The greatest technological advancement of the modern world, after the personal computer, has to be the cell phone. The power that it gives its approximately three billion users around the world arises from its participatory nature. Consider the recent protests against the Chinese repression of Tibetans. The use of mobile phones to send pictures of the protests in Lhasa and elsewhere and regular updates of rapidly unfolding stories is power that is hard to contain.

It is the one device that makes possible the notion of the global village. Perhaps the only thing that the poor fishermen on the Kerala coast and the rich stock analyst in the New York Stock Exchange have in common is the cell phone.

What accounts for the unreasonable success of the cell phone is that it reduces the cost of disseminating and accessing information instantly. The mobile phone is what I call “a general-purpose personal information communications device”. The “personal” refers to the information, rather than to the ownership of the device because what information is depends on the recipient.

The rich and the poor alike have a need for information and depending on their personal interests and occupations, they differ in their willingness to pay for information. Therefore while the device is common, what the poor do with the device is different from what the rich do with it.

One can distinguish between two broad categories of information: pure and actionable. Actionable information is something that enables a decision to be made and action is prompted as a result, as in the case of the protesters. Pure information is something that does not result in an immediate response or action. Pure information is “good to know” as opposed to actionable information which is “need to know.” One may call pure information a luxury good, while actionable information a basic good.

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