Chris Wilson wrote:
If it cost $500 million to give a calculator to every child on Earth,
and $500 million to give them all clean water or basic nutrition or
medicine, where does one start? How does one make difficult choices like
that? Are there models for things like economic improvement, poverty
reduction, quality of life improvement, reduced healthcare costs, etc?
Do you see ICT as a fish a fishing rod or a fishing rod design tool ?
Sure, you could solve the water problem first, or the debt problem or
the irregularities in world trade, given enough cash but what is to stop
them re-appearing. Only if the disadvantage have the skills to
articulate, control and maintain their own future will the problems be
really solved, or at least better controlled, after all I don't think
these problems have been fully solved in the developed world.
But no... some people would prefer to maintain control over developing
nations. For example some company could ride in build a desalination
plant and give people clean water (at a cost). But where would the local
engineers be to maintain it ? No where, if your local population are
still struggling to get to grips with writing in their own language.
I don't care if its 'simputer, 100$ laptop or next-gizmo proposed by
geek X' as long as the platform is freely adaptable (GNU/Linux based) so
that the indigenous peoples it is target at can take control, be
responsive to its usage and take it forward, and so long as it improves
their own educational prospects and abilities.
I believe that both Simputer and the 100$ laptop have the potential to
do this. And beyond that create a secondary market for repairs,
software localisations (which are difficult with proprietary products)
and just important culturalisations.
As another example consider this:-
To my knowledge MS Office still does not have support for right to left
texts. Open Office on the other hand does. This is because people from
right to left language cultures where able to add support without
question, bureaucracy or non disclosure agreements.
Im going a little off focus here, but the point is that Simputer and the
100$ laptop use Free Software Foundation principals and GNU/Linux
software to drive them, and as such are "fishing rod" devices and not
just "fish".
Computers are not going to clean up the water, remove trading gaps or
make the poor instantly richer. But people of developing nations who are
given the opportunity to use computers and hopefully well networked
computers at that, will be able to learn how to look after their animals
better, grow better (preferably organic based) crops, create water
filtration systems and make and build their own future in a 1001 ways
social, economic and sustainable.
Simputer had a design advantage here since it was designed in India by
indian's to solve specific problems for indian communities. But the
principal CAN be the same with the 100$ laptop and more universal.
And another example ...
A computer programmer (student) went over to the Cameroon recently and
wrote a program for the local water authority office in a remote region.
Prior to this program being provided (freely I think), the data had to
be sent to central office 100's Km away and the bills printed and sent
back. Now the bills are printed locally, the tarifs have been reduced.
This is progress and I am envious of the programmers achivements, but
how much better would it have been if a local programmer could have done
the work.
The diversity of computers and their ICT roll means that computers can
be fish or fishing rods depending on how you use / program and design
them. I think, therefore we should encourage our developing nation
brothers and sisters to learn not only how to "fish" but how to build
their own rods.
Our goal in the developed world should be to stay focused on the fishing
rods and let the developing world do their own fishing. Then one day
quite unexpectedly there will come a time when the developing world can
develope fishing rod v2.0 by themselves for themselves, then we can all
celebrate !!!
Of course thinking about it the Simputer very nearly achived this status.
Tom.
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