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High-tech devices for world's poorest What with fancy computers, MP3 players, cellphones and the rest, "high technology" is usually regarded as a plaything of the world's economic elite. But it doesn't have to be that way. Some of the same engineers who make products for the world's wealthy are also working on radically simplified versions of the same tools for use by the world's very poorest. Their goal is to make technology a cause, not a consequence, of economic development. Consider the personal computer. The average desktop machine these days has, at $300, become so inexpensive that price alone isn't the barrier it once was to large quantities of them existing in the developing world, especially as gifts of donor countries. Those PCs, though, all assume the existence of a reliable and clean supply of electrical power -- a wild luxury in many of the world's poor rural areas. The Jhai Foundation computer, though, uses less than a third of the power of the latest Dell. It's designed to be hooked up to whatever power supply happens to be handy, which often is someone sitting next to it, peddling away on a stationary bicycle attached to a generator. It costs about $200. And because you never know when flooding will be a problem, the machine is not only waterproof but also contained in a sealed metal box that can survive being underwater, albeit briefly. The Jhai Foundation began life as a bit of expiation by San Francisco resident Lee Thorn, who spent some of his youth with the U.S. Navy helping support the massive secret bombings of Laos. He returned later in life to make amends. Lao villagers, who often support themselves as coffee farmers, said they wanted a way to know about prices in adjoining villages, to give themselves more leverage with the wholesalers who buy their crops. An ultrasimple computer with a bare-bones wireless networking system emerged as the answer. It was designed by Silicon Valley engineer Lee Felsenstein, a legendary figure in the hobbyist groups that played a crucial role in the development of the PC during the 1970s. There are many other cases of First World brains thinking about problems of underdevelopment. Consider the $1 million Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability, funded by the Grainger Foundation through the National Academy of Engineering. The money will go to whoever invents a simple, inexpensive method to remove the arsenic that's poisoning the wells used by millions of villagers on the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere. The poisoning, which has resulted in an epidemic of cancers, is a woeful consequence of an earlier bit of Western generosity. During the 1970s, Western aid helped dig deep wells so that villagers wouldn't have to rely on polluted surface water. But everyone forgot about arsenic, a naturally occurring mineral that, through mountain rain runoff, concentrates in the aquifer. Parts of the U.S. have the same problem, though Americans can easily afford the required treatment systems. Wm. A. Wulf, president of the Academy, says the arsenic problem was chosen for the "challenge" prize both because of its pressing humanitarian urgency and because it's the sort of contained problem that might well be solved by an inspired bout of creative engineering that relies on the most modern materials and methods. Other examples, he says, include a new design for an indoor stove that would allow it to more efficiently burn whatever energy source is used by the local culture, such as coal or dung, and thus reduce the indoor air pollution that is often a major health risk. There are other instances of smart technology transfer programs, from low-cost, super-simple cellphones to long, thin Velcro-closing sacks conceived by NASA to provide housing for an eventual mission to Mars. The sacks were to be filled with Martian soil and then stacked to form an igloo-like structure, but they have already proved useful at providing shelter in desert villages. The best of these efforts resist the temptation to simply transfer our own technology fetish to people who may need something vastly more basic, like clean water. They also recognize that with the causes of underdevelopment so profound -- including everything from the legacy of colonialism to widespread corruption -- simply dropping in technology won't, by itself, solve anything, any more than it does inside big companies in the U.S. Indeed, sometimes the latest high-tech solution is the last thing people need. For instance, in many parts of the world, potholes aren't just irritations but major impediments to economic development. New road repair systems in the West use advanced materials and sophisticated application systems. But these systems can't be used in developing countries unless a major structural issue is dealt with first, says Lynne H. Irwin, an engineering professor at Cornell University. While Western aid programs cover the capital costs for building roads, they usually won't subsidize the routine upkeep required to keep the roads passable. Governments thus have an incentive to let their roads crumble so that they can get grants for new ones. "The basic cure involves management, not technology," Prof. Irwin says. # # #
(c) 2005, The Wall Street Journal |