Category: Appropriate technology

FrontlineSMS at The Feast ’09

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I’ve always maintained that the greater the distance between an ICT4D ‘problem’ and the problem solver, the greater the chance of failure. The difficulty here is that quite often the problem and the resources available to fix it are in different places, and available to the wrong people.

While ‘we’ – those who rarely fully understand the problem – have easier access to the technology and funding, those who do more fully understand it don’t. This is why the current proliferation of local innovation and IT-focused business hubs across Africa is so exciting and has so much potential.

More via this short edited five minute talk I gave last year at The Feast in New York. Further in-depth thoughts on who might be best placed to run ICT4D and mobile-for-development (m4d) projects, check out this recent blog post, “Dissecting “m4d”: Back to basics“.

The rise of “user-experienced” innovation

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Around the time of two recent talks – Thinking Digital in Newcastle (UK) and National Geographic (Washington DC) – much of the world’s tech media was focused on Apple. Both the iPad and iPhone 4 had hit the shelves in relatively quick succession, and many people were marvelling at the latest innovations from California.

To the everyday man and woman on the street, cutting-edge innovation has rarely been so tangible. Sure, the technology behind motor vehicles or aircraft has advanced rapidly in recent years, but often what makes these things clever is either hidden out of sight – a new fuel injection system in a car, or a new kind of braking system, for example – or they’re not things many of us would ever get to interact with – such as the latest fly-by-wire controls of an aircraft cockpit.

The staggering advance in the consumer electronics world has changed all that, and we’re now holding mobile phones in the palm of our hand which are infinitely more powerful than the computers which took man all the way to the moon and back. These devices are changing the way we live, and the way we interact with each other and our environment. Consumer electronics are particularly relevant in interaction terms because their primary purpose is to allow us to interact with them. Thanks to advances in the technologies behind mobile phones, tablet computers, gaming consoles and television among many others, cutting edge technological innovation has come to every individual man and woman on the street. It’s got personal.

That said, we’re living in interesting times. The rate of innovation is unprecedented. What we’ve seen happen with mobile technology in the last five years alone is beyond incredible, and you sense the rate of innovation is only speeding up. This may be in part down to the fact that these devices have both a hardware – device – component, and a software – usability – component, meaning there are twice the number of opportunities to innovate.

What I’ve been sensing lately, however, is a growing ‘backlash’ – for want of a better word – and a desire to build what are seen as purer, more sustainable, locally sourced, culturally relevant technology-based solutions. Although you could argue a certain romanticism in the approach, the fact of the matter is that most technologies being pushed out by the electronics industry remain relevant to only a small percentage of the global population. It’s not only down to cost either, although that’s a large part of it. It’s also down to the fact that many of these devices just don’t work in places without high-speed data networks and/or a mains supply to charge them nightly. Many people just don’t have that.

I’m writing this on a flight home from Washington DC, and have just watched a programme which featured a water-powered lift. The idea is brilliantly simple. The lift – which runs up a steep cliff – harnesses the power of the nearby river and uses gravity, one of the oldest and most sustainable of energy sources, to pull one of two carriages upwards while the other drops.

It’s such a simple but effective piece of engineering that if it broke you’d likely be able to find someone locally who could figure out how to fix it. That’s clearly been the case since it began operating 120 years ago.

The likes of IDEO, Catapult Design, IDE and D-REV are household names to anyone interested in designing and building “for the other 90%”, and I’m a big fan of the approach. I’ve been also been a big fan of the appropriate technology movement for some time, and am excited to be speaking at the “Small Is…” festival later this year. The irony is that despite all of this I work in a high-tech world which is about as far away from much of the appropriate technology work ethic as it could be. John Mulrow in World Watch Magazine recently wrote a great article about the relationship between mobile technology and appropriate technology, but for me many questions remain.

Our world is becoming increasingly dependent on information and communications technology and many local, indigenous, traditional ways of designing, building and doing are slowly being replaced, and in many cases lost, forever. I’m not entirely sure if that represents progress or not.

Rethinking innovation

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Last week I had the incredible opportunity to talk about our work with FrontlineSMS at the National Geographic Explorers Symposium in Washington DC. A big part of what we do is to try and take the mobile message to an entirely new audience, and to help people re-think what innovation means in the developing world, using mobile technology as our lead.

It’s great to see such a revival of interest in appropriate technology, something I first became a fan of at University way back in 1997. As a sign of this growing interest, World Watch recently published one of the best and most comprehensive articles to date on “mobile technology as an appropriate technology”. You can read about that here, and it is well worth a look.

There are, of course, increasing examples of innovative applications of technology, particularly in the field of renewable energy and particularly in the developing world. Two recent and favourite examples are the solar-powered light bulb and the energy-harvesting football, both of which I’m a big fan of – not necessarily in the technology itself (although it is pretty neat), but in the approach.

Solar-powered light?

When I first heard about this I wasn’t sure if I’d read it right. A solar-powered light bulb? Well, the Nokero N100 is a solar LED bulb which can be left outside in direct sunlight during the day. This charges up its internal battery which then gives you up to four hours of light at night. It’s a brilliantly simple idea, and one which has huge potential in developing countries. Not only could it solve significant lighting issues for many households, but it also has positive health implications (replacing kerosine lamps) and, of course, potential benefits to the environment. More on the the Nokero N100 here.

Kid-powered football?

This was an instant favourite because of its sheer simplicity and brilliance. It’s not a million miles away from the Play Pumps concept, harvesting the ‘wasted’ energy of childrens’ play to generate electricity. While children kick the ‘soccket’ football around, it harvests the kinetic energy generated by the ball’s movement. A short ten minute kick-around charges an internal battery which can later power an LED bulb for up to four hours. There’s more on Soccket in this New York Times article by good friend Jim Witkin.

I don’t know about you, but I think we could do with these kinds of innovation everywhere.

Rethinking Schumacher

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Ever since I came across Fritz Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful” at University back in 1997, I’ve been a close follower of the appropriate technology movement. Although for many appropriate technology is associated with ploughs, stoves and farming implements, for some time I’ve been thinking about how it applies to the work we do with mobile. I tackled this in a PC World article a couple of years ago, and more recently in a blog post on how appropriate “cloud-based” mobile solutions are in a world where so many people are yet to be reliably connected to the web.

Now the World Watch Institute have taken the discussion a step further in an excellent article in the May/June edition of their magazine. In it, John Mulrow argues that, if carried out appropriately, Schumacher’s original concept of local initiatives, local ownership and local innovation can be applied to today’s mobile world, despite mobile phones being a technology often designed, developed and controlled from the ‘outside’. This is one of the best articles yet on mobile vs. appropriate technology, and is well worth a read.

“Think Mobile, Act Local” is available as a PDF here.