جمعه, 10 فروردين 1403

 



موضوع: SOCIO- CULTUREAL ISSUES

SOCIO- CULTUREAL ISSUES 9 سال 2 ماه ago #111698

Technology Increases Income, Reduces Poverty in Developing countries
Musa Kayairanga of Rwanda is a traditional healer. He uses natural medicines to treat his patients. He learned how to use computers at a rural telecommunications center in his country. Musa Kayairanga says he exchanges information with doctors as far away as Canada. He also says the computer has improved his knowledge of using plants to treat diseases.
Many people in rural areas are now able to communicate with the rest of the world. This is one example of how technology is changing life in developing countries.
Andrew Burns is an economic at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. he led a recent study of technology in developing countries. The study found that technology has spread faster in such countries than in rich nations. It also found that technological progress has helped raise wages in developing countries. And it reduced the percentage of people living in extreme poverty from
twenty-nine percent in nineteen ninety to eighteen percent in two thousand four.
Progress in communications technology has aided the growth of call centers in developing countries. Call centers are offices where most telephone calls for a business can be answered. For example, a woman in the United States who calls her computer company about a problem might speak with someone in India or Pakistan.
Call centers serve businesses in local and international markets. And they have added to economic growth by providing well-paid jobs and new skills for workers who might not have had such employment. Ahsan Saeed is a young call center worker in Karachi, Pakistan. He says the job improves his language skills, his sales skills and his ability to deal with people.
Experts say the wireless telephone has changed lives and businesses more than any other advice. Eighty percent of the world’s population now lives in an area covered by at least one cell phone network. Arthur Molella heads the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at American’s Smithsonian Institution. He says cell phones are having many effects. One effect is increasing communications from countries with strong rules.
For example, when governments repress their opponents, the world knows about it almost immediately because of cell phone pictures and videos placed on the internet. This has helped increase international pressure against such governments.
Yet experts say the spread of technology in the developing world will not necessarily produce the same kind of progress or wealth as in rich nations. Arthur Molella says technology is being used in different ways in developing countries.
Cell phones are an example of what is sometimes called “leapfrog” technology. This is a kind of technology that is not based on earlier technology. For example, many people in developing countries have gone from no telephones to wireless communications.
Cell phones permit developing countries to have a good communications system without the heavy investment of fixed-line telephone technology.
In Afghanistan, Abdul Wakil owns a store in a village about forty kilometers north of the capital, Kabul. He says his cell phone has been important for his business. In the past, he had to go to Kabul to order products. Now he can do that with a phone call. The International Telecommunication Union says cell phone signals are able to reach seventy-two percent of Afghanistan’s population. By comparison, fewer than one percent of the population has a fixed telephone line.
Cell phone use worldwide has increased as more countries have opened their state-owned telephone systems to let private companies build cellular networks. By the end of two thousand six, sixty-eight percent of the world’s cell phone users were in developing countries.
Andrew Burns of the World Bank says one person for the spread of cell phones is ease of use. He says a person does not have to be able to read or know mathematics to use such devices. Using a cell phone gives a person more power. For example, using cell phones for financial activities is becoming popular in countries where many people do not keep their money in banks. In Kenya, a low cost cell phone service called M-Pesa lets people send and receive money by using text messages. The service is popular because people do not have to travel long distances to make payments or receive money. Cell phones are also proving to be an important tool in health care. They are helping to halt the spread of diseases such as AIDS. In Rwanda, health care workers in rural medical centers use cell phones that have a special software program. An American company, Voxiva developed the program. The software lets health care workers enter information about medicines and patients in cell phones.



