Emergic: April 9, 2005 Archives

Saturday, April 9, 2005

Leapfrogging and Development

Leapfrogging is possible but mostly it is restricted to technologies.

Unlike technology, you cannot leapfrog the various stages of development. A century ago, to be educated, one had to be literate and numerate. Same holds for today even though we have digital gizmos and computers. Indeed, to be able to effectively use the products of high-technology, literacy is an absolute necessity. Functional skills required for using high-tech all involve the ability to read and reason. I grant that illiterate idiots can use a cell phone, but that is not what I would call the effective use of high technology.

The so-called “digital divide” cannot be bridged by simply installing lots of PCs in areas where they don’t exist and connecting them up to the internet. If the people are unable to use them, they serve no purpose other than to enrich the peddlers of hardware and software. Furthermore, there is the opportunity cost of spending limited resources on useless high-tech gizmos.

You cannot leapfrog development. It cannot be done at an individual level. And it cannot be done at a societal level. Although development paths may differ, the sequencing within a path cannot be radically altered because there are strict dependencies. Basic functional literacy is a pre-requisite to pretty much anything that one does. The use of high-tech depends on literacy and therefore if the population is illiterate, even gifting them with free hardware will not make a difference. The pre-condition for bridging the digital divide is therefore the bridging of the literacy divide.

Deeshaa (Rural Development) | PermaLink | Comments (5)

Totally agreed. But I feel merely being literate in any language is not enough. One needs to be "english" literate to absorb most of what the WEB has to offer. Even a "hindi" literate faces a whole lot of problems online, as his choice becomes limited to less than 1% of the things on offer.

Unfortunately, it is just 'literate' that any government is first targetting before 'standard-language literate' which truly can work wonders for an individual. English for the whole world, but if not, atleast hindi for whole of India.

Posted by Kshitij Chandan

The New International Webster's Student Dictionary defines literacy as "The state of being literate." Then it defines literate as, "Able to read and write." A lot of knowledge can be gained through modern technological media (PCs and cell phones with many features) without actually reading and writing. Knowledge of reading and writing can concurrently be gained through these media. There have been many examples (in the West) where children's programs, toys, and devices based on high technology have given them enormous knowledge as well as the ability to write and read by the time they enter primary school. Adults with no literacy can also gain knowledge, literacy, and numeracy rapidly with the proper use of technology.
The use of the phrase "illiterate idiots" by the writer was a poor choice by a literate person.

Posted by Som Karamchetty, PHD

I don't claim that illiterate people cannot be knowledgeable, or that illiterate people are idiots. Neither do I claim that literate people cannot be sub-par in intelligence. My claim that cell phones can be used by illiterate idiots does not imply what Som Karamchetty concludes.

Posted by Atanu Dey

I think the observation made by Deeshaa and other feedbacks posted on it are very pertinent. I would like to give my perspective. Its true that to be able to truly use technology as for social upliftment & to connect different geographies, mere hardware / software networking is just not enough. Its a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. In this respect, literacy is a prerequisite. To start with, literacy will ensure a perspective change in the minds of hitherto illerate community. It will enable them to understand and appreciate the benefits of technology (if not technology itself). With a literate mind, their inquisitiveness towards technology adoption (eventually for service usage) will be multifold and they will be far more positively predisposed towards adoption of a tech-enable service than just bringing an internet-kiosk in front of them and expecting them to jump with excitement. In this regards, it is also imperative that the services enabled through technology should be the ones that touch their lives on a day-to-day basis and the ones that they can relate to most easily. e.g. fishemen in kerela now carry mobile phones to caution each other about impending deteriorating weather conditions or to network among themselves for a fair daily price for the fish. This is something that touches their daily chores perfectly.

Once they are hooked on to the technology, they can then be exposed to myriad other services that they can use. In fact, technology providers (hardware/software) can themselves work on providing vernacular languare in which the community 'talks and thinks.'

Views please.

Posted by Sumit Chopra

Digital divide sure has divided opinions on this post ;-) Let me offer my two cents worth.
As Mr.Dey writes, the divide cannot be bridged merely at the individual or at the societal level. It is a kind of a movement that needs to happen.. Couple of examples here..
1.Litteracy drive in Kerala resulted in over 90% state "litteracy" where litteracy was defined abilty to read/write real basic stuff. Punjab,haryana caught the virus as well.. their percentages jumped many fold.
2.Female foeticide.. social problem.. but all media(TV,print,celebrity endorsements) are getting their point to the masses.. These people cant read/write but they understand.
In mumbai, all public transport were observeed supporting the cause of girl child education through the medium of writings on their rickshaws/vans. Dunno if it was mandated by the state but it is gaining momentum.
3. Politicians were provided with PCs.. Can they use it? NO. They confessed that it is beyond them .. "leaders" of the nation, representative of the masses!!!
4. My wife is a professional.. definitely knows to read/write work with project plans etc.. but she can't do blogging, find resources on the internet quickly or email more frequently. So can we term her as illeterate ? Becos what she knows only goes this much and she does not know more what that can work for her..

the definition, IMHO, is more of a comfort feel. What constitutes enough literacy is a subjective opinion which each individual has to form for himself. BUT yes.. you can be very knowledgeable without being literrate at all..

Posted by Krishna Iyer

Long Tail vs. Bottom of Pyramid

Chris Anderson does a comparison:

The BOP model is focused on taking a single product or service and finding ways to make it cheap enough to offer to a larger, poorer, market. This is why I think it's essentially about commodification.

The Long Tail, on the other hand, is about nicheification. Rather than finding ways to create an even lower lowest common denominator, the Long Tail is about finding economically efficient ways to capitalize on the infinite diversity of taste and demand that has heretofore been overshadowed by mass markets. The millions who find themselves in the tail in some aspect of their life (and that includes all of us) are no poorer than those in the head. Indeed, they are often drawn down the tail by their refined taste, in pursuit of qualities that are not afforded by one-size-fits-all. And they are often willing to pay a premium for those goods and services that suit them better. The Long Tail is, indeed, the very opposite of commodification.

So the Long Tail is made up of millions of niches. The Bottom of the Pyramid is made up of mass markets made even more mass. Both lower costs to reach more people, but they do so in different ways for different reasons. They're complimentary forces, but fundamentally different in their approach and aims.

General | PermaLink | Comments (0)

Communities of Purpose

Nova Spivack writes:

I can't think of a larger publicly-accessible database of people, places, and things than Google. However, its vast database is actually quite disparate and scatter-brained. It does not contain a single, reliable identifying method to link you with what you need to be linked to no matter how good you think it is at finding what you're looking for. Google still has to search through hell and high water for it.

A unique identification code for every event, person, place, and thing is the next logical step. It's where the future is headed and we might as well go there now. There's simply too much to keep track of to not have a unique way of identifying something you're related with.

Wikipedia is the perfect platform on which to bring everything under the sun together. It is already well on its way, with hundreds of thousands of user-submitted articles and bits of information. This could easily be extended to include the man sitting in the cafe, the cafe itself, the event he's waiting for in the cafe, and the book he's reading while he waits.

Every person, place, thing, and event would be assigned a unique ID (this can be automatically done for both new and current entries). One could then form or enable the formation of a relationship with anything in the database merely by copying and pasting the ID. Put it in your blog profile, mobile phone, an email, feed reader, or other field in your client. It will automatically know what it is because of its categorically-oriented ID, and how to organize it in your profile. You could even select the type of relationship you have with it ("relationship key") from a list of relationship types.

General | PermaLink | Comments (4)

This is indeed a very good and excellent concept. I had a similar idea long time back, but when I saw PeopleAggregator - I thought they can do it better and moreover it will require good branding and promotion.

Somehow, things are not clear as to where PeopleAggregator is heading. You have such a wonderful service like Blogstreet and domain expertise. May be you should think about it ;-).

Regards,
Santosh
http://www.indusnexus.com

Posted by Santosh Kumar

The above-quoted post was made by HowNotToBlog.com, not Nova Spivack. The link for the latter takes you to a different article

See: http://hownottoblog.com/index.php/2005/03/18/extending_wikipedia_to_include_everythin

for the original article.

Posted by HNTB

Hello

Ive been working for a few years on just this concept see our Civicpass.com site see weblinks for descriptions of our communities of purpose. Branding is a key element in our process of exploiting our potentials.

Regards,

Terry Kelliher
Collectic

Posted by Terry Kelliher

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Posted by bob