Mobile Technology

Even though technological implementations have a recognized impact on socialization their role remains unaccounted for within the study of market design. Technologies affect market performance directly if the affordances presented by them are not of sufficient quality and the signals sent by the users misrepresent their true preferences and intentions. In such cases technology can aggravate existing information asymmetries and result in suboptimal market outcomes. Technologies also affect market performance indirectly via their impacts on social systems and communities. These impacts can be contradictory, contributing to empowerment but also enslavement, independence but also dependence, the fulfilment of needs but also their creation.
Mobile technologies employed in markets could be designed to fit the skill sets, the cognitive tendencies and the information literacy of market participants. Removing these constraints remains a challenge for technology developers. Meanwhile digitalization is shifting methods of communication from literate to visual thereby increasing communication via symbolic systems at the expense of text and traditional literate forms. The combination of this shift in the language paradigm with lower ICT prices and with technologies such as 3G and multi-media mobile services has the potential of moving the world in the direction of higher density and quality of communication among populations with low level of formal education. Need to explore how the growth in communication can be turned into an opportunity for improving the welfare of the poor and the
illiterate.