Category: Information and Communications Technology

Palliatives Considered Dangerous

Recently the Indian Postal Services have started offering a service which can be characterized as “mediated email services.” You write out a message on a piece of paper and bring it to a post office and they will transmit the information to an email address after any required translation. On the return route, they will print out an email and a postman will deliver it to the addressee who does not have direct access to email.

I subscribe to an email list where matters relating to India’s progress down the information highway is discussed. One member, Mr. S.N.Rao, wrote in response to the postal department’s scheme. I find Rao’s comments very pertinent and with his permission I quote him for the record.

I can see that this is a very useful thing to have and that it benefits large numbers of poor people who cannot afford to own computers or learn how to operate them or speak/write English.

That brings me to the frighteningly palliative nature of this kind of solution. It attempts to provide a workaround – causing the real problems to be ignored along the way. I hope I am not the only one to see the striking parallels between this solution and the “good old days” solution to illiteracy where the postman often read out incoming letters to his customers and scribed outgoing mail on their behalf!

The basic problems that need to be solved are

a. Computers and technology are still bewildering and sometimes threatening in their cost and complexity of use. The platform that is used to develop and test software is basically the same as the platform that is used as a home PC…with all the attendant disadvantages of a user interface geared for essentially production/office environments.

There are some products that make sending email simpler by providing a dedicated email station that does nothing else – but that again is a point solution. There is a sorely felt need for a home platform. Sending email/voice/photos via the internet should be at least as easy as turning on the TV and switching between Z-TV and CNN (if not as easy as switching on a light).

b. Local language support is nearly non-existent despite large cumbersome frameworks and customisation options being built into operating systems. As a result it is almost imperative that the user be comfortably familiar with English. Oh! wait – that’s only true for India and a few other countries – in Japan, the computers, UI, keyboards are all in Japanese (I think you might be even able to select between two different scripts – kanji and the more common mix of katagana and hiragana). Now wouldn’t it be nice for the old man in Alleppy if we had a computer with an interface and markings entirely in, for example – Malayalam?

Band-aids, palliatives, patches, workarounds — are dangerous when they mask underlying problems. They work in the short-run and appear to solve the problem but in the long-run, they indirectly contribute to the persistence of the problem. They often address symptoms rather than causes. I am not advocating the abandonment of band-aids. My insistence is on making sure that even as we are busy putting on band-aids, we should spare some time and effort to address underlying causes.

Computers are complex beasts because of the evolutionary pathway they have traveled. Made by techies for techies. For them to be useful for the unwashed masses (such as yours truly), they have to be transformed into easy to manage domesticated animals. Some people are working on that domestication.

The availability of computers for the masses is of course increasingly becoming a necessity. But that is far from sufficient. For us to have a reasonable shot at development, we need to have a literate population. Palliatives that mask that underlying deficiency should be considered dangerous.

Why, oh why, don’t they own shoes?

If one ponders the question of why cobbler’s children often go barefoot, one comes to the obvious conclusion that cobblers are traditionally poor and cannot afford the luxury of the same shoes that they produce for others. It is not that they don’t desire shoes; only that shoes lose out in a cost-benefit analysis.

Continue reading “Why, oh why, don’t they own shoes?”

God-realization Through Technology

On the launch of the Simputer, a sort of Palm clone meant for the poor, PicoPeta chairman Prof. Vinay said: “Amida allows people to share information, stay connected and bond emotionally. It does these by breaking the fear of technology.”

Damn, now I know what was preventing me from bonding emotionally with people — my fear of technology. Now that Simputer is here, I will get over my fear of technology and bam! I will be bonding emotionally with people. Now I will finally get a life!
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Why Telephones, Radio, and TVs Don’t Make The Conference Circuits

In late February, immediately upon my return from my brief trip to California, I went to attend what is called the Baramati Conference in Baramati. Baramati is a small town in Sharad Pawar’s constituency. The conference was on “Information Kiosks and Sustainability”. I sat through the presentations. After a while it gets mighty boring to hear about ICT-this and ICT-that and all the wonderful things that computers and the internet are going to do for development of poor people. My mind wanders when I get bored. So I sat there wondering what motivates these people who wish to push computers and internet as the solution to all problems. Why?
Continue reading “Why Telephones, Radio, and TVs Don’t Make The Conference Circuits”

