Carl, I worked with a doctoral student earlier this year.
He is in charge of food distribution for 145,000 refugees in Burundi, Africa! He had this problem. He could not track his supply chain of food distribution.
As a result, people were stealing food to sell, and the refugees were going hungry. He wanted to fix this. His proposed solution was using the cell phone as a supply chain "computer."
First, it is cheaper in poor countries to use cell towers than to string fiber optic phone lines.
Second, as you suggest, information services are converging on the cell phone or similar devices - and away from the PC and laptop!
In fact, courses like this could easily come to you over the cell phone in the not too distant future!
Anyway, I encouraged my student to go to the Gates Foundation for funding. He offers two interests of theirs: technology and health in the Third World.
I am pleased to have done my little bit to help this situation.
Dr. Rux
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