Hi Cindy, Taran, others,
Why do you feel there is an inherent problem with using first-world
technologies to address third-world problems? India owes its status as a
booming IT market entirely to this phenomenon.
I'll give you a more grassroots example, however. I know of a nonprofit
based in Varanasi, India, that works with children from artisan
communities. They run a school, have several arts programs, and attempt
to address the growing marginalization of Indian artisans. And, like so
many of such groups, they have the typical problems of finding
volunteers, getting exposure, and finding funding.
In India, website designers are everywhere...but they all want to be
paid. Hosting costs a ton. Search engine optimization is almost unhead
of, and the companies that do it are outsourcing for major US firms, at
very high prices. No one is willing to donate their time or their skills
to a nonprofit in need, which is why the organization I speak of didn't
have a website till a couple of years ago...though they've been working
in this field for 17 years now. No one here had heard of them. I'm sure
each of us can name a dozen organizations (at least) that are in the
same boat.
A couple of years ago, when I came across them, I was in a different
position. Sitting here in my first-world city, where I can live off food
stamps or my corporate day job and volunteer my time with abandon, I
decided I could easily build them a website. I could host it for them
for very cheap (now, for free) and could apply my first-world corporate
search engine optimization skills to their cause. Now, their site
receives tons of traffic, and was ranked first in Google for "nonprofit
ngo" for almost a year...and as a result, they no longer had to even
look for volunteers, because people spontaneously began finding them
online and applying to work there, from all over the world. This summer,
a group of professors from the University of Michigan travelled to
Varanasi at their own expense to conduct a series of talks and concert
performances, and then concluded with an academic conference. This is a
fairly big deal for Varanasi, since the city's not exactly an academic hub.
A very efficient, first-world solution, bridging the gaps between what
they needed and what they could never afford to develop on their own. I
could have gone to Varanasi and taught in their school, instead. I could
have worked on the ground, and spent all of my time and effort these
past few years touching the lives of a few children. Instead, I donated
a portion of my time and effort, from my home here in Chicago, and it
resulted in a large number of employees, interns, and volunteers
donating their time, and touching the lives of so many more.
There are certainly those in Africa and elsewhere who do not have pencil
or paper...but I ask you, do they have TVs? In your writing, you speak
of two very different target populations. I would argue that the poorest
of the poor will not be affected in the least by the advent of
interactive TV, simply because if they cannot afford pencil and paper,
they cannot afford TV, and nor will their governments support
infrastructure to make TV available to their areas unless more affluent,
urban populations reside nearby. Incidentally, the technology to use a
TV for two-way communication has been around for years...no MIT
development needed. Ranging from video game consoles with ethernet
capabilities to the older Web-TV systems, and everything in-between.
There are problems with all of these technologies...the primary one
being that using a TV as an output system is only that, an output
system. You still have to supply a computer to handle processing, on
some level, even for the simplest applications. This is where the cost
factor comes in to play.
There are different target populations involved here. For a child who
does not have pencil or paper, and cannot read, I agree...there are more
critical priorities that need to be addressed before our laptop will be
needed. Similarly, to address Taran's post, there are populations (like
this hypothetical child I just referred to) who will need food and
clothing long before we can worry about the state of their digital
education. Digital literacy must take second place behind the other
basic necessities.
However, digital literacy is fast-becoming (I would argue, has already
become) a basic necessity as well...perhaps not as basic as some others,
but far more basic than many. Cindy's critique could easily apply to all
digital literacy initiatives; how are they relevant if the target
population is starving?
They aren't relevant, perhaps, or must take a back seat to such
concerns. But, for better or for worse, digital literacy is the gap
we've chosen to fill, and these are the tools being considered to do it.
Perhaps there are better, more basic causes to be aligned with. But a
criticism of the cause of digital literacy cannot be an effective
analysis of its tools.
And, as a justification of the cause, I would point out that there are
audiences that are not in need of a pencil. There are vast populations
that are eager and ready for digital education, and find the lack of it
their main obstacle to social mobility. Taran, if you provide food and
shoes and clean water, you sustain populations. Providing a digital
education (assuming these other needs are met) could trigger a model of
self-sufficiency, where populations can begin to sustain themselves.
Give a man a fish, but also teach a man to fish...and the hunger of the
man in question is not relevant to our discussion of various fishing rods.
D.
-------------------
Dave A. Chakrabarti
Projects Coordinator
CTCNet Chicago
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(708) 919 1026
-------------------
Cindy Lemcke-Hoong wrote:
Reading some of the discussions on this list, somehow they give me the impression some of the members on this list is still using FIRST world tools to solve 3rd world problems. (Sorry to use the terms first and 3rd worlds).
Not that long ago I wrote about children in some African countries do not even have paper to write on. They do not have money to buy pencil and exercise books. They use twig to trace and practice writing on the chair/sandy ground they are sitting on. They have no chairs nor tables, and if their parents do not have money to buy them a uniform they are not even allow to attend class. So what would you do? Buy them a uniform so that they can at least attend the class? Help them to furnish their classroom with chairs and desks so that they can have something to sit on? OR would you give these same children with the $100 lap-top with FLASH animations? Do you think this same child would know how to use Google to search for information?
Furthermore, $100 might be dirt cheap in our world. The same $100 is a lot of money in thier world. What would you want to provide them first with?
In my opinion, if anyone wishes to, they can turn the TV termnal into a very useful interactive tool. IF one can use TV monitor to play games, why can it not use the same TV monitor and turn it into a computer screen? What is the different between TV and PC? TV is sending, computer is both send and receive. I am sure some smart person from MIT or the like, IF THEY REALLY WANT TO, can come up with a device.
It would also make much more sense to create telecenters. Giving each child a lap-top, you are looking at a ' distributed model' that is composed of millions and millions of lap-tops. How are you going to service them? or train the users? It would make much more sense to create 'centralized model/telecenters' and have the users come to the center to use the facilities. Not only it is easier to control and manage, one can also start creating job for local populations to man the telecenters.
Cindy
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