{"id":1577,"date":"2009-10-29T20:22:37","date_gmt":"2009-10-30T03:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/xsml\/?p=1577"},"modified":"2009-10-29T20:22:37","modified_gmt":"2009-10-30T03:22:37","slug":"phones-unfortunately-more-widespread-than-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/2009\/10\/29\/phones-unfortunately-more-widespread-than-food\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Phones unfortunately more widespread than food.&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Matthew Cordell <a href=\"http:\/\/undispatch.com\/node\/9068\">writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The WFP has announced a new twist in its successful program using mobile phones to alert Iraqi refugees in Syria about available food aid\u2026\u00a0[Quoting Reuters] &#8220;Iraqi refugees in Syria will this week start receive U.N. text messages they can redeem for fresh food in local shops. &#8220;\u2026<\/p>\n<p>FP&#8217;s Joshua Keating <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.foreignpolicy.com\/posts\/2009\/10\/27\/un_to_deliver_food_aid_by_text_message\">notes<\/a> the strangeness of a world in which people don&#8217;t have access to food but own mobile phones.  I hear what he&#8217;s saying, and the situation may even be more shocking than he knows.  According to the UN&#8217;s International Telecommunications Union, worldwide at the end of 2008 there were 4.1 billion mobile phone subscriptions, buoyed by developing countries, where two-thirds of those subscriptions were used.  The WFP&#8217;s work in Syria is just one of the many projects taking advantage of the ubiquity of mobile device to affect change in the developing world.  A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unfoundation.org\/press-center\/publications\/wireless-technology-for-social-change.html\">report<\/a> last year from the UN Foundation and the Vodafone Group Foundation details a series of case studies that are fascinating.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>On a related note, Barbara Demick&#8217;s profile of a North Korean refugee and famine in North Korea is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2009\/11\/02\/091102fa_fact_demick\">horrifying<\/a>. It is, indeed, very possible to live in a society with all sorts of modern amenities but no food.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, hunger worldwide is growing as food prices <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/business\/8144008.stm\">continue to rise<\/a>,\u00a0despite the recession and advances in technology. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matthew Cordell writes: The WFP has announced a new twist in its successful program using mobile phones to alert Iraqi refugees in Syria about available food aid\u2026\u00a0[Quoting Reuters] &#8220;Iraqi refugees in Syria will this week start receive U.N. text messages they can redeem for fresh food in local shops. &#8220;\u2026 FP&#8217;s Joshua Keating notes the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}