[IP] Trying to Take Technology to the Masses
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Dave Farber +1 412 726 9889
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From: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 08:58:36 -0400
Subj: Trying to Take Technology to the Masses
August 16, 2004
Trying to Take Technology to the Masses
By JOHN MARKOFF
OUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 12 - Raj Reddy was fed up debating the problem
of the digital divide between the rich and the poor and decided to do
something about it.
Mr. Reddy, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence and a
professor at Carnegie Mellon University, plans to unveil at the end of this
year his new project, called the PCtvt, a $250 wirelessly networked
personal computer intended for the four billion people around the world who
live on less than $2,000 a year.
He says his device can find a market in developing countries, particularly
those with large populations of people who cannot read, because it can be
controlled by a simple TV remote control and can function as a television,
telephone and videophone.
Mr. Reddy is hoping his project - with backing from Microsoft and TriGem,
the Korean computer maker, and in partnership with the Indian Institute of
Science, the Indian Institute of Information Technology and researchers at
the University of California, Berkeley - can prove that it is possible to
bring information technology to impoverished communities without depending
on philanthropy.
Because his low-cost computer doubles as a TV and a DVD player, Mr. Reddy
believes that he will be able to use it as a vehicle to take computing and
communications to populations that until now have been excluded from the
digital world.
What separates Mr. Reddy's approach from other efforts is his belief that
even the world's poorest communities can become a profitable market for
computers.
"I kept asking myself, 'what would the device have to do for someone on the
other side of the digital divide to be desirable?' " Mr. Reddy said. The
answer, he decided, was a simple device that would offer entertainment,
making it something that even the world's poorest citizens might be willing
to pay a sizable share - perhaps more than 5 percent - of their annual
income to own.
"Entertainment is the killer app, and that will smuggle something that is a
lot more sophisticated into the home," said Tom Kalil, special assistant to
the chancellor for science and technology at Berkeley.
Earlier this year Mr. Reddy persuaded TriGem, South Korea's third-largest
PC maker, to supply prototypes of a fully equipped computer and Microsoft
to support the project with an inexpensive, stripped down version of its
Windows operating system.
This November Mr. Reddy hopes to begin installing the first 100 prototypes
of the PCtvt in India and possibly several other countries. The project
will work in partnership with University of California researchers who are
attempting to develop high-speed wireless digital networks for rural
communities.
The philosophy behind the PCtvt grew from ideas explored in the early
1980's by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, the founder of the World Center
for Computing and Human Resources, which is based in Paris. The center was
built on the idea that developing countries could use biological and
microelectronic technologies to leapfrog the industrial stage of economic
development.
Mr. Reddy was among dozens of leading international researchers working on
design projects at the center, including Alan Kay, Nicholas Negroponte and
Seymour Papert. Mr. Kay was the creator of the Xerox Alto, an early PC. Mr.
Negroponte had designed a pioneering videodisc system at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and Mr. Papert was the inventor of the LOGO
programming language.
The French center established a pilot project in Senegal that experimented
with adapting the LOGO language for a Third World population. But that
project failed years later because of politics and because the computers
involved were too expensive.
"We needed three decades," Mr. Reddy said, for those technologies to help
developing nations. He noted that in the early 1980's, computing was more
focused on data processing, while today the focus is communications.
Coincidentally, he said that designing a system largely for people who
cannot read will require more wireless network bandwidth than is currently
required for most modern computer networks since communication will rely
more heavily on audio and video transmissions than on text messages.
With a small team of students and faculty here at Carnegie Mellon
University's West Coast campus, Mr. Reddy has built a simple control screen
that allows the PCtvt to be used for audio and video conferencing,
electronic mail and viewing local newspapers on the Web through a TV remote
control. The designers have intentionally limited the computer's functions
because they are struggling to simplify what the users see and experience.
One challenge Mr. Reddy faced was in persuading Microsoft to offer a
version of its Windows software for the project for far less than its
commercial price. But Mr. Reddy said he eventually won the support of Craig
Mundie, the chief technical officer and a senior strategist at Microsoft.
Meanwhile, Mr. Reddy's team is also working with social scientists to
determine the effect that access to this technology has on communities. "If
we can do these experiments" and show that people living in poverty are a
market for computers, Mr. Reddy said, "we will have proved something."
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