I have a new job! Im now working for Segovia, which is trying to improve payments and logistics in low-income parts of the world. In addition to general efficiency improvements, one of our top goals -- the one that excites me most -- is to fight corruption and fraud by making it much harder to skim money off the top of a transaction without being caught, currently a huge problem in some parts of the world and one that makes it much more difficult than it should be for people to raise themselves out of poverty. The initial emphasis is on making sure the money from cash-transfer charities and government social programs makes it into the hands of the intended recipients, and in fact Segovias software is already being used by GiveDirectly, one of my favorite charities. Its not a trivial problem either technically or socially. I like that the technical side is kind of old-school, with severe design constraints thatll make it challenging to arrive at any solution at all. The work will involve things like electronic currency and distributed webs of trust designed for intermittent-connectivity environments, secure transactions using severely memory-constrained hardware, and interoperation with unreliable, high-latency local delivery systems. But theres also a healthy dose of the latest tech, with NFC tokens, biometrics, and other fun stuff. If were successful, well both make a nice profit and, more importantly, significantly improve the lives of millions of people who dont usually get much attention in the tech communities of Silicon Valley and New York City.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 17:44:44 +0000
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