A few years ago, Mashable featured an interview with Melinda Gates titled Tech’s Responsibility to the Developing World.
Pay attention to Gates’ perspective if you’re using mobile ministry to glorify God among unreached peoples:
When it comes to issues in the developing world, an understandable concern is “technology creep,” wherein organizations use advanced technologies even when a low-tech solution may prove a better option. To avoid this, according to Gates, one must understand what kind of technology certain people are likely to have and work with it in a local context.
Sure, the iPhone and iPad can always do it better and with more flare, but if you want impact the unreached, it’s much wiser to learn what devices the people you are reaching own. Then develop your outreach to operate within those boundaries. Although every other person in the U.S. may seem to have an iPhone or iPad, that’s not true among the least reached!
A beautiful iPhone/iPad app doesn’t help people making $3/day because they can’t afford either device nor the Internet service required to run the app. Fancy apps may only excite donors for your ministry, but they won’t help many of the people they’re designed to reach. Alternatively, if your people group is Japanese, I’d highly recommend developing an iPhone/iPad app for your outreach immediately!
If you’re looking for impact and not just show, avoid the technology creep and start with the end user, the technologies they are using, and how they are using them. Our Digital World Atlas and DataReportal are good places to start for finding out more about people groups’ digital lives.
A couple short videos dealing further with the subject of appropriate technology and solutions are:
Computing on the Margins: Tools that Travel
and