There are over 2 billion literate, mobile phone subscribers in the developing world, many living on less than $5 a day. Corporations pay people to accomplish billions of image, audio and text-based tasks. txteagle enables these tasks to be completed via the mobile phone by people around the globe.

The Boston Globe picks up on a very interesting point, which is, that the nature of work is being redefined, partly by economics pressures but also by our need to no longer work as we once did – defined by managerial capitalism – the office and factory to you and I. And our ability to move beyond the nation state, to redistribute wealth via the interlocking of networks, such as Txteagle.

The thought also came to me that this grassroots approach to tackling poverty, to help lift populations out of poverty by making small but dramatic changes in wage income should both enervate and inspire us all. Txteagle has a fascinating story, and often its the smallest things that can inspire us to do something remarkable.

In the words of Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, “[r]ural poverty has in the past been defined almost by its isolation.”  Poverty and isolation, however, should simply be viewed as just that; they should not be taken to imply that the individuals living in such condition lack the ability or willingness to participate in modern, knowledge-based tasks.  The average world literacy rate is 84%, and countries even in the developing world are near this level.  Over 80% of Kenya is literate.  Mexico and China are over 90% literate.  While educational systems in the developing world lag the industrialized world, they are most definitely present: to dismiss such labor pools from being able to participate in a global knowledge workforce is a mistake.

Until recently, the opportunity to tap into such developing world labor markets did not exist, for there was no way to communicate with them.  The recent and rapid advance of mobile technology in such parts of the world, however, has changed that. Mobile technology is disruptive: large populations of the world are suddenly becoming available for remote work.

Connected communication technologies, offer transformation for many of us. I was thinking of Lauren Luke whilst reading this article, the single mum from Newcastle that is today running a very successful business. She also faced a harsh reality of isolation and perhaps not the life threatening poverty her African counterparts did, but, non-the-less her chances of escaping the life that had been dealt to her – seemed somewhat remote. Connectedness has enabled Lauren to make for herself a life better lived.

As Vint Cerf wrote, You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,

There are more than three billion mobiles in use today and more than 80 per cent of the world’s population live within range of a network. In areas where wireline or WiFi access barely exists, many new users will first experience the internet through a mobile phone. In developing economies, people are already finding innovative ways to use mobile technology. Grameen’s micro-finance and village phone programmes in Bangladesh and elsewhere are known and respected around the world, but there are many less famous examples. During the Kenyan elections, Mobile Planet provided its subscribers with up-to-the-minute results by text message. As the cost of mobile technologies fall, the opportunities for such innovation will continue to grow.

We’re nearing the tipping point for mobile computing to deliver timely, geographically and socially relevant information. Researchers in Japan recently proposed using data from vehicles’ windscreen wipers and embedded GPS receivers to track the movement of weather systems through towns and cities with a precision never before possible. It may seem academic, but understanding the way severe weather, such as a typhoon, moves through a city could save lives. Further exploration can shed light on demographic, intellectual and epidemiological phenomena, to name just a few areas.

So we celebrate Txteagle and we wish them well, as they are building the what comes next, which so many companies and organisations fret about, but cannot seem to find their own way to the answer.