Design for the Other 90%

...an exhibition whose title underscores the fact that most designers focus their work on the desires and needs of the world’s richest 10 percent. Ninety percent of the 6.5 billion people living today don’t have access to the products and services that many of us take for granted.

Saving lives and fighting poverty in the developing world with design
By John Barrat

I also watched Cynthe E. Smith explain the leapfrog concept on tv.
In essence, its about helping these third world countries jump from the nineteenth century into the twenyfirst, without laying down the infrastructure that was required by the rest of the developed countries. How do we do that? By assisting them to adopt and implement modern (ie. mobile phones instead of land lines) and newly emerging technologies (i.e solar power).

Defining yourself Through Opposition to Others.

This is the phenomenon of what I call 'negative islam', and it is rife in Muslim communities in the West. This is a dynamic inherently set up for conflict. Where your very identity is one of differentiation, any attempt to look for points of connection, to build bridges, very quickly becomes an act of treachery. Accordingly, it is now common in the Muslim conversation for ideas and arguments to be dismissed on the grounds not that they lack merit, but that they are 'Western', and hence automatically a corupting, 'un-islamic' influence.

Waleed Aly
People Like Us;
How arrogance is dividing Islam and the West
Picador 2007

Edward Sa'id

But rejection alone does not take one very far, since if we are to claim, that as a religion and as a civilization Islam does have a meaning very much beyond either of the two currently given it [oil suppliers or potential terrorists], we must first be able to provide something in the way of a space in which to speak of Islam. Those who wish either to rebut the standard anti-Islamic and anti-Arab rhetoric that dominates the media and liberal intellectual discourse, or to avoid the idealization of Islam (to say nothing of its sentimentalization), find themselves with scarcely a place to stand on, much less a place in which to move freely.

In case it does sound too out of context, here's the full article
Islam Through Western Eyes
Edward W. Said
April 26, 1980,
The Nation.

Waleed Aly

...I stand at the intersection of these two conceptual entities we very loosly call 'Islam' and the 'West'. We tend to conceive of a gulf existing between them, and to a significant degree in today's world that is true. But there is also an overlap, and i presently find myself dwelling in it. Those who occupy this space are decidedly more familiar with the Islamic tradition than most Westerners, and with Western societies, culture and politics than most Muslims. That is not a qualification. People in this position can be ignorant, too. But it does provide unique opportinities.

Waleed Aly
People Like Us;
How arrogance is dividing Islam and the West
Picador 2007