Re: [GKD] Cyber-Revolution in India's Slums

[Purushothaman Pillai]

I am more fond of the Bundle Theory of consumption patterns, when it comes
to the poor, why not he have the benefits of the pure & humanly theory. If
focus is only on information & knowledge, then it should aid or facilitate
in procuring his basics. Then he may find time to see more & other benefits.
It is not the computer or convergence, but it is information & knowledge &
further its utility that would have value for my customer, the poor. If it
is going to be cost effective and having marginal utility greater than other
sources or resources, poor ought to seek ICT. We have to think only on the
delivery systems, the efficiency & effectiveness. Say the queuing of kids &
waste of time in the queue. The diminishing of interest with passage of
time, if the kids lose interest after initial excitement of seeing computer/
screen/ images etc.

Sometimes I wonder, will this reach a point of saturation of information as
in the case of education & nature; only the seeker gets the information..
after struggle.. there are indicators in ICT area they are flooded
with information, what to choose & what not; there are resource constraints.
But, in the case of poor, the information leverage is having more synergy or
mechanical advantage, should really give good results. Showing good people &
good things will have motivational effects. We will bring America here, we
will create conditions for good living here itself. (This is in agreement
with NDesai, I have a hypothesis that dreaming is a rehearsal & safety
mechanism.)

with high regards,
Purushothaman





***GKD is an initiative of the Global Knowledge Partnership***
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
Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at:

[GKD] The Simputer... from India

[Frederick Noronha]

THE SIMPUTER, A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO TAKE COMPUTING TO THE MASSES FROM INDIA

by Frederick Noronha,

BANGALORE, March 8: If this works as planned, the Simputer could go a long
way in taking computing within the reach of the reach of the commonman...
not just in India but across the Third World. Slated to cost below $200,
this device is now weeks away from its prototypes being made.

"Response has been phenomenal so far. We've got some 30 to 40 mega-bytes of
e-mail just discussing this project," says Professor Vijay Chandru, an
MIT-educated computer scientist who is one of those slaving away at this
project in the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science.

 From the Philippines to Cuba and beyond, this device has drawn attention,
from surprised specialists, who watch India's efforts at gingerly putting
together a computing device that could create a revolution for the commonman.

It's not only its below-US$200 (approx Rs 9000) price that's interesting,
but what the Simputer will be able to do.

This Internet device will have the potential to help even non-literate users
to check the Web, and get access to useful information that can make a
difference to their lives. It was put together by several academics and
engineers, in their spare time.

Once commercialised and put into the market -- its designs will be freely
released to companies that go into producing it -- the Simputer could be
used not just as a device for individuals to access the Net, but also by
communities through kiosks. A smart-card interface is being worked on to
facilitate micro-banking.

Its text-to-speech capabilities mean that it could also be used by the
hundreds of millions of illiterates in the country and beyond.

Proving skeptics wrong so far, the Simputer team put together a working
model of the device, which was showcased this week at the Banglinux
conference, held in this software capital of India in early-March.

This could change the way how IT proliferates in a country like India.

The Simputer -- or Simple Inexpensive Multilingual People's Computer -- is
built around Intel's StrongARM CPU, and is based on the Linux operating
system, with 16MB of flash memory, a monochrome liquid crystal display
(LCD), and a touch-panel for pen-based computing.

You needn't know English to access the Simputer, and it will give you both
Internet access and e-mail.

What's more interesting is the manner in which the product is being
released, through what is called Open Hardware Licensing.

To promote hardware innovation in India -- a country which doesn't have a
reputation in this field, unlike in software -- its design will be provided
at a nominal license fee to manufacturers.

Manufacturers can modify and extend the Simputer specifications.

"Companies can go ahead and create an improved Simputer. But, after a
one-year 'window of opportunity', the hardware they create will then come
back into the public domain. This will avoid the creation of monopolies, but
will also give people an incentive to innovate," said Prof Swami Manohar,
another key person involved with this project based at the IISc.

"Our model tries to complete the circle of innovation. What we are saying
is, 'Take this product, innovate on it, and then pass it on back'. We don't
want to create monopolies for anyone," said Manohar, who is part of the
newly-set up Simputer Trust.

For what would this keyboardless computing device be used? "We don't expect
someone to browse the Net with this for two hours. But a villager could
quickly log onto the Net, get the information he wants -- like the latest
prices being offered for commodities in nearby markets -- and switch off,"
says Prof Manohar.

He also clarified that it would be simple to operate so that people wouldn't
need "two hundred rupees per week training" to use it. Since Open Source
software based on Linux was being used, a whole host of people would be able
to create suitable software for it, he said.

One problem still remaining was that nobody was prepared to give them the
technology to create Smart Card readers, which would be openly available to
future developers.

"We cater to four languages as of now. If this device could speak to you in
your own language, it would be really nice," says Manohar, who says that
further information is available on the site www.simputer.org

Prof Chandru told IANS in an exclusive interview that in some "four weeks"
time about 400 to 500 prototypes would be developed and then employed for
field trials. There would be a need for developing large number of
applications that work on the Simputer's specifications, he said.

Partly, the cost of it was kept low simply because the "development team was
just not claiming any recompense", he said. Devices with somewhat similar
potential were being sold at prices of US$400+. "Then, you have to keep in
mind that there's nothing really comparable," he said.

He disagreed with the suggestion that the Simputer would be difficult to
maintain in rural

[GKD] Radio Browsing in Sri Lanka

[Gerard Kenney]

Marrying Traditional and Modern Communication Technologies
for Development

Email messages coming out of the Indian subcontinent in the last year or
two have spoken of initiatives combining traditional and modern
communication technologies for reaching people in rural areas. This
concept has been described as having a beneficial impact with respect to
the development of people in those areas. Those are the words. Converting
those words, that one can understand with the mind, into images that not
only stimulate the mind but also the heart is sometimes difficult without
actually seeing the concept in action.

Last January, I  was fortunate enough to participate in a UNESCO sponsored
workshop on the subject of combining traditional and modern communication
technologies for development. The workshop was held at place called
Kothmale in Sri Lanka where the other participants and I were able to
experience first hand the concept in action. I would like to describe the
initiative.

Kothmale is a region in the very centre of the island of Sri Lanka. It is
a region that comprises a number of rural communities spread over a wide
area. A mountain rises out of the jungle in Kothmale, on the slopes of
which is a conference centre which uses the buildings and houses left over
from a Swedish aid initiative that built a number of hydroelectric dams on
the Mahaweli River some years ago.

In approximately 1988, before the conference centre was created in these
buildings, UNESCO funded the establishment of an FM community radio
station on the highest part of the mountain. From that vantage point, the
radio beams its relatively low power radio signal to some 52 communities
in the valleys below. The average population of the communities is in the
order of perhaps 1500 or so.

The radio station staff has designed an initiative they call Radio Browsing.
With the help of UNESCO, the station acquired three computers equipped
with Internet access. Australia provided the services of a young volunteer
versed in the use of computers and the Internet for a period of 18 months
to train the station personnel, as well as interested students from
schools in the surrounding villages. There was no shortage of eager young
students to be trained. The purpose of Radio Browsing is to bring the
benefits of the information age to the people in the 52
surrounding villages even though they do not themselves have access to the
Internet, or computers for that matter. It works as follows:

The radio station has a broadcasting schedule that includes a one hour
program each day of the 5-day work week on a particular theme, for example
Mondays the theme is health; Tuesdays may be nutrition; Wednesdays,
learning English; Thursdays, culture (the programs have elements in both
Tamil and Singhhalese); Fridays is yet another theme.

Taking Mondays as an example, for which the theme is health -  the health
subject within the health theme for a particular Monday's one-hour program
may be HIV/AIDS; for the following Monday it may be living for a healthy heart,
and so on. Students who come to the radio station are tasked with
searching the Web for material on HIV/AIDS for example. The station staff
turn the raw information into an hour program.

During the programs, listeners' questions are invited. After each program,

Villagers send their questions to the station by regular mail. During the
week following a program, students are again asked to search the Web, this
time for answers to the questions received, which are provided on air at
the end of the following week's health theme program.

Why the name Radio Browsing? Because, in effect, the villagers are browsing
the Web by proxy and getting their information via the community radio.
Not quite as good as having your own computer, which in the circumstances
is not even thinkable for many years to some, but it is far better than not
having access at all.

Some interesting elements of the Kothmale initiative:
-   Issues of health, nutrition and basic education are addressed. Such a
concept could be very useful in disseminating knowledge to rural people on
the issue of HIV/AIDS, for example,
-   Youths are significantly involved in the world of information
technology and community action in this concept,
-   There are openings for young women in this field as was demonstrated
in the community library of nearby Gampola where a young woman is in charge
of the Internet access facility. The Kothmale community radio station,
acting as a mini-Internet service provider, provides this service to a
library in each of the nearby communities of Gampola and Nawalapitiya.

Radio Browsing is a concept that can be very useful in programming for
development. The concept applies specifically to the millions of relatively
unconnected poor  who are very likely to be left behind by the information
society, unless imaginative measures are taken. Radio Browsing is an
imaginative mean sure developed by developing countries th

Re: [GKD] Cyber-Revolution in India's Slums

[Modesto Ombiga]

GKD Members:

My name is Modesto, I am making this comment because, I have experienced
what it means to have no access to any information technology.  In a
village where there is no proper roads, no electricity, no telephone, no
postal services nearby and no clean water, is it not like being trapped
in a jail?  You may call it a slum, but there are slums in the "First
World" too with a different level of poverty.  Information and communication
technology is, I believe, as necessary as the above basic human
necessities described above in some of the developing countries.

As much as I would like to agree with Rajaraman, my departure is where
the statement: "information is no use if the poor do not have the
capacity to use it to their benefit".  Let me tell you that, in the
region in which poverty is beyond measure, as described above, the poor
travel over 40 miles in some developing countries, on foot to go and
make a telephone call at the central postal service, commonly at the
district offices, to reach a relative who stays in the capital city
where amenities are available.  The need to make that communication link
is very important to such a poor person.  It can save lives in that
village, or at the person's home, in cases of illnesses.

If it is the time necessary to reform a countries national policies, one
would this time of cyber revolution include in their priorities central
units where telephones, electricity, PCs connected to the Internet are
made available to rural communities.  Even if an elderly person is
illiterate, there must be a relative who is computer literate to send
the message whenever, the need arises.  These needs may include, the
urgency for school fees, the sick to be taken to the hospital for
treatment, seeking an advice from a doctor, a friend, a relative, etc.,
etc.

We have a sustainable development plan to initiate Internet centers
whereby one could find such amenities as: photocopiers, wordprocessing
services, telephones, smart cards, and postal services and emergency
means of transport at every parish of a walking distance within every
ten miles in the villages of the poor.  If you are in a position to help
in an way possible, please do.  The wish list which includes:
computers, photocopiers, street-stand-alone telephones, for sub-Sahara
African region specs. (220-240 Voltage).

Please let me know if this is a viable option to improve the lives of
the poor, if not what is it?  Food, water, clothing and housing are
truly the obvious needs of the poor, but to improve their lives from
object poverty, would you not provide them with ICT, as one of your
development list of priorities, if you were in that position?  I look
forward to receiving your response.

Modesto Ombiga
[EMAIL PROTECTED]





***GKD is an initiative of the Global Knowledge Partnership***
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
Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: