m-Living Labs, A framework for collaborative community advancement

Abstract

Within Southern Africa the establishment of Living Labs for community development is steadily gaining momentum. The majority of the established living labs aim to improve and address various aspects and issues encountered in rural environments. Internet access barriers also referred to as the digital divide, is becoming a lesser issue due to the high saturation rate of mobile technologies. The cellular phone industry is a rapid growing platform for development in all possible fields of science and education as researched by this paper. The capabilities of cellular phones grow each year, allowing us to push the very boundaries of what content is presentable to end users as well as creating new, innovative services. This paper will revisit the Living Lab concept and provide a possible framework for the application of various mobile Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 technologies, to render different envisaged services.