I recently came across the Nokia Bicycle Charger, designed to charge mobile phones with a bottle dynamo. It is an intriguing hybrid of old technology, the bicycle dynamo, which was very common when I was a child and new technology the mobile phone. Nokia developed it for the African market. Much of Africa has a very poor infrastructure, with poor electric and landline phone systems. This has lead it to leapfrog landline phone services and embrace mobile phone ownership. Half of all Africans now own a mobile phone. In a continent where many areas have very poor access to mains electricity a bicycle charger is a very elegant and simple solution to the problem of charging phones.
Africa is pioneering new services that may soon spread to the rest of the world. Electronic money on mobiles is catching on very quickly, new text services are developing, mobiles are being used to create networks to monitor elections and hold public officials to account.
Like the bicycle charger the African revolution is an intriguing hybrid, where an underdeveloped and apparently backward continent is leading the world in innovative and efficient communication services and ideas. In Africa necessity is proving to be the mother of invention.
Even with its underdeveloped infrastructure and chronic poverty Africa can maintain a mobile phone infrastructure and become world leader in mobile services. Perhaps in future decades as western societies power down we will be able to maintain our mobile phone systems.
Necessity will certainly force us to loose many resource hungry technologies like the car as a system of mass transit. But there are some advanced technologies that consume modest amounts of resources and have great utilitarian value. In the future we will, all other things being equal, continue to maintain these technologies. I believe and hope that mobile phone communications will be one of those technologies.
The Nokia Bicycle Charger is now the number one item on my shopping list. When I head off bicycle touring this summer my bike will be equipped with a Nokia smartphone and a charger. On the road I will keep in touch with home, watch the weather forecast, find information about the areas I am passing through and maybe post on this blog, all from the saddle of my touring bike. This service will cost me one euro a day.
The future is here already and it’s a hybrid of old technologies like the bicycle and the bottle dynamo and new technologies like the smart phone.
A good Guardian article on the African phone revolution
BBC article on same
The Nokia Bicycle Charger
Available from Phonesonline.ie for 30 euros
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