Learning to listen: technology and poor communities

A Sri Lankan robotics scientist is leading an effort to get technology working for poor communities around the world, reports Waleed Al-Shobakky

[Published on SciDev.net, Jan 20, 2006]

Bernadine Dias, a Sri Lankan-born scientist based at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), United States, admits she "wears many hats". Her main focus is robotics, but she also devotes a lot of time promoting innovative ways of using technology in poor communities.

In 2004, Dias founded an initiative called TechBridgeWorld to forge collaborations between CMU and developing communities around the world, including poor neighbourhoods in the United States.

Dias believes this kind of relationship benefits both partners: university staff and students learn about the real needs of the world's poor, while communities gain skills and access to technology.

Ongoing TechBridgeWorld projects are using technology to improve healthcare in Haiti and to teach English in Ghana. And when Dias moved to Qatar last year to teach in the robotics department of 'CMU-Q', her university's recently launched local branch, she took TechBridgeWorld with her.

Working on robotics at the Qatar branch of CMU

As well as introducing the initiative to Qatar, Dias plans to use the country as a springboard to expand into developing communities in Asia and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Working on robotics at the Qatar branch of CMU, says Dias, is an attempt to rectify what she sees as a common misconception: the tendency for consultants and experts to assume that technology that works in the West will also work well for communities elsewhere. From personal experience, Dias believes the notion is misguided.

"Because I grew up in Sri Lanka, I know about experts who have flown in and stayed at five-star hotels for a month, used all the money and come up with solutions that had no relevance at all," she told Gulf Times, a Qatari newspaper, in September 2005.

Dias says this mindset leads to Western products, developed to meet the needs of "a sliver of the world's population", being shipped to communities in developing countries who have not been asked about what they need.

Communicate and collaborate

Dias stresses two reasons why it is important to listen to local communities and develop partnerships with non-governmental organisations. "First, which is obvious, you can't design a solution without grasping the problem — in technology or in any other discipline," she says.

"Secondly, several developing communities have been around for so long, and they managed to live in synch with their environments. We need to learn more about this, not only when designing technology solutions for these communities, but for designing technology solutions in general."

One of TechBridgeWorld's early efforts that highlighted the importance and feasibility of getting local institutions involved was a pilot project in Ghana's capital, Accra. One of Dias's students, Ayorkor Mills-Tettey, went there to see how schoolchildren in poor neighbourhoods would respond to and interact with an automated, English-language, reading tutor developed at CMU. The computer programme works by correcting students reading stories aloud in English if they mispronounce words.

Ghana-born Mills-Tettey needed little more than a laptop and eight headsets. In Accra, she quickly found an Internet café willing to let a group of students use its computers for about an hour a day for the project.

She then visited the nearest school and offered to set the project up there. Returning the following day, she found that the head teacher had arranged a meeting of the students' parents to explain the project to them and have them sign consent forms.

The children soon learnt how to use the automated tutor

"It was amazing," recalls Dias. "All the roadblocks that people said we were going to face were just gone."

Most of the children had never touched a computer before, yet learned to use the programme in 15 minutes. They grasped it not by sitting through the accompanying tutorial but when Mills-Tetty read it out to them. Her familiar accent served her well.

"The students loved it, and people were so excited. Here was a new way of getting students interested in reading English, a new way to alleviate the problem of not having enough well-trained teachers," says Dias. TechBridgeWorld is now collaborating with a Ghanaian non-governmental organisation to run the same project, but with more students and for six months, to get more concrete results.

Dias thinks the project could address the problem of the lack of well-trained English teachers in the Middle East too, pointing out that for the project to succeed, whenever it is put to work for a new community, attention should be paid to the delicate differences that distinguish communities, even in the same region.

Moving mountains

Healthcare is another focus for TechBridgeWorld, which is exploring a low-cost project to digitally connect well-equipped hospitals in cities to distant, rural clinics that lack resources. The Albert Schweitzer hospital in Deschappelles, Haiti, is one example.

Connecting the hospital to health centres scattered in mountains eight hours away, could save villagers from having to make daunting and laborious journeys to see a doctor. Digital photos of patients in rural clinics would be sent over the Internet to better-trained physicians in the main hospital, who could then decide whether a disease is benign or serious and whether it warrants quick action.

"We would not need these digital cameras to work 24 hours per day, just one or two hours daily to take all the photos for accurate diagnosis," says Dias.

Dias, who witnessed the impact of the Indian Ocean tsunami while visiting family in Sri Lanka in 2004, is also working on disaster relief, with the aim of developing robot-human rescue teams. Yet with all her projects and plans, Dias believes technology has a long way to go before it can really deliver to poor communities.

"Technology has yet to mature. It's still unreliable," she says, giving the example of computer software that performs differently depending on which operating system the computer uses.

She believes that it is only when technology is reasonably reliable that we can use it more courageously in risky endeavours such as landmine detection. "We're starting to witness signs of maturity, though," she adds.

Dias also thinks that awareness is slowly growing of the need for technology providers, particularly multinational companies, to encourage people in poor communities to become financially independent entrepreneurs, not simply consumers or charity-dependent people caught up in cycles of need.

The Indian professor C.K. Prahalad, a management guru at the US-based University of Michigan, led the call for change in his 2004 book Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. The book received much praise from Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and, through the Gates Foundation, a major supporter of science and technology for development.

Dias says listening to poor communities is crucial to ensuring that technologies provided are appropriate of CMU

Dias, too, is enthusiastic. For her, the core of the book's importance is that it invites the business sector to recognise what Prahalad calls "markets at the bottom of the pyramid", and build new products accordingly.

Dias believes that designing technological products specifically tailored to the needs of poor communities is no mean feat. It takes a great deal of creativity and discipline — listening to what communities need.

However, some companies have taken a simpler route to make their products more accessible. In September 2004, Microsoft released in Thailand a low-price, 'watered down' version of its Windows operating system, named Starter Edition.

Generally, the product was not praised by analysts and commentators, but Dias thinks this is not what matters ultimately: "it all comes down to what people in these communities want and can use. If these versions of products are useful to a community, and that community plans to make good use of it, then it is great that they are able to get access to the products... You don't always need the most hi-tech or expensive solutions."

Under the umbrella of TechBridgeWorld, two new courses – both focused on technology consulting for communities, particularly poor ones – will be introduced to undergraduate students at CMU-Q's school of computer science. As ever, they uphold Dias's belief in mutuality when it comes to encounters between the West and the developing world.

As she says: "The most important thing students and faculty walk away with from these courses is the realisation that you can't be an expert on everything, and that you need to listen to, and learn from, your partners in local communities."

Related links: TechBridgeWorld CMU's Medical Robotics Technology Center (MRTC) CMU's Medical Robotics and Computer-Assisted Surgery Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti Photo Credit: TechBridgeWorld

The Rise of Middle East Technology Parks

A feature article on the Science and Development Network -- SciDev.Net. Oct 3, 2007

The rapid growth of technology parks in the Arab world has so far created more expectations than outcomes, reports Waleed Al-Shobakky.

[In the photo, right, Eulian Roberts, CEO of QSTP. Source: QSTP]

It is "parking" time in the Middle East. Over the past few years, technology parks have been sprouting up all over the region: from Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia in the north, to Kuwait, Oman and Qatar in the east.

Recognising that their natural resources, particularly oil, are being fast depleted, and looking to emulate the success stories of technology parks in Asia, Europe and North America in creating jobs and successful businesses, countries like Turkey and the United Arab Emirates have constructed as many as seven or eight parks.

But as the ranks swell, the question remains: will technology parks be able to prove their worth?

Good reasons

The concept of gathering together businesses with similar interests in one place is now a region-wide movement in the Middle East, but different reasons lie behind each country's decision to join the bandwagon.

For instance, to the oil-wealthy Gulf states, science and technology parks are tools for diversifying the economy in preparation for the post-oil times.
For the less-endowed countries, such as Egypt and Jordan, technology parks seem to be a way out of poverty — with high potential returns without the need for prohibitively high investments.

The successful parks of India and Malaysia look particularly appealing to these countries. This may explain why Middle Eastern governments have established a total of 30 technology parks dedicated to information and communication technology (ICT) alone, according to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). There are also 15 biotechnology parks, and 12 dedicated to advanced engineering.

Indeed, the buzz surrounding technology parks in the region, says Eulian Roberts, chief executive officer of Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP), is coming from what policymakers see happening elsewhere — namely the technology parks' ability to foster a country's economy, without necessarily relying on natural resources.

And there is research to back this up. A study from the United Kingdom's Science Park Association, says Roberts, found that companies located inside technology parks stand a better chance of gaining funds and support — and hence success — than their counterparts outside.

Technology parks are also thought to help initiate synergy with academic institutions. "They encourage productive R&D in academia and provide a mechanism to commercialise this research," says Omar Hamarneh, director of iPARK, Jordan's government-run institution mandated with supporting technology start-ups.

A focus problem

But the near consensus over the validity of establishing technology parks erodes when it comes to deciding what to do with them.

One view, as articulated by Tarek Elabbady, director of the Microsoft Innovation Centre in Egypt, is that technology parks should focus on supporting the "most rewarding industries," in terms of either monetary returns or jobs.

Elabbady says high-population countries like Egypt can make the most of technology parks by channelling their energy into the most rewarding job-creating sectors, such as agriculture and textiles. To that end, research and development activities could focus on areas such as bioinformatics and fertilizers.

Another view is that a technology park should be employed as an instrument to augment the economic gains from a country's existing natural resources, says QSTP's Roberts.

For a country with a small population such as Qatar, Roberts explains, technology parks can be a way to generate wealth through intellectual capital — for example, through development of specialised fuel formulas for the aeronautic industry and more environment-friendly energy solutions — rather than relying solely on the direct exploitation of natural resources like oil.

Besides the intellectual capital gains, science and technology parks can also bring about "human capital" gains. They could attract expatriates back from Europe and the United States and stem the brain drain, says Mikko Suonenlahti, a Finnish venture capitalist who runs the two new technology funds of the QSTP.

And beyond that, Egypt's Smart Village, like its counterparts in the region, is starting to attract foreign entrepreneurs and executives to set up their own companies.

Indeed, the current zeal for technology parks has put entrepreneurs in a good position. Governments and technology park authorities in the region try to outbid each other in offering incentives (such as tax holidays, access to venture capital and unrestricted movement of labour, equipment and merchandise) to attract entrepreneurial talents, both from within the region and from outside.

To some, such as Suonenlahti, "competition is always good," because the free movement of talents and venture capital in the region will lead to the best allocation of resources, and best outcomes.

Competition vs. integration

To others, such as Elabbady, competition at this stage should give way to integration that is based on specialisation. That view probably stems from a curious dilemma in the Arab world: countries that are rich in human resources (like Egypt and Turkey) are often poor in resources, and vice versa — as is the case in the Gulf.

result is either a technology park rich in human capital but poor in infrastructure and facilities, or one with good resources but a limited (and hence highly expensive) talent pool.

One consequence is that countries with similar economies — such as the Gulf States, with their reliance on oil — look set to compete for the same big clients in the hydrocarbon sector. Everyone is talking about specialisation in the long term. But it seems that little has been done to that effect.

QSTP's Roberts says that specialisation is surely the road ahead; but the nascence of almost all technology parks in the region makes them hold their bets as to what to specialise in, until areas of specialisation emerge naturally, in response to market realities. QSTP, for example, has among its targeted sectors aircraft operations, environmental technology, gas and petrochemicals and ICT.

Tarek Elabbady sees the situation differently. He says most technology parks in the Arab world are not focused, spreading their already limited resources on widely diverse activities.

The state of science and technology today, he says, would reward most those with focus on a certain discipline — such as what Singapore is trying to do in biotechnology, South Korea in electronics, or Taiwan in microchips.

Elabbady also believes that many of the science and technology parks in the Arab world have practically no entry criteria and are in essence real estate development projects with just a tiny research and development component.

Attempting to be everything to everyone, Elabbady says, could help technology parks get quick returns in the short term by attracting multinational and large national companies. But this approach, he adds, robs technology parks of any significant future potential, particularly in local capacity building.

On the other hand, Ahmed Naim, sales and marketing director at the Smart Village, says that the traditional boundaries between different research fields — such as information technology, media and communication technologies — are no longer relevant. And this is why such a diverse range of companies do business at the village.

Should the lack of specialisation then be a reason for concern? Adhip Chaudhuri, economics professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, says no.

In the oil-rich Gulf, he says, specialisation will happen sooner or later because the growing demand on oil serves as an incentive for companies to come and set up shop here in search for niche markets or innovative products.

Not the panacea

Whether diversity is good or bad for science and technology parks may not be certain. What is certain is that what those parks have achieved so far in the Middle East is not much in terms of patents granted or technology companies listed on international stock markets.

In spite of this, euphoric reports, particularly from state-run media, have already started portraying technology parks as a magic entry pass into the league of developed countries.

"We sometimes get carried away by the excitement and lose sight of the goals and how we are going to get to them," says Microsoft's Elabbady.
To counter this, adjusting expectation is necessary.

Eulian Roberts says that policymakers and the public alike need to be reminded that technology parks are not the panacea for the knowledge economy. They are rather "one important instrument that can focus effort and resources and deliver visible results".

Nevertheless, technology parks are already sending a positive message about the region into the larger world. Says the Smart Village's Naim, "The mere presence of technology parks in Egypt and other countries is gradually changing the desert-and-camels stereotypes about the region."

A Tale of Two Sheikhdoms

Waleed al-Shobakky in Doha, Qatar

Published on ScienceBusiness. April 18, 2007

With their oil billions, the Arabian Gulf states are on a spending spree in science and technology – inviting Western universities and technology companies to set up classrooms and laboratories. But will the investments pay off?

[In the photo: Geologist Dr. Farouk El-Baz, director of Boston University's remote sensing center [credit: El-Baz]

A close look at two of the biggest science spenders shows contrasting strategies for technology development. Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirates, is a pioneer of diversification from oil into science—drawing 19 universities so far to its “Knowledge Village,” to set up profit-seeking satellite campuses for science, technology and business. Nearby Qatar, by contrast, is a newcomer to the field and is taking a long-term strategy, spending heavily to bankroll labs and classrooms with the help of selected Western academics.

It’s too early to say which strategy, for-profit or for-science, will work best in the long run—but in the meantime, all the spending has prompted a feeding frenzy in the cash-strapped academic world. The rush for oil wealth has drawn academic brand names such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Imperial College London and the Sorbonne, and others such as Australian Wollongong University and Britain’s Middlesex University.

“This is the only place in academia I have ever been in that is not limited by financial constraints,” says James Holste, associate dean of Texas A&M University’s school of engineering in Qatar. Back in the mother campus in Texas, he adds, no matter how good your proposal is, there is a point you cannot get past in getting finances for projects; here, if you convince Qatar Foundation of the educational value of your project, you will just get the money.

For Arab science, it amounts to a Renaissance – or at least, the money is being made available to fund one. In all, 15 Middle Eastern countries are now running or planning science parks. Dubai was was one of the pioneers – but others are catching on fast. And with leaders conscious of the missed opportunities of the oil-price boom in the mid-1970s, they are banking on the new oil boom and are investing enormous amounts of their petrodollars into projects designed for life after oil. In doing so, they are in fact demonstrating a commitment to science and research hardly ever witnessed in this part of the world.

A me-too?

On the surface Qatar may seem to be just a copycat of the Dubai and the UAE. After all, Qatar has just recently started doing what the UAE has been doing for quite some time: heavy investing in infrastructure and non-oil sectors; bringing in Western universities; building a technology park with heavy-weight multinational corporations as tenants; and introducing regulations that make the country more business- and foreign labour-friendly.

The UAE is indeed widely believed to be a pioneer in the Gulf region in terms of opening up and diversifying its economy and modernizing higher education. And if media coverage in illustrious magazines can serve as indication of success, then the Dubai emirate is certainly in an enviable position among the region’s cities. Dubai was featured in cover stories of National GeographicBusinessWeek, to mention just a couple of examples. It was also lavishly dubbed the “Tech Mecca” by Wired magazine and “the most connected city in the Middle East” by the Foreign Direct Investment magazine, a publication of the Financial Times. and

To many, Dubai, and the UAE at large, looked like the best model of doing things in the region—until Qatar’s plans started to be implemented.

By invitation only

“The UAE got the idea going,” says Texas A&M’s Holste, speaking of the UAE’s Knowledge Village (KV) and Qatar’s Education City (EC). “But the way Qatar implemented that concept [of having Western universities open branches locally] is getting a lot of attention because they have done things differently from everybody else.”

And it is no small difference. The UAE offers the facilities, on a lease basis, to any university from around the world interested in setting up shop in its attractive Dubai Knowledge Village – whose universities, nineteen in all, include the Australian Wollongong University, Britain’s Middlesex University, the Indian Mahatma Gandhi University and the Pakistani Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology, along with other French, American and local universities. Those universities, with the exception of local ones, are operating in Knowledge Village as profit-seeking entrepreneurial entities, with the tuition fees from students as their bread and butter.

Market realities, therefore, largely shape the approach of those universities. For instance, the courses highest in supply in Dubai’s Knowledge Village are those of business administration and computer science because of the high demand. And because those courses are cost-competitive, very little, if any, is spent on research, “which is necessarily expensive and with no direct financial return,” according to David McGlennon, director of research and outreach in Zayed University, who has done work on research capacity building in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

Also, McGlennon adds, universities that are set up in the UAE free zones, including Dubai Knowledge Village, are not required to be accredited through the national system and can be accredited only through the free zone authority. A Knowledge Village spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

In the Education City, by contrast, Qatar cherry-picks select universities and—with the incentive of full financial backing, special benefits to faculty and staff, and extensive financial aid programs to non-Qatari students—invites them to set up branch campuses in the 25,000-acre, and growing, campus.

Each of the invited universities brings in only one school, with the exception of Carnegie Mellon University which has two schools in Qatar: business administration and computer science. Other Education City branch campuses are Cornell University, with its medical college, Texas A&M’s school of engineering, Virginia Commonwealth’s school of interior and fashion design and Georgetown University’s school of foreign service.

“We are not interested in getting a quick financial return on our investments in the Education City,” says Abdullah Al-Kubaisi, chairman of Qatar Science and Technology Park and principal advisor to Qatar Foundation on science and technology.

Established in 1995, Qatar Foundation is the institution that spearheads Qatar’s efforts in science, technology and education. The Education City, Al-Kubaisi adds, is part of a larger, state-backed capacity-building plan that is bolstered by other QF projects, such as Qatar Science and Technology Park and Qatar National Research Fund.

Quality not survival

Texas A&M’s associate dean sees Qatar’s Education City approach as better geared for the future. “Qatar Foundation does not push its partners to be entrepreneurial to survive. Therefore we can think more about quality, and not about survival,” he says.

On that McGlennon agrees. From the R&D perspective, he says, Qatar has a very cohesive strategy. The Dubai-based scientist also notes that, thanks to the recently established Qatar National Research Fund, Qatar has developed its own national R&D priorities, a step he sees vitally necessary for any country serious about advancing its research and development capacity.

Which, of course, is not to say that Dubai does not have money or the willingness to spend on research. This last February, Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s ruler and the UAE’s prime minister, launched the Knowledge Fund which is geared towards supporting “government projects such as scholarships, scientific research, development of teaching staff and educational infrastructure improvement”. Beyond those general outlines, not much was disclosed about the priorities of the fund.

Big is beautiful

Why Qatar seems to have a more cohesive approach, however, may be due to factors more basic than plans and willingness. After all, the UAE is seven times Qatar’s size, and three times Qatar’s GDP and population. The UAE is composed of seven emirates (and hence seven rulers), with varying degrees of resource endowments, and diverging administration styles and priorities.

For instance, Abu Dhabi is much more endowed with oil revenues than Dubai – revenues that Abu Dhabi can apply to projects with no potential of short-term returns, like Qatar. Last October France’s renowned Sorbonne opened its doors for the first class in its Abu Dhabi campus. Britain’s Imperial College London is helping develop a diabetes clinic and research centre. And last February, an agreement was inked between Abu Dhabi-based Masdar Institute of Science and Technology and MIT to offer a graduate programme in the UAE.

Qatar, on the other hand, is very rich in natural gas resources — and with one ruler, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, to call the shots. And with a real growth rate of GDP of 7.1 per cent for 2006 and forecast to accelerate, Qatar’s big ambitions may be realised. Last November Qatar’s emir pledged 2.8 per cent of annual GDP (or about $1.5 billion) to R&D. That stands out in a region where average spending on R&D does not exceed 0.02 per cent of gross national product, most of which goes to salaries, according to the United Nations Development Programme’s 2003 Arab Human Development Report.

“I think Qatar wants to establish itself as the