The Foreign Service Journal, January 2007

has inspired thousands of booklovers around the world to join in the effort. The idea is simple: Book Crossing instructs members to follow the three Rs — read, register and release. Users register and label their books, which receive unique ID numbers, or BCIDs, and leave them at bookshops, bus stops or other places. Once caught, books are reported back on the Web site and recirculated for more unsuspecting readers to find. A completely free service, Book Crossing boasts over 515,000 mem- bers in almost 200 countries, who have put nearly four million books into circulation. Booklovers around the world gather at one of several Book Crossing conventions each year. Though the capture rate is only around 20 percent — that’s not count- ing the number of books that go unre- ported — the phenomenon is slowly but surely gaining momentum. The Web site has been receiving much press attention and in 2005 won two Webby Awards. As the homepage proudly notes, the word ‘bookcrossing’ has even been included in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary ( www. askoxford.com/pressroom/archive/ coed11new/ ). Hornbaker, who works with the software and Internet developer Humankind Systems, Inc., was inspir- ed to create Book Crossing while browsing through Phototag.org, a sim- ilar project that releases disposable cameras into the world unchaper- oned. The cameras are equipped with return postage so that phototaggers can take a picture, pass it on and even- tually mail the camera back. The pho- tos and travel statistics are then posted online. For example, one gallery shows a camera named Turtle making the long journey from Boston to India! For more information, visit www.pho totag.org . — Lamiya Rahman, Editorial Intern Crossing the Digital Divide In developing countries, deep poverty, poor infrastructure and weak governance have long fueled concern over a “digital divide.” Yet, as statistics show, cellular technologies are already revolutionizing the lives of many mil- lions in the Third World. Mobile phone use is rapidly in- creasing in poorer nations: Fifty-nine percent of the world’s 2.4 billion cell- phone users live in developing coun- tries, with over 400 million cell-phone users in China, the world’s largest mobile-phone market; 100 million in India, the fifth-largest market; and 152 million in Africa, where, at 65-percent growth a year, cell-phone use is rising fastest ( www.atimes.com/atimes/ South_Asia/HJ28Df02.html , www. learningpartnership.org/resource s/facts/technology , and http://web. mit.edu/eprom/whyafrica.html ) . Wireless communication tran- scends the inefficiency of costly, poor- ly-constructed landlines by offering a cheaper and more convenient alterna- tive. In fact, the number of cell-phone users has already surpassed that of landline subscribers. Once-isolated rural populations can now use phones to find jobs, earn better wages and transfer money to relatives. This is ground-breaking in regions where such basic tasks as going to the bank or finding information on markets can otherwise take hours, if not days, of arduous travel. In many countries, farmers and fisherman use cell phones to enhance businesses and increase their leverage over traders. Previously, isolated vil- lagers had no information on other markets, and were often forced to accept the low offers at hand. As Kevin Sullivan writes in the Washing- ton Post , however, Indian farmers can now contact various markets to find prices for produce, while fisherman can call several ports to find the agents that will offer the highest pay, 10 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 7 C Y B E R N O T E S