Knowledge and Information

One of my basic convictions is that symbol manipulation ability is what distinguishes intelligent entities from non-intelligent ones. For manipulating increasingly larger chunks of symbols, we create higher level symbols which encode a number of lower level symbols. Vocabulary is then that set of symbols. I would define an extensive vocabulary as one with a large number of symbols, that is, the width of the vocabulary. Vocabulary can also be more or less intensive, depending upon the complexity – or depth – of the symbols. Higher intelligences have the need and the capacity to handle more extensive and intensive vocabularies.

Vocabulary matters. It allows us to reason about the real world more effectively. It allows us to avoid illogical constructs arrived at through ill-defined and vague ideas poorly understood and consequently improperly communicated.

One of my pet peeves (which stimulated this comment) is the conflating of ‘information’ and ‘knowledge’. They are cats of two distinct breeds and are not interchangeable. The first does not require a brain whereas the latter cannot exist outside a brain. A telephone directory does not have knowledge of my phone number; it merely represents that data as information. When you look up and internalize that information, you have knowledge of my phone number.

Information is what economists call a public good (non-rival, mainly) while knowledge is a private good because it is associated with a brain. The same amount of information can lead to a lesser or greater amount of knowledge depending upon how many brains internalize that information.

The revolutions in ICT has lead to a decrease in the cost of replicating and disseminating information. It has not reduced the effort required for information to be incorporate in a brain into knowledge. It is an information revolution; it is arguably not a knowledge revolution. There is an explosion in information (some would argue that it is merely a data explosion) maybe but certainly not a knowledge explosion. Indeed, too much information – information overload – can lead to a decrease in knowledge acquired because humans have limited CPU power and if too much is used up in input of information, less CPU capacity is available for processing the information into useful knowledge.

From the introduction that Rajesh Jain quotes in one of his tech talks, it is not clear to me that Mokyr distinguishes between knowledge and information. With the distinction in mind, it is interesting to re-read the quoted text and find evidence of much muddled thinking.

In my own field of development economics, I have noted a similar muddling of two very distinct concepts: growth and development. Not being able to distinguish between the two often leads policy makers to mistake growth for development: the former is neither necessary nor sufficient for the latter. So also, more information is neither necessary nor sufficient for greater knowledge.

Finally, let’s keep in mind the following: Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom, and finally wisdom is not enlightenment.

We are Made of Stuff

… We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

    Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Writing in the Dec 28th, 2003 edition of The Week, President Kalam says, “In the 21st century, knowledge is the primary production resource instead of capital or labour.”

I have been unable to fully comprehend that insight, fundamentally because it does not make any sense. Sounds profound but makes no sense. What is a ‘primary production resource‘? Did Kalam imply that once upon a time capital and labor were primary production resources but knowledge wasn’t? What changed so that labor and capital got displaced and now knowledge holds that position?
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The Rise of India

BusinessWeek online in its Dec 8th 2003 cover story The Rise of India says “Growth is only just starting, but the country’s brainpower is already reshaping Corporate America.” It is worth the read. Here is an excerpt:

If India can turn into a fast-growth economy, it will be the first developing nation that used its brainpower, not natural resources or the raw muscle of factory labor, as the catalyst. And this huge country desperately needs China-style growth. For all its R&D labs, India remains visibly Third World. IT service exports employ less than 1% of the workforce. Per-capita income is just $460, and 300 million Indians subsist on $1 a day or less. Lethargic courts can take 20 years to resolve contract disputes. And what pass for highways in Bombay are choked, crumbling roads lined with slums, garbage heaps, and homeless migrants sleeping on bare pavement. More than a third of India’s 1 billion citizens are illiterate, and just 60% of homes have electricity. Most bureaucracies are bloated, corrupt, and dysfunctional. The government’s 10% budget deficit is alarming. Tensions between Hindus and Muslims always seem poised to explode, and the risk of war with nuclear-armed Pakistan is ever-present.

I am glad that the article does not paper over the real problems. It goes on to report the confidence among some Indians.

