Ged Carroll

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  • Cash divide

    The 1990s had a cash divide. A number of years ago in college, I wrote an essay about the role of technology exclusion in society. This internet as a thing was only really starting to get going and we had just changed over the web browsers at the college from Mosiac to Netscape.

    I used to surf the web in 16 shades of grey available on my battered PowerBook 165, when I jacked into the JANET network. Why am I rambling about a geriatric computer and the ‘net before Google?

    Well, I used the web to research my essay and came across an article on the Washington Post about the cash divide discussing a ‘cash ghetto’, increasingly if you had to deal in cash you were on the margins of society. Part of this was down to the laundering of money from organised crime, including the drug cartels. It made sense to move as many people as possible out of the cash economy, but it created a cash divide. The cash divide separated illegal migrants from citizens; criminals from law abiding citizens.

    An article in the Arizona Daily Star, which my RSS feed aggregator picked up talked about the pervasive nature of Visa and MasterCard where cash was once king reminded me of the college essay.

    Visa and Mastercard have moved in alongside cheque cashing services and remittance businesses to bridge the cash divide profitably. Poor people tend to pay more charges than richer members of society.

    You don’t even need to have a credit record or a banking account. There are ways to provide pre-loaded credit cards in the US to bridge the cash divide. From intern payments to staff bonuses can be provided on cards form Visa, Mastercard and even American Express.  Interesting reading check it out. More finance related posts here.

  • Social Networking

    Fantastic overview on the overhyped technology trend of the moment social networking. Don’t get me wrong I am a member of some of them, its just that the net is not paved with gold and there are only a finite number of opportunities. By the time you get around to organise a high-level conference about them or Wired do an eight-page spread to explore the issues it’s over.

    Ged Carroll’s guide to the new-new thing:

    Info-imaging: digital is the new film, but there still hasn’t been a truly easy way to manipulate and store pictures online that is as easy as a photo album, why? Also people like Fuji, Kodak etc are used to having continuing revenue from film sales, how do they adapt for the 21st century when the market for cameras that are good enough for you and I saturates in the next few years, whats the sticky app. How can business take advantage of this technological change in a risk-free, cost effective manner and still take home the benjamins

    Communities for broadband: Question why was AOL so successful? Not because of its content, nor its direct marketing technique learned from the Luftwaffe. It was two things ease-of-use and communities. With broadband network providers are obsessing about content, in reality they don’t have too much of a clue they are using a fast failure model to try and find out what works. I know because I promoted a survey done at the end of 2000 by Capgemini with Ernst & Young that reached out to about 100 CEOs in telecoms and media. The survey concluded that everyone knew that broadband was needed but not the why. If we look at what has driven net adoption so far is communication and being a part of a community. Email was the killer app. The question to be answered is how can a community be enhanced and made more engaging to sell broadband services and differentate the next AOL from just another pipe-merchant. VoIP won’t do it because its a commodity product and need to be ‘open’ in order to allow it to become useful through gaining ubiquity.

    I’ll leave it to David Hornik to put the hype in prospective with a summary of a Churchill Club event Social Networking Who Cares?

    “Welcome blah blah blah relationship capital blah blah blah social contracts blah blah blah media businesses blah blah blah identify the rabid fans of the iPod blah blah blah utility media blah blah blah this is the future of the web blah blah blah RSS blah blah blah Spam blah blah blah killer app blah blah blah social networking is blogging dumbed down for the masses blah blah blah tribecaster blah blah blah widget blah blah blah what is the connection between social networks and blogs blah blah blah the most efficient media platform ever blah blah blah read-write, not read-only blah blah blah all software is about people blah blah blah put this stuff in context blah blah blah monetizing relationships blah blah blah a new dimension to the web blah blah blah I met my wife on Match.com blah blah blah wiki-based community blah blah blah collective action, common good … blah blah blah I’ve been monetizing my social relationships since my bar mitzvah blah blah blah blah blah it’s group voice blah blah blah social context blah blah blah the entire web is a social network blah blah blah join me in thanking tonight’s moderators blah blah blah goodnight.”

    More related posts here.

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