speed life along or make it easier. Just thinking of the music trail from reel-to-reel to cassette tape, to 8-track, to CD. (I have a friend who now makes beautiful hand-painted mandalas on those old CDs!) Now our music is in the ether! Next, with VR, we'll be part of the band. Rock on!
I love how you stretch my thinking Karena! I’m negatively disposed towards AI for many reasons (environmental for one), but your excitement and openness is contagious. I will continue to explore.