Technology Increases Income, Reduces Poverty in Developing countries
Musa Kayairanga of Rwanda is a traditional healer. He uses natural medicines to treat his patients. He learned how to use computers at a rural telecommunications center in his country. Musa Kayairanga says he exchanges information with doctors as far away as Canada. He also says the computer has improved his knowledge of using plants to treat diseases. Many people in rural areas are now able to communicate with the rest of the world. This is one example of how technology is changing life in developing countries.
Andrew Burns is an economic at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. he led a recent study of technology in developing countries. The study found that technology has spread faster in such countries than in rich nations. It also found that technological progress has helped raise wages in developing countries. And it reduced the percentage of people living in extreme poverty from
twenty-nine percent in nineteen ninety to eighteen percent in two thousand four.
Progress in communications technology has aided the growth of call centers in developing countries. Call centers are offices where most telephone calls for a business can be answered. For example, a woman in the United States who calls her computer company about a problem might speak with someone in India or Pakistan.
Call centers serve businesses in local and international markets. And they have added to economic growth by providing well-paid jobs and new skills for workers who might not have had such employment. Ahsan Saeed is a young call center worker in Karachi, Pakistan. He says the job improves his language skills, his sales skills and his ability to deal with people.
Experts say the wireless telephone has changed lives and businesses more than any other advice. Eighty percent of the world’s population now lives in an area covered by at least one cell phone network. Arthur Molella heads the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at American’s Smithsonian Institution. He says cell phones are having many effects. One effect is increasing communications from countries with strong rules. For example, when governments repress their opponents, the world knows about it almost immediately because of cell phone pictures and videos placed on the internet.This has helped increase international pressure against such governments.
Yet experts say the spread of technology in the developing world will not necessarily produce the same kind of progress or wealth as in rich nations. Arthur Molella says technology is being used in different ways in developing countries.
Cell phones are an example of what is sometimes called “leapfrog” technology. This is a kind of technology that is not based on earlier technology. For example, many people in developing countries have gone from no telephones to wireless communications.
Cell phones permit developing countries to have a good communications system without the heavy investment of fixed-line telephone technology.
In Afghanistan, Abdul Wakil owns a store in a village about forty kilometers north of the capital, Kabul. He says his cell phone has been important for his business. In the past, he had to go to Kabul to order products. Now he can do that with a phone call.
The International Telecommunication Union says cell phone signals are able to reach seventy-two percent of Afghanistan’s population. By comparison, fewer than one percent of the population has a fixed telephone line.
Cell phone use worldwide has increased as more countries have opened their state-owned telephone systems to let private companies build cellular networks. By the end of two thousand six, sixty-eight percent of the world’s cell phone users were in developing countries.
Andrew Burns of the World Bank says one person for the spread of cell phones is ease of use. He says a person does not have to be able to read or know mathematics to use such devices. Using a cell phone gives a person more power. For example, using cell phones for financial activities is becoming popular in countries where many people do not keep their money in banks. In Kenya, a low cost cell phone service called M-Pesa lets people send and receive money by using text messages. The service is popular because people do not have to travel long distances to make payments or receive money.
Cell phones are also proving to be an important tool in health care. They are helping to halt the spread of diseases such as AIDS. In Rwanda, health care workers in rural medical centers use cell phones that have a special software program. An American company, Voxiva developed the program. The software lets health care workers enter information about medicines and patients in cell phones.

Iran's change at the top gives director cue to show social ills
Two years ago, Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Bani-Etemad knew she had no chance of showing a feature film in Iran about the depredations of unemployment, drug abuse and wife-beating, so she made a series of shorts instead.
The fact that she has now stitched them into a full-length movie in the running for top prize at the Venice Film Festival shows that Iran's new leadership can take a broader view, she says.
"It’s true that the questions we are dealing with are Iranian, but they are also global," she told Reuters in an interview in Venice, where her film received excellent reviews.
With the Middle East high on the world list of trouble spots, Bani-Etemad hopes that wider circulation for "Ghesseha" (Tales) will help people inside and outside the region to understand one another better.
"It’s set in Iran, it was made in Iran, the characters are Iranian. But these are problems that exist throughout the world and I see them in my society. "
The picture she paints of life in Tehran is anything but flattering.
Using the device of a documentary filmmaker visiting the city to record vignettes about everyday life, she shows such scenes as a shelter for battered wives where a drug-addled husband, who has disfigured his wife by pouring boiling water on her face, pleads with her to return.
In another strand, a functionary will not listen to an elderly former civil servant's plea to recoup crippling medical costs because the bureaucrat is more interested in taking a call from his mistress.
A unifying figure in the film is Abbas, played by Mohammadreza Forootan, who drives a taxi because he has been expelled from university for his political views.
His mother Tooba, played by Golab Adineh, is trying to get the nine months' pay she is owed by the owners of a factory who closed it down without paying the workers and sold it to a property developer.
Portraying the mean and corrupt sides of life in Tehran did not endear Bani-Etemad to the government of former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and she shot a series of shorts because she was unwilling to make the compromises needed to get approval for a feature-length film.
After last year's election of Hassan Rouhani as president, she was able to string the pieces into the present film, which still plays mostly like a series of shorts about characters whose lives intersect.
"It has been given a screening license to be shown in Iran and hopefully in the next few months it will be screened," she said. "With the changes that have occurred in Iran, this has been a pivotal reason why I was given permission to show the film."
مدير دسترسي عمومي براي نوشتن را غيرفعال كرده.
كاربر(ان) زير تشكر كردند: مریم پیری, مينا علي محمد
مدیران انجمن: خسرو اژدری مفرد