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April, 2002 CHIEF GUEST |
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"The next generation of IT users is too poor to use IT right now" Newsweek magazine recently chose him as one of the 100 Americans most likely to shape the current century. Alex (Sandy) Pentland, the dean of the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Media Lab, is also its founding director and a pioneer in researches on smart environments, wearable computers, and technology for developing countries. Pentland is also co-founder of the Media Labs' Digital Nations Consortium, of the award-winning LINCOS (Little Intelligent Communities) project, and of the Center for Future Health. Media Lab Asia was instituted as a non-profit company in India in September 2001. Now it's up to Pentland to translate the Lab's "IT for the masses" slogan into reality. Pentland recently visited Delhi, where Sudhir Chowdhary asked him how he proposed to do this:
IT for the masses might sound a bit empty-can these masses afford it? I am quite sure of one thing: As the cost of information technology continues to drop, a majority of tomorrow's technology consumers will be those who can't afford it today. Right now the next generation of IT users is too poor to use IT. We don't know what might be useful to them, what services they would need. All we know is that they won't be using Windows on a PC. Meanwhile, the cost of hardware is declining every year-everything is low-cost when produced in volume. The challenge, therefore, is to develop innovative usable solutions that will be useful to the other half of humanity. What is Media Lab Asia working on? MIT has set up its third media lab worldwide together with the Indian government, to explore the ways technology can be introduced to improve the state of the rural poor. How to build useful "rural software", how to interface with a user and in what language; these are questions MIT hopes to answer with help from its Indian partners. These partners range from research institutes like the IITs and IISc, Banagalore, local self-help groups, state governments and NGOs (non-governmental organisations). Media Lab Asia's first year would be a preparatory period, giving time to bring in the best researchers and management, to find the best organisational partners, and to adapt the Media Lab model to the Indian context and to the objective of inventing technology that reaches everyone on earth. At the end of the first year, we will review the relationship before continuing the process. More concretely, we have set up our headquarters in Mumbai, appointed a COO and CFO, and created four research laboratories in the Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and Kanpur IIT campuses. Will Media Lab Asia develop India-centric solutions? Yes, to begin with. However, a village in Indonesia or Russia isn't very different than a village in India. So over time, these solutions could be mapped on to other developing nations. At the moment, Media Lab Asia is also finalising its research agenda around three technical challenges that are barriers to deploying low-cost digital services in rural communities. These core research areas are: World computer-Can we create an interface for very low-cost devices with tiny operating systems that can be used even by the illiterate? We are investigating how to create a truly multi-language user interface, based on an internal interlingual representation that allows multi-language authoring, Web access, and database search. Bits for all-Can a broadband service be delivered to rural users at nominal costs? We are investigating unlicensed spectrum networks that charge for services instead of spectrum, so the poor, especially in rural areas, have basic connectivity for a minimal monthly charge. Tomorrow's tools-How can mix-and-match hardware components be designed to make low-cost computers and embedded components for village applications? We are investigating low-cost design tools for small manufacturers, new types of products for the mass market, and new modular reference designs. To ensure that Media Lab Asia's output benefits all members and levels of society, we will have a fourth theme: the digital village. Its goal is to realise (M.K.) Gandhi's vision of a sustainable village through culturally appropriate use of new technologies. New technologies should not erase traditional culture but should instead enhance and make it sustainable. So Media Lab Asia's goal is to create a digital ecology that maintains traditional values and community, while opening economic and expressive opportunities for all members of society. It recently got an important vote of confidence from the United Nations when the new ICT (information and communication technology) Task Force, set up by the UN Secretary-General, named Media Lab Asia as its academic and industrial body for Asia. By springtime we anticipate forming broad-based, precompetitive industrial consortia organised around these three problems. We are now consulting industry leaders to set fee schedules, IP policy, and precise problem focus. Why would a company invest in a shared intellectual property project? Our focus is on the development of new technologies for emerging economies. These are huge markets that are now opening up to ICTs and offer vast potential for industry growth. Besides, advances in microprocessors, embedded systems, wireless communications and other new technologies offer tremendous opportunities to develop new business models. Media Lab would undertake the high-risk research that an individual company might not find feasible. We will take a percentage of turnover as the fee for participation in Media Lab Asia. My concern is how effectively the government can guard intellectual property rights. India has pledged to follow global IPR norms, but if there's a conflict the country's legal system would prove slow. A courtroom battle here can take years. How exactly IPR would be shared and how effectively can these rights be protected are areas that the corporate sector will be very interested in. I can say that the overall mood is optimistic. MIT had tempting offers from other Asian nations for locating the Media Lab. Why did you choose India? From a monetary point of view the offers from other countries were far more interesting. But India offers the unique combination of intellectual resources and a national (or governmental) focus on the problem. In addition, India's excellence in software development has been proven in the competitive export market. Now is the time to turn this leadership towards the even harder problems of a domestic market, towards education and towards an economy based on human capital. |
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