Is Money Equal to Data Equal to Money, or the other way around?
Imagine an “Internet” of the Air (IoA) — to provide “juice” for the Internet of Things(IoT) — to increase non-cash assets of the very poor, tiny bits at a time.
A proposal
Presenting a new tool (S2); an S2 implementation as a new web standard (W3C) for the Internet of Things(IoT) t hat provides the “juice” for a trillion internet connected “Things”; an appeal to G- 20 for political commitment to make S2 an obligation by regulation; an implementation mechanism (GSMA/G-5). https://www.space.com/38928-antarctic-selfie-tests-interplanetary-internet-tech.html
Send to: (S2) Instant, easy, and free airtime transfers: Across the room, or across the sea. It’s just a simple button; A couple lines of code that send internet juice, or it hovers into a request to “Get Juice”. It’s got to be a W3C standard, because it has to work across global telecommunications infrastructure — anywhere, anytime. With a dash of AI, these “things” could live for ever; request juice from each other — become a network of networks.
A draft Presentation
Cover Image: cool, movie poster like of blurry ethereal crowd of people looking away — inside a circle.
Title: The Intangibles
Definition of tangible: easily seen or recognized;
Definition of intangible: not made of physical substance: unable to be touched.
After much spent treasure by governments, NGOs, and non-profits, so many still struggle without the resources to bring themselves out of the dark shadows of poverty. They are as though invisible to the telecoms, banks, and internet agents — we think they are there, but only because of the data.
Image: The “Intangibles” circle becomes a big black dot that disappears into a point
What does the data tell us about them. There are the very big numbers: Mark Zuckerberg tells us there are 4.5 billion people with no internet. The Global Findex data tells us there are 2 billion with no financial tools. And there are the very small numbers. Two. $2.00 dollars that 2.7 billion people have to survive day to day — 2/3 of whom have no bank account.
Image: from the dot, concentric circles Click for the 2, click, 2.7, and click 4.5 billion with crowds flickering dimly in black and white — the circle is seen in 2D wrapped in string. A ball of string.
Can a G-20/W3C/GSMA backed regulation do what governments, NGOs, and non-profits alone could not? This S2 collaboration was founded on the belief that we can connect these people, by mobile telephone, to a tiny, instant “airtime” transaction service — by pulling a comms signal, at scale, across the world’s networks.
Image: a ball of string pulling a length of string.
These already interconnected global telecom networks can be leveraged by the networks of internet agents. Air time can be sent to anyone; gotten from anyone from anywhere, for any phone with no commission. We simply connect the existing global networks of Telecoms and internet agents to networks of people to send and get airtime — billions of tiny transactions of pure airtime.
Image: produce a mocked-up print advertisement. Show a “S2h” button on a feature phone.
Tag line: Send to: home
Instant, easy, and free — airtime transfers — for you & for me: Across the room, or across the sea.
A customer need only know another telephone number to send airtime from anyone, anywhere. With Send to: we can scale to connect the globe.
Image: the network all lit up with some dark areas. A shimmering topologic fabric spread across the globe.
We can increase the incentive for the extension of this comms signal by increasing demand at the remote edge of these networks with tiny, instant, free, and easy transactions of airtime.
We can increase the affordability of the comms signal, because we increase the purchasing capacity of the poor by increasing the choices for how their airtime is obtained and transacted; by increasing trade in pure airtime; by increasing the consumption of airtime and mobile data that flow through their devices of the poor — we can increase the sporadically received assets of those with too little.
Image: the network all lit up with some dark areas — that begin to show activity represented by light around the edges of these “holes”. A happier sparkling globe.
We can create a vast market of tiny — just in time “jobs” with this Send to: tool. We can Send to: Share — where customers have set up an airtime sharing group. We can add a “When:” button: now, daily, weekly. “Send to: daily.” Or perhaps: Send to: daily up to 50 cents.
Image: show an animation of the sequence of these buttons in action on feature phone.
It’s the data, stupid! Because data is money is data!
A tool for innovations that arise from the experimentation of customers that generates data that instructs innovative new uses of these tools to generate more data… A pull algorithm sitting on a Send to: service. Send to: produces data interpreted by an analytic engine to tell us who needs what when for a new design or redesign — for the growth of these transactions.
Image: Show network design spreading horizontally.
Google’s and Internet.org’s vertical “push” approach could benefit from a horizontal “pull” of demand. This demand by “fuzzy finance” sustainably pulls the comms signal along horizontally to naturally extend the far edges of these networks. Pushing the signal vertically replicates the weak results of the billions of dollars spent by NGOs, Governments, and non-profits for the alleviation of poverty. Yet initiatives that push up MNOs OPEX/CAPEX and lowers their margins are unlikely to provide the incentives to scale, this S2 service must be mandated by regulation, because although this S2 service will increase Airtime distributed by over 20%, the affect on market competition will likely reduce the average global cost of this increased airtime by 20% or more by allowing these airtime transfers within duopolistic local markets. This one regulation with a uniform implementation will significantly increase the assets of half the world’s people who live on less that $2.50 a day.
S2 explicitly bridges both the lack of access to information and the lack of financial tools with the introduction of S2 as a mass market digital tool for a “natural” extension of the customer’s physical experience.
Airtime to bring this comms signal to the 4.5 billion without one. Tiny airtime transactions to provide simple safe tools for the 2 billion with only more awkward financial tools, such as jewelry or livestock. Simply airtime. Any of the 7 billion mobile subscribers can benefit from this service by transferring their airtime balance to any other mobile user; for the trade of both digital services and physical services; and as an instrument for internet agents or businesses, in general, to settle debts to their providers and partners.
The widespread utilization of S2 will herald an alternative method of exchange, from which, operators, internet agents, and customers all benefit: MNOs benefit with a 20% influx of new revenues at their current margins; internet agents benefit with an efficient method of exchange for tiny-transactions; and any mobile customer benefits from these convenient tiny transactions.
S2 quickly scales globally, because these tiny airtime transactions are governed by telecommunications regulations, not cumbersome banking law. S2 will fit like a glove for what people actually do — and extend what they do around the globe. S2h offers customers a simple, but innovative new service: the sending and the getting of tiny bits of airtime — commission free.
The evolution of fuzzy finance; From “juice” to Juice!
So What? must be done…
- Recruit an organizing committee.
- Define the IoA ontology.
- Ok we need a marriage of the IoT and a newly created IoA ontologies. We’re a goint to need something easy and smart like a RDF tripple. IoT to IoA: get, send, and get back. Time. When to get back.
