Dear GKD Colleagues, Jean-Marie Blanchard wrote:
> Main barriers to Internet penetration are identified as: lack of Telecom > infrastructure, limitation of population income, not adequate enough > content and applications, lack of local expertise and population > awareness....Alcatel is participating in a lot of field experiments, all > demonstrating that most of these limiting issues could be fixed, > provided a relevant approach is followed. For example, funding of > network infrastructure construction is quite solved when project > profitability is proven thanks to offering useful end-user services with > high local added value; so, it becomes possible to attract potential > investors; moreover, Internet illiterates and lowest income people could > afford connectivity thanks to community centers. So, universal access to > Internet can be no more a dream! My apologies but this is a circular argumentation. Jean-Marie starts off by saying at first that there is insufficient infrastructure, continuing then that there is limited income, not enough content and applications, no local expertise, no awareness. In any other field of market-economy the straight-forward conclusion would be that you try to sell a useless product and that therefore there is no demand and hence there are neither sales nor much product to sell. (Unless there is some strange conviction close to secular religion as if Internet penetration as such constitutes something desirable - despite that it's apparently of no valuable use). Please don't misunderstand me: I was an Internet-pioneer already en 1988, long before the Internet-hype started and I'm still almost fulltime engaged in promoting appropriate use of Internet in a not-so-developed country, Nicaragua. Yet I would insist that -- as in any market -- the starting point should be real needs (i.e. things that can be better solved or addressed using among other Internet-technologies). "Better" includes more efficiency - economically - but by no means is limited to more efficiency. > In Saint-Louis (Senegal), one pediatrician serves more than ten thousand > children. Here, the experimental project uses the Internet as a bridge > between the patients (a group of one thousand infants) and the doctor. > > The weight of a child can be considered a key health indicator. It is > measured twice a week by "weight collectors", local women equipped with > scales to weigh babies and a laptop computer to collect data. The > measurements are then uploaded to the pediatrician's database via the > Internet. Within five minutes, the doctor is able to detect which > children have odd weight curves and require further attention. When that > happens, he sends an e-mail to the weight collector, who in turn informs > the family that the baby needs medical attention. Just counter-productive examples: your Tele-doctor is counter-productive for Public Health Education because instead of providing the local weighers with pen and each parent with a chart where they jointly put the weight-measure and compare it against standard-curves - and by doing this increase Health Awareness not only for the parents - you just electronify the very old fashioned "wise man", who - only God knows how - is capable to predict which child is going to fall ill and which not. And as the poor and illiterate paid the "wise man" a couple of thousand years ago when he "predicted" seasons and eclipses, they now pay for health-predictions ... where in both cases if they were not kept ignorant they wouldn't pay a cent. Yours, Cornelio ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
