How Connectivity Will Create a Global Microeconomy

What’s the Latest Development?

The mobile communication revolution has already changed the world but we have only scratched the surface of how connectivity will change society, according to a report from Cisco. The multinational corporation estimates that by 2012, mobile devices will outnumber humans. By 2016, global mobile connection speed will increase ninefold and traffic will increase eighteenfold. Ten percent of that traffic will come from China while the Middle East and Africa will have the greatest mobile-traffic-growth of any region on the planet.

What’s the Big Idea?

The advance of wireless technologies represents economic growth, potentially empowering the billions of people who live in developing countries. Among the biggest impediments to growth, however, is lack of a wireless infrastructure, something the US should work to provide itself and the world, says consumer technologist Ben Bajarin. He predicts that opportunities for trade and commerce will become more deeply ingrained in the global society as mobile technologies enable ever-more connectivity between individuals and far-flung countries.

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