Ewan's Corner

Archive for the ‘Local’ Category

Thanks to @hfordsa for the heads up.
via http://bostonreview.net/BR35.6/toyama.php

"Technology—no matter how well designed—is only a magnifier of human intent and capacity. It is not a substitute."

If I were to summarize everything I learned through research in ICT4D, it would be this: technology—no matter how well designed—is only a magnifier of human intent and capacity. It is not a substitute. If you have a foundation of competent, well-intentioned people, then the appropriate technology can amplify their capacity and lead to amazing achievements. But, in circumstances with negative human intent, as in the case of corrupt government bureaucrats, or minimal capacity, as in the case of people who have been denied a basic education, no amount of technology will turn things around.

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Technology is a magnifier in that its impact is multiplicative, not additive, with regard to social change. In the developed world, there is a tendency to see the Internet and other technologies as necessarily additive, inherent contributors of positive value. But their beneficial contributions are contingent on an absorptive capacity among users that is often missing in the developing world. Technology has positive effects only to the extent that people are willing and able to use it positively. The challenge of international development is that, whatever the potential of poor communities, well-intentioned capability is in scarce supply and technology cannot make up for its deficiency.

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The myth of scale is seductive because it is easier to spread technology than to effect extensive change in social attitudes and human capacity. In other words, it is much less painful to purchase a hundred thousand PCs than to provide a real education for a hundred thousand children; it is easier to run a text-messaging health hotline than to convince people to boil water before ingesting it; it is easier to write an app that helps people find out where they can buy medicine than it is to persuade them that medicine is good for their health. It seems obvious that the promise of scale is a red herring, but ICT4D proponents rely—consciously or otherwise—on it in order to promote their solutions.

”When a village has ready access to a PC, the dominant use is by young men playing games, watching movies, or consuming adult content.”

Disseminating a technology would work if, somehow, the technology did more for the poor, undereducated, and powerless than it did for the rich, well-educated, and mighty. But the theory of technology-as-magnifier leads to the opposite conclusion: the greater one’s capacity, the more technology delivers; the lesser one’s capacity, the less value technology has. In effect, technology helps the rich get richer while doing little for the incomes of the poor, thus widening the gaps between haves and have-nots.

….My point is not that technology is useless. To the extent that we are willing and able to put technology to positive ends, it has a positive effect. For example, Digital Green (DG), one of the most successful ICT4D projects I oversaw while at Microsoft Research, promotes the use of locally recorded how-to videos to teach smallholder farmers more productive practices. When it comes to persuading farmers to adopt good practices, DG is ten times more cost-effective than classical agriculture extension without technology.

But the value of a technology remains contingent on the motivations and abilities of organizations applying it - villagers must be organized, content must be produced, and instructors must be trained. The limiting factor in spreading DG’s impact is not how many camcorders its organizers can purchase or how many videos they can shoot, but how many groups are performing good agriculture extension in the first place. Where such organizations are few, building institutional capacity is the more difficult, but necessary, condition for DG’s technology to have value. In other words, disseminating technology is easy; nurturing human capacity and human institutions that put it to good use is the crux.

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“Computers, guns, factories, and democracy are powerful tools, but the forces that determine how they’re used ultimately are human.”

We are in the midst of the largest ICT4D experiment ever. In 2009 there were over 4.5 billion active mobile phone accounts, more than the entire population of the world older than twenty years of age. The cell phone is overtaking both television and radio as the most popular consumer electronic device in history. Some 80 percent of the global population is within range of a cell tower, and mobile phones are increasingly seen in the poorest, remotest communities.

These numbers prompt suggestions that there is no longer a “digital divide” for real-time communication. Yet any demographic account of mobile have-nots will show them to be predominantly poor, remote, female, and politically mute. Whatever the case, if the spread of mobile phones is sufficient to help end global poverty, we will know soon enough. But, if it doesn’t, should we then pin our hopes on the next new shiny gadget?

Another great visualisation which puts things into perspective, courtesy of Kal Krause (of Kai’s Power Tools fame, now there’s some personal nostalgia). Definitely an improvement on the previous version, although still likely to fire up the “continent vs country” debate… but it gets the point across!

Quotes from three Google Africa interns (currently getting work experience at Google in Zurich) struck me this weekend as a striking contrast to the attitude displayed by some of the strikers currently damaging South Africa’s international image and local economy (not to mention the lives of innocent students and hospital patients).

On the one hand you have a wonderful self-help self-motivated attitude displayed by Kobla (Ghana), Derick (Kenya) and Doug (Democratic Republic of Congo):

Caitlin (University Programs, Google): Finally, I was hoping you could share a few words of wisdom from your home countries with our readers?

Derick: Sure!  Mtaka cha mvunguni sharti ainame.  In Swahili, this means ‘If you need something that’s on the floor, you’ll have to bend to pick it up.’  In other words: ‘there’s nothing free in life, you have to work for it!’

Kobla: Here’s one from Ghana in the Akan language: Nyansa nnyƐ sika na woakyikyir wodze esie.  This means ‘Wisdom is not like money to be tied up and hidden’ or, more simply: ‘wisdom is to be shared.’

Doug: I like this one, in Lingala: Nguba bakalingaka yango na soni te.  Literally: ‘Don’t pretend to toast a peanut if you don’t know how to do it.’  Basically, this means that you shouldn’t pretend you know how to do something when you really don’t.  If you’re stuck, ask for help!

(via the Google Africa blog)

Contrast that with the attitude of entitlement displayed by some strikers, and this unnamed nurse in particular who clearly has a low external locus of control:

“Why should we care when someone dies, because we are not at work while the government doesn’t care about our lives,” said one nurse, who refused to give her name.

We are coming here every day to stand vigil and see bodies being removed from the hospital.

This is what the government wants. If they didn’t, then we would not have been here in the first place. Patients’ lives have been put at risk by our government.”

I’m all for people’s freedom of expression and right to demand a fair wage, but in this case the demands seem totally unrealistic, and the methods barbaric.

My wonderful children getting into the Soccer World Cup spirit with the help of mom’s face painting skills.

8 days to go!

http://fifaworldcup.durban.gov.za/