There is no technological fix for poverty — at least not without social, political, and economic measures, as well. But this experiment in the Philippines might be a sign that the ability to organize simple collective action (like group buys for basic commodities, or the ability to shop for the best price) via mobile telephone could be one useful tool in helping the poorest of the poor make it through the day (Thanks, Ryan!):

Finding that his family has run out of its supply of rice, Nestor Santos (not his real name) pulled out a cellular phone from his pocket, keyed in the order and promptly sent it via short message service (SMS) — better known in the Philippines simply as “texting” — to his order taker.

A few hours later, the ordered sack of rice to be shared by Nestor and his neighbors arrived.

This account may sound like just another technology-assisted lifestyle story, except for the fact that Nestor collects garbage for a living, and lives in a former dumpsite that still has a huge mound of compacted decades-old filth — and a much-reduced stench outsiders still find overpowering — to remind residents of their even sorrier past.

As before, he and his family of six live by the day. They are just one of the 2,520 families eking out a living of sorts in Smokey Mountain — a huge slum located in Tondo in western Metro Manila that gained international notoriety from the ’70s to early ’90s as a blatant symptom of something terribly wrong with the way the country has been run by various administrations.

Transformed into a low-cost housing area for poor families in the mid-’90s during the Ramos Administration, Smokey Mountain still has a mountain of garbage — and the pervasive smell — to show what it used to be.

Today, 21 buildings brimming with families sorround the three-storey-high garbage hill, on which they used to build their shanties.

And for Nestor’s family of six, some things never change — like having to live on just a kilogram of rice for an entire day, and to contend with a cloud of noxious gases from the garbage mount that can blanket the entire community.

This time, however, there is one glaring difference: these impoverished families have started using technology to get by each day on slightly better terms.

Using a simple GSM cellular phone to buy basic goods like rice, cooking oil, dried fish and detergent, their order takers-cum-purchasing coordinators haggle for the lowest price among factories and wholesale suppliers in Bulacan just north of Metro Manila, as well as in Pampanga and Bataan, Central Luzon.