It is a country that has high levels of poverty and inequality and asks its citizens on the very first page of the national census if they use a hole in the ground or open cesspit for a toilet. Yet despite all of these obstacles, the Brazilian government has embarked on the world’s first fully digital national census. It has achieved this ahead of countries like the US whose digital trials failed and resulted in it reverting to an old-fashioned paper based census. The Brazilian census is another...

So I got quite excited when I read that the Indian Government had announced that it was going to produce an iPad/slate type computer powered by solar batteries with wi-fi and web-conferencing facilities all for the princely sum of $35 a unit. The plan is to get 110 million of these units into the hands of school children in India. But this got the alarm bells ringing. I interviewed Nicholas Negroponte, (apologies if you get The Times’ paywall/registration page) the brains behind the One Laptop...

Here’s an experiment with pictures and video. I recently went to Valencia and looked to capture the city with a loose brief of Street Art and the things the tourist board would not want you to see. There was a fantastic exhibition called Mean Streets at the Valencian Institute for Modern Art which presented representations of cities through video, music stills and film. It inspired this little experiment. Stills taken on a rather restrictive 50mm lens on a Nikon D80. The video was shot on...

Interesting ideas at the website Design for the First World where a competition is being held for designers and inventors in developing countries to help developed with their problems. Were you surprised or did you chuckle at the thought that people in developing countries might be able to help those in developed? Well the author (who is from a developing country) says that this is is just plain wrong and I would agree: “Design for the First World shouldn’t be funny. The phrase “Third World...

There was an excellent article in the New York Times last week which exposes the exorbitantly high rates of interest charged by microfinance institutions on loans to the poorest households. The article highlights lots of examples where microfinance is leading to interest rates as high as 130-40 per cent – way above mainstream market rates. I was alerted to the article by an industry insider who has become disillusioned with the way things have gone in the sector. He also suggested that I investigate...