Silicon Valley Musings

During my Digital Vision fellowship at Stanford, one of the things I noticed is that many emerging economies are seeking to attract manufacturing or impersonal service jobs (e.g. call centers). The problem with this approach is it creates low paying jobs that are easily moved to the next lowest bidder.

As an alternative, I suggest emerging economies provide person-to-person services to the developed economics of the world via the Internet. A combination of instant messaging, a identity system, and an international Paypal-like facility would be the building blocks for person-to-person service infrastructure.

A Person-to-person service provider would be clearinghouse where individuals in the developed world could be matched with individual service providers from the developing world. These one-to-one relationships would provide high paying jobs that would be difficult to supplant.

The following are some examples of person-to-person services:

Person-to-person Tutors could provide direct instruction in a number of subjects, the most obvious being be foreign language and social studies. But other subjects including math, science, nursing, music, etc. are also possible.

Person-to-person Caregivers would allow convalescent homes, hospitals, and home bound elderly to augment their nursing care with remote caregivers. These care givers would help the patients to read their email, keep abreast of the news, sports scores, remind them of important family events, etc. The caregivers could also send alerts to local relatives or health workers if the patient?s condition has deteriorated.

One such service could be Person-to-person Chaperones for latch key children. These chaperones would discreetly monitor a child?s Web surfing, email, and instant messenger usage ensuring children are staying out of trouble. The nannies could optionally provide parents summary reports of their children?s activities.

Person-to-person Artisans could create unique, customized avatar, ring-tone, or skin designed just for power Internet users.