Now, many talented Indians feel a sense of optimism India hasn’t experienced in decades. “IT is driving India’s boom, and we in the younger generation can really deliver the country from poverty,” says Rhythm Tyagi, 22, a master’s degree student at the new Indian Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore. The campus is completely wired for Wi-Fi and boasts classrooms with videoconferencing to beam sessions to 300 other colleges.

Boom, like beauty, evidently lies in the eye of the beholder. I like enthusiasm as much as the next guy. But let’s not get carried away by IT. It is not driving India’s boom because there is no boom to begin with. India’s economy is growing at a modest pace. Calling it a boom is silly. And it is worse than silly to believe that IT can deliver the country from poverty — it is dangerous.

Thinking that IT is the answer to India’s development is dangerous because it could divert limited resources into wasteful activities. Every now and then one hears of another large sum being allocated for e-this or e-that. Recently I was at a roundtable on e-governance. Speakers held forth on how e-governance would help. I could not for the life of me figure out what is the point in moving from bad-governance to e-bad-governance. I thought that the move should be from bad-governance to good-governance. But that was the minority view there because the consensus was that everything was as it should be and all that was needed to gild the lily was a bit of IT.

Misplaced conclusions

“My uncle died sadly due to his habit of drinking tea?”

“That’s amazing! I have heard of people dying because of alcohol. But tea?”

“Yes, tea lead to his death. He was crossing the road to get himself a cup of tea, and a bus ran over him. Tea caused his untimely demise.”
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The Four Noble Truths

Little drops of water
Little grains sand
Make the mighty ocean
And the beauteous land

I think the time has come to speak of little things. Things that add up like little grains of sand and little drops of water. Individually, they seem irrelevant and inconsequential. But they matter very much in the end.

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Saturday evening plans included meeting friends for drinks at the Cricket Club of India near the Churchgate station. Karthik said it was so close to the station that anyone would be able to tell me. I asked but there was no address he could give me. I arrived at the Churchgate station well on time. Then for the next 25 minutes I tried to get to the Cricket Club of India.

It was not more than 10 minutes walk from the station. But not having an address, I had to rely on asking people. They generally waved in various, often contradictory, directions. Finally, after a couple of mobile calls to Karthik, I arrived about 10 minutes late at the CCI.

It does not take a genius to figure out that without numbers and addresses, it is difficult to locate a place; that it is wasteful and frustrating. It is not as if addresses and numbers are a modern new-fangled invention that requires all sorts of fancy high-tech equipment and massive amounts of capital spending to put in place. Any idiot with half a brain can figure out that without a proper addressing scheme, people waste time and effort needlessly. Yet, I notice the almost universal lack of a rational street addressing in India.

Sure, in business cards you see addresses printed. But it is not an address but rather a description of the general neighborhood. “In front of this, and behind that, and near to the other, and opposite something else, close to the cinema.” The addresses generally run into 4 or 5 lines. Even then you are not likely to find it in a hurry.

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This morning, I thought I would call the Confederation of Indian Industries offices in New Delhi. I am invited to speak at their 6th Social Summit Dec 17-19 “National Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility” in Bhopal. It was supposed to be just a simple call to ask for a list of participants.

After over an hour of my time and significant costs in long distance charges, I still don’t have that information. I had no idea of how difficult it was going to be. I dialed the number, it kept ringing and then the phone system finally timed-out. I called again a few minutes later. It was busy. I tried all four listed numbers; they were either busy, or were not answered. I tried again after a while. This time someone answered. They mumbled something, as if they were answering the phone while asleep.

“Hello, is this CII?”

“Yes.”

“I am trying to reach Ms. xyz.”

Without a word of reply, I find myself listening to muzak. It goes on for few minutes. Finally, someone picks up the phone. I could hear the person talking to someone else in their office with the phone off the hook and I was kept waiting. I hung up after a few minutes. After a while, I re-started the whole process. After another 20 minutes, I was finally speaking to someone. Left a message asking for information.

Later in the afternoon, when I still had not heard back from them, I started the whole thing once again. This time I lost my cool. When the operator answered, I said, “Listen to me carefully, and don’t transfer me before you fully comprehend what I am looking for.” Then I carefully explained her job to her.

To cut a long story short, this was not a 2-bit fly-by-night operation I was trying to reach. It was an industry association representing thousands of firms. One would have expected a little bit of professionalism. They don’t even know how to answer the phone. Their shabbiness is astonishingly blatant. Surely, this is no professionally run organization.

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The two anecdotes illustrate a larger point that I would like to make. I submit that for India to develop, there has to be a change in our outlook. We need to think very carefully about what exactly the problems are and then think very deeply about what are the appropriate solutions for them.

Economists like to remind people that learning by doing is a very powerful device. If you are at the fore-front of some technology, the only way to learn is by doing and making mistakes and so on. But I believe that if you are not at the cutting-edge, then learning by imitating is the way to go. It does not require a rocket scientist to keep ones eyes open, note very carefully how others have solved a specific problem, and simply copy that solution if it is applicable. That way you don’t have to pay the price of having to discover the solution and yet you get the benefit of having the solution. This is the advantage that can come of being a late-comer. Among siblings, it is often the case that the second born appears to be sharper than the first born because of this learning by imitation.

Development economists often wonder about the so-called convergence hypothesis, that is, developing countries grow faster than developed countries and eventually catch up. One of the factors that governs the rate of growth of an economy is the level of knowledge. Information internalized leads to knowledge. Now these days information is no longer a really big secret: it speeds around the globe at electromagnetic speeds. Why is it then, one wonders, that the poor countries cannot use the information effectively to increase their growth rates and pull themselves out of poverty?

My contention is that merely having knowledge is not enough. The system has to be attuned to make use of that knowledge for it to be useful. In a very broad sense, it is larger ecology of the society that determines whether a give bit of knowledge or technology will be useful in a society or not. The tranfer of knowledge is a much harder problem than the transfer of technology.

In other words, you could very easily import a million PCs and tons of software from some advanced industrialized country. Or you could import the technology and build them locally. Will that have an effect on the growth rate of the economy? Marginally at best. But for real change, you would also have to the way things are perceived. That is a much harder problem to crack. It is harder because it is a soft issue — it deals with people, their belief systems, their emotions, their understanding of who they are, their ambitions and hopes, their fears and insecurities.

I come back to my original position: ICT merely provides the tools. How to effectively use the tools is not part of the software package. That cannot be imported in a box any more than merely stacking books on quantum physics in your living room makes you a physicist.

We have to change our view. Two and a half millennia ago, the historical Buddha Gautama had outlined an Eight-fold Path as the Fourth Noble Truth. While all of them are important, the most important in my opinion is that of Right View. We have to find the right way to view the problems we face. Only then can we take the first steps to fixing them. My fear is that we are too eager to rush in with technological fixes to problems that are primarily sociological.

It is ironical that we have not learnt a lesson that was taught in this land by the Buddha. He was unhappy about something. So first he decided to fully understand what the problem was and state it unequivocally. That was the First Noble Truth, the truth about dukkha. Then he figured out the cause and called it the Second Noble Truth. Then he did what I would call an existence proof, that is show that a solution does indeed exist. That was the Third Noble Truth. Finally, the Fourth Noble Truth with its Eight-fold Path.

The lesson we should have learnt is that of the systematic application of reason to any problem. First, define the problem, then understand the cause, then show that the cause can be eliminated, and then finally outline the solution.

So my advice to all those who are ICT-trigger-happy, think before you fire up the internet browser. The answer may not be there at all.

India’s NRI (Network Readiness Index)

Global Information Technology Report 2002-2003 – Readiness for the Networked World

The Global Information Technology Report is the most comprehensive assessment of “networked readiness” — how prepared an economy is to capture the benefits of technology to promote economic growth and productivity. As the world experiences an economic slowdown, the Report highlights that the use and application of information and communication technologies (ICT) remain among the most powerful engines of growth. This year’s Report benchmarks the performance and monitors progress in networked readiness of 82 countries.

Finland ranks numero uno in the NRI — Networked Readiness Index — followed by the US. India is somewhere in the middle (number 37th of the 82 countries listed) because “of its immense pool of trained IT manpower”. China is ranked 43rd. This came as a bit of a (pleasant) surprise to me.