I am forwarding an email from a friend to the development cafe mailing list (in India) regarding the "can technology end poverty" article in boston review. I thought some of the points were general enough to share here.
-- Dr. Sarath Guttikunda, New Delhi, India www.urbanemissions.info | TED Fellow | +91 9891315946 http://www.dri.edu/People/Sarath.Guttikunda ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mahesh Vee <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 10:34 AM Subject: Re: Boston Review Forum: "Can technology end poverty?" To: Development Cafe <[email protected]> Interesting article. Thought would use this article to get the group to brainstorm a bit. Below are my thoughts. I believe the point is innovations will continue and many will fail, from badly to miserably. Part of the reason could be innovators never understood the users, and part could be just bad technology (cost, utility value, relevance, etc). Humans were not born with using computers or mobile phones, but well, I can go into any village now and find at least a bunch of users of mobile phones. The evolution, so to say, should be towards continuing to innovate and create products, etc working with the communities. More co-creation/innovation, and less of lab creations or garage innovations, which is a Valley concept and worked/works very well to the audience it caters. We continue to use technology and it works quite effectively even in a place like Jharkhand or Orissa. Our teams work towards moving people towards it as it brings in higher efficiency, better accountability in some cases, quicker access to services, cost savings, and simply getting things done faster, cheaper and better. These are things people in the villages’ lack, and it becomes the responsibility of the so called innovators to educate and build capacity to use these technologies/innovations for good. In an urban setup, innovation stops where the product is tested and prototyped, as the customers are pre- educated and distribution is almost at doorstep. However, I believe in taking technology/products to rural masses, the challenge begins there and continues through distribution, delivery and adoption. Most problems are known, and the complexity of technology required to solve problems is quite simple and readily available, be it solar cookers or cook stoves, or can be developed without too much effort. The challenges are around building awareness of use of such technologies, capacity building so it caters to a larger audience, partnerships to understand local needs, village level entrepreneurs to take up servicing and maintenance, etc. I believe most people working in this space understand technology is an enabler (of different variance) and not the silver bullet to solving all of world's problems. It does go through multiple iterations before it gets stronger, but that shouldn't stop us from experimenting it on the field. I would request other points of view here to make the dialogue richer. Thanks, Mahesh
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