A few months ago I prepared an abstract for a paper on the effects of mobile technology on the economy. Since the requirement for the full paper has gone away, I thought I'd share as this summarises several previous posts I've done on the subject. Hope it's useful! Mobile is often referred to as revolutionary. I agree, but not, perhaps for the reasons most regularly cited. I’m not down on mobile technology. Smart devices have enabled greater scale and scope of communications between individuals, greater consumption of content, greater variety in that content. Five years ago, applications were the preserve of suits with laptops. Now they are a mega-industry in the making. A new media untarnished by the false dawn of the dotcom era. Androids are cool for the first time since Star Wars. Mobile has enabled all of this and still found time to revolutionise banking in Africa, catalyse the growth of the largest company in history and overthrow half a dozen regimes. Not b...