On 20/04/06, Shane M. Coughlan shane@shaneland.co.uk wrote:
I have been working away on various things during the last couple of weeks, and one was how mobile phones could be used as ICT (Information and Communication Technology) solutions in developing nations.
http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/shane/communicating_freely/the_mobile_office
The blog post is "fluid," in that I've put out the idea and will be revising the article based on feedback. It's not finished (and perhaps I have some horrific typos), but it's far enough along that I wanted other people to see it. Let's call it professional suicide.
Shane,
That was interesting "commute home" reading. Nice article. My thoughts below....
<quote> There is a gross inequality in the distribution of empowering Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Access to productivity and communication solutions is currently the domain of the richest one sixth of the world, with the remaining five sixths remaining resolutely disenfranchised with regards personal computing, mobile communication, and instant processing of information.
This is the 'Digital Divide,' an unnecessarily damaging situation where the people who most need productivity solutions are unable to obtain them. In effect, the vast majority of the human race is condemned to prolonged poverty and inefficient economic, political and social solutions due to neglect and a lack of effort with regards sharing technology. </quote>
This is quite obviously true, but it is equally true of all other aspects of the developing world.
Maybe your statement is more relevant to the social, industrial and economic aspects than the ICT aspect as this form of technology is fairly young, whilst the developing world has been slipping further behind the West for decades or even centuries.
My question (most probably a rhetorical question) is from a technology point of view how can we break this cycle, where people don't have access to affordable technology (or healthcare, social support) because of their poverty which in turn drags them further behind the rest of the world and deeper into poverty?
<quote> The second option (of providing usable VGA output on a phone) is viable, but requires a certain level of commitment from manufacturers to introduce an output port on all new mobile phones. The port would be designed to work in conjunction with a special cable to allow connection from the mobile phone to the aerial input on a television set. </quote>
Obviously your plan describes a possible solution that would have to occur during the next few generations of mobile phones - not least because people would have to own and use the phone to then donate it for recycling to the developing world.
When we look at how much more advanced phone displays are today as compared to 3 generations of devices ago I am sure that they will be capable of running advanced applications in a usable resolution in full colour.
However the output interface you describe you have to be either a) developed and implemented by device vendors specifically for the idea that consumers will donate the phone or b) the output to TV interface will have a useful function for the original owner.
Not only would the interface have to be useful to the original owner I suspect the phone vendor will have to be able to sell services based around people wanting to watch their phone via the TV set. Seeing people watching movies on their PSPs riding the London Underground this may be a reality someday, but I think that is a barrier there.
If we look at the functionality of phones today and the technology available I can see a "version 1.0" to your plan that you described in the paper.
Phones today have the following characteristics
* They can output the full ASCII alphabet (or at least common alphanumeric characters and a host of commas, semi colons etc etc)
* Predictive texting
* They have SMS functionality
* They have network access over GSM and possibly GPRS
* They have voice capability
Could governments in developing countries provide a telephony interface to services using commands sent by SMS, or possibly voice recognition software.
When I bought a digital certificate recently I was emailed and told to phone a number and complete a registration process on the phone. The system was fully automated and it recognised the registration code and my name verbally.
As a user of a Blackberry (which admittedly is a richer interface than a standard phone) I regularly access a bash session over MobileSSH and GPRS. I'm not suggesting we teach the entire developing world /bin/bash but you could develop any text based system you wanted and allow people to access it over a thin SSH client
I also have a Cisco 7940 phone which has a on screen "web browser" which is very light on functionality. It is driven by an up button, down button, enter button and a cancel button.
However I can easily check the BBC news headlines on it, weather information and other services so it is useful.
I believe that technology could be brought to the people you described in your article based on todays technology, but the methods you described would be the next generation of the concept.
Thanks
-- ~sm Jabber: mozrat@gmail.com www: http://beerandspeech.org