WCIT 2008 live blogging - Craig Barret's presentation

I tried to post this live, but my Asus ran out of batteries. I'm posting this again.

I missed the first five minutes or so of this lecture. He's talking about accessibility to school kids with respect to technology. As you might know (or probably not), I am a big fan of improving education through the use of technology. I consider the Smart School project to be my baby, albeit one with many surrogate parents. It was a painful birth, I was elated when it first saw the light of day, but now it's a toddler, I worry at the kind of friends its making - many of them to be unhealthy influences.

He's just making the point that the price of PCs are going down, selling in Jakarta for less than USD200. This, to me, is the sub-RM1000 PC that I've been dreaming of. My ASUS Eee baby is even better, being mobile to boot. Accessibility is a big deal when you're talking about technology, because it is that that gives opportunity. As a nation, we have enough money that we could provide every teacher and student ready access to technology so that they are not wanting. I'm not saying everybody gets a PC, but able to get to it when they need it

But he's missed the cost of maintenance and support. We don't just need affordable technology, but also reliable technology. OLPC is a great example of this. You can drop it, and it's fine. You can wind it up when you have no electricity. I think it also has no movable parts. But he didn't mention it, probably because it doesn't run on Intel chips.

Instead, they have their version of it. It too is rugged, it too is versatile, but it also runs on Intel chips.

Craig Barret however made an important point; that connectivity is issue. Some statistics on connectivity:
5% africa
24% asia
21% middle east
70% US
The real limiting factor is cost.
In the US 100kbps is US 50 cents a month
Africa 80 dollars a month
sub-sahara 250 dollars a month.
In Malaysia, my theoretical 1Mbs is RM77 per month - which isn't cheap when compared to the US.

He points out that Malaysia is progressive in Wimax. I agree that it's one of the things it seems we are doing well. My question is usually how do you get the market to understand these different technologies? How do you know it won't be overrun by some new wireless kid on the block? And how will Wimax be rolled out to the rural areas, if there aren't enough customers to justify it?

The example they are suggesting is to involve private sector, and Pakistan is taken as an example.

They have the universal service fund. but the company that distributes it is based on the private sector model. They auction off remote areas, to be funded by the government, and they combine providing access to schools with the communication lines.
Auctioned four different remote areas
Government is bureaucratic.
Board of company is 50-50 govt and private sector.

This talk is pro-private sector, and private sector involvement in public sector projects is something that worries me. "Let the private sector do it," he says, but I think the government needs to keep a very close eye on things. Do you trust people whose bottom line is to make money?

Partnership is great, but it needs to be a balanced. Otherwise these guys will maximise their bottom line at your expense.

He makes the point that relevant content is important. Middle East has almost no websites, for example, despite having 5% of the population. But local content has limited reach, even if it is also more relevant for locals. I'm not completely sold on the idea that it is so crucial, when compared to educating users to be members of the world community (instead of sitting in their own cybersphere).

Tele-health, which gets medical knowledge out to the rural areas. Malaysia was in prime position to implement this, but for some reason it didn't fly as well as it could have. Limited hospitals are connecte to each other in Malaysia, but at (I think) they use the same stadards, so information can be shared by all.

He then presented Grameen, which is an organisation that tries to narrow the gap between the haves and have not. Dr Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work giving microloans to the poor (especially the women) who were otherwise rejected for loans from banks. He then did the same with handphones, leasing them out to the poor, wich they then could pay for because of the increased business they got from being able to use phones to communicate. Based on the success of that work, he now wants to extend it to narrowing the gap with respect to access to ICT.

I like the work being done here very much. This is, in fact, giving opportunity, rather than handouts - something that our Government policies should really look into.

The whole thing was wrapped up with three kids being trotted out to be introduced as students whose lives had been changed through the use of technology.. To be fair, Craig Barrett always pointed out during the presentation that good teachers matter more than technology. But the kids had prepared speeches (which were well done, but stiff), which for me is a glaring example of how prescriptive our education is sometimes. It would have been great if they were more relaxed, as they were nearer the end of the presentation.

As a reward for their efforts, each student got one of theose Intel notebooks. Which was nice of them.

But still I'm not completely cofortable with private sector involvement in schools.

Labels: wcit2008