A Phone Is a Cow: How Pioneers of the Mobile Revolution Helped Millions Lift Themselves Out of Poverty

By Philip E. Auerswald

The untold stories of a generation of pioneers who brought the mobile revolution to global majorities worldwide

Far more than a phone, today's mobile is a handheld digital device embedded within a global network--and accessible to nearly everyone, everywhere. Creating the potential for technological inclusion at this unprecedented scale took both science-based inventions and necessity-driven innovations; both the scale of the largest corporations and the adaptability of entrepreneurs; and both regulation by government and the responsiveness of markets.

A Phone Is a Cow explores the revolutionary transition of the mobile phone from an urban convenience in wealthy countries to a global necessity. The book is built upon the untold stories of a generation of pioneers who brought the mobile revolution to global majorities worldwide. Collectively, their work has had a decisively greater impact on the lives of most people on the planet than the activities of Silicon Valley titans usually featured in the books that line airport bookshelves. In the stories of these market pioneers, we see replicable processes for bringing frontier technologies to excluded populations by combining determination with empathy and creative foresight.

A Phone Is a Cow will draw readers in with the patterns that connect history, economics, technology, sociology, ethics, and daily lived experience--and provide a richer understanding of the long-term trends that matter most.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1647127106
• ISBN13: 9781647127107
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Length: 286 Pages