Challenge to Silicon Valley
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In November 2002 Kofi Annan issued a Challenge to Silicon Valley (http://news.com.com/2010-1069-964507.html?tag=lh) to create suitable systems at prices low enough to permit deployment everywhere, whether through international aid programs, NGO charity, or microcredit support. In addition to low cost, these systems had to work in areas with no electric power system and no phone system, providing connections to the Internet and Voice over IP (VoIP) telephone functions on the Internet. The aim is to leapfrog the high-tech development process, going straight to VoIP for telephony, and to create enough new economic growth to pay for the equipment and for accompanying programs in health, education, and so on, so that growth from that point on would be self-sustaining.
The challenge has been taken up not only in Silicon Valley, but worldwide. The Simputer movement had begun in Bangalore, India even earlier, with products appearing in 2002. The Grameen Foundation USA, an offshoot of the Grameen Bank, has experimented with Pocket PC handhelds and later with Simputers in its Village Computing Project. Renowned computer designer Lee Felsenstein, best known for the Osborne Computer, created a system for Laotian villages supported by the Jhai Foundation. The Hewlett-Packard e-inclusion program uses Compaq iPAQ handheld computers in similar programs in villages in India and other countries; minority communities such as East Palo Alto, California; and Navajo reservations. At WSIS in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 2003, the ICT4D Platform (Information and Communication Technology for Development) exhibit showcased hundreds of such initiatives.
The Free Software community promotes the Linux operating system and applications for such projects, and a number of countries are planning to switch over entirely to Linux. This is in part because of cost (although the "Free" in "Free Software" has more to do with Free Speech than Free Beer) but largely because of the freedom to adapt the operating system and applications to local languages, legal systems, customs, and so on. There are Linux distributions in Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda; Yorùbá, a language of Nigeria; and a number of other languages of Africa and Asia; and there are plans to create distributions in many more languages, including languages of Native Americans.
Further reading:
- People, organizations, projects, and events devoted to ICT4D (http://www.wsis-online/)