Street Exchange Rate

Tech workers laid off by the Silicon Valley brotherhood will be alright. They’ll probably develop some apps and sell them to companies that fired them. They know enough about the tech locomotive, to know where and how to jump in, using personal networks nurtured at institutions such as MIT, Bangalore Institute of Technology or Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Street technicians in all four corners of the globe don’t have the money for higher education. They don’t speak code, don’t know the meaning of IPS, but they speak languages of the soil. My phone is blocked. My laptop cannot power up. I can’t open the attachment my brother sent me. I’m dead, money in my bank account just disappeared!

Street tech not only solves problems, it can re-engineer devices, the same way they tinker with the electricity meter. Street tech does not have open plan offices with fridges full of bottled water. Word of mouth is the re-tweet. Some might have a stall at the market that sells spinach, sweet potatoes, noodles, meat, fabrics from Germany, everything.

Street tech is like foreign exchange. As a tourist, do you change your dollars at the bank or on the street? The two rates are as different as night and day.  It’s not always advisable for tourists to wander into certain areas, just because they want more than what banks can give. Some tourists do it anyway. 

Unlike recently downsized Silicon Valley techies, street tech has never been inside air conditioned offices. They work in the sun, in taxi ranks, noodle shops and local bars.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.