UNITY
nication between people – two areas that
otherwise could hardly be more different
from one another.
The first of them is so blindingly obvious it seems redundant to even mention
it. The merest mention of “global village”
or “making the world smaller” should call
to mind an endless stream of adverts for
social networking, cell phones, even internet-ready computing. And would you
know it, Jewish and Israeli footprints are
all over these.
American Jews have played a crucial
role in personal computing from its early
days, most notably Intel co-founder Andrew Grove, but it was when computing
really became about connecting people
that they really stepped into the spotlight,
starting with the establishment of the
TCP/IP protocol (a foundational component of the internet) by Bob Kahn, right
on to the advent of social media when
Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook, all
by way of the behemoth that is Larry Page
and Sergei Brin’s Google.
Israel too has made some fairly major
contributions to the field. The first Intel
chip was created in Israel, as was the first
USB-based flash drive – an invention that
was literally all about “sharing”. In terms
of cellular technology, though, they’re a
hard country to match, let alone beat. The
original cellular technology was developed by Motorola, with a huge percentage
of the company’s initial research and development being conducted by Motorola
Israel. An Israeli branch of a major corporation is very common, incidentally, as
tech companies like Google, Microsoft,
IBM, Intel and Apple all have a major Israeli presence.
It’s in its smartphone applications,
though, that Israel’s technological sector
really showcases its unifying spirit. Three
of Israel’s best and most popular apps are
all about connecting people, albeit in
three quite distinct ways.
Waze has become one of the premier
GPS apps that not only connects people
via maps and driving directions, but
through a host of functions that specifi-
46 JEWISH LIFE
ISSUE 86
FOR A COUNTRY AND A PEOPLE THAT HAVE SPENT
THEIR EXISTENCE ON THE BRINK OF DESTRUCTION, THE
STATE OF ISRAEL AND THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL HAVE
NEVER LOST THAT QUINTESSENTIALLY JEWISH IDEAL
OF MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE.
cally call on interaction between people to
build maps together, create private groups
for tip-sharing and even play games. Viber
makes use of the Israeli-created voice over
Internet Protocol to tackle major chat programs like Skype head-on, and provides
one of the best, simplest and cheapest
ways to stay in contact with friends, family and colleagues all over the world. Finally, Babller may be the least well known of
the three and its headache-inducing spelling may have some users running for the
hills (or their nearest library), but it’s actually the app that is most specifically designed to build bridges between different
cultures, as the multiculturalism in Israel
spurred its designers to create a social networking app that automatically translates
social messages from one language into
any other.
KICKING THIRST AND HUNGER
WHERE IT HURTS
Less fun but several leagues more important (think first world versus third world
problems), one of the other major technological areas in which Israel has taken major strides in is agriculture. It’s a field – if
you’ll excuse the pun – that is central to
Israel’s status as the “Start-Up Nation”
and, indeed, lies at the heart of its very
survival and continued existence. And it
turned Israel from a barren desert into the
Biblically-accurate land of milk and honey… And trees. Lots and lots of trees!
Solving this particular existential crisis
hasn’t just been good for Israel, though: it
has resulted in technologies that have the
potential to change the way countries the
world over can cater to the food and water
needs of their populaces. Th