Welcome!

Surprisingly, I've always seemed to avoid blogs - not reading them, of course, but having my own. Like a lot of other 21-year olds, I'm definitely no stranger to online forms of communication and expression*; after all, I grew up on them. But I think I've always felt like writing journal entries online [an obviously outdated definition of blogging] for the world to read was a bit too personal. Then again, maybe I just needed an excuse.

So maybe its a good thing I'm taking this elective class where the professor has given a relatively simple course-long assignment: to blog about tech successfully. Now that I think about it, I'm sort of excited: I get to write, which really I don't do much of anymore, and I get to explore and comment on subjects that interest me.

But before I get any further, I guess I should introduce myself. So I'm Goldie, a senior at USC's undergraduate business school. I couldn't really decide what to major in so I ended up doing a little bit of Finance, a little bit of Information and Operations Management, and a bit of international economics (my minor). I was born here in Southern California, but grew up entirely in Asia - mostly in Taipei and Singapore.

Being from Asia, I pretty much knew right away that I wanted to blog about Asia. It was incredibly hard to decide on a topic because there are so many huge things/trends/issues right now all around Asia that interest me, and especially to do with technology - globalization, tech hubs, IT shifts, biotech funding, venture capitalists, agricultural tech, tech policy, infrastructure, and the list goes on forever.

In the end, I've decided on a topic which could potentially touch upon all the above issues; at the same time, however, it is a topic that on its own has various implications and is of interest to everyone. My blog is going to be about how technology affects poverty, and more specifically, how technological innovations are being used to alleviate poverty.

In the weeks to come, I hope to comment on both the success stories in this arena (for example, the story of EChoupal, a computer/internet system that has instigated rural transformation across India by giving farmers direct access to buyers and seed sellers, as well as information on farming techniques, leading to improved yields), and also talk about potential tech-related solutions to the current obstacles in the battle against poverty.

Along the way, I welcome any comments, questions, and definitely opinions. Feel free to throw any links my way when it comes to related articles or topics.

Thank you!



*aka ICQ, quickDot, msn, aim, circleup, linkedin, facebook, and of course, other people's myspaces.