Digital for Social

  Workers wait in line It must be disappointing to find at the end of a month, perhaps spent working under a hot sun in difficult conditions, that you can give away one entire day’s pay in just a few minutes on fees and commissions to send your monthly salary home. If you’re a South Asian expatriate, you could nevertheless count yourself lucky - it can  easily cost two days pay  to send a month’s wages home to some African countries. The money in your pocket that represents your hard work, handed over to someone in an aircon office who punches a few buttons to send your cash home safely to your parents - does that feel fair?  Bill Gates , the  G-20 , the  European Council  and the  UN  don't think so.  The author's quest for new routes to market may involve trying novel paths Last year I was working in one of the less well-travelled countries of the Middle East. Among other things I was looking for the best return on an investm...

  Blackjack is one of the few casino games where sufficient knowledge about the order of the cards allows you to systematically beat the odds. The problem is that its hard both to keep track of the cards and to calculate whether to stick, twist or fold. In 1982 some adventurous geeks figured out that several pairs of eyes and some basic wearable computing might allow them to collaborate and win big; after a couple of practice runs they headed to Las Vegas, and, amazingly,  filmed their heist under the noses of the casino bosses . They called the subsequent documentary ’The Wedding Party’ because that’s what they posed as to avoid attracting suspicion about one group all being at the same table at once. At the end they get surrounded by a mob of burly security goons desperate to figure out how these guys’ luck was lasting so long. Wouldn’t it be good if we could similarly guarantee the outcome from tech bets on financial inclusion and poverty alleviation? Well, perhaps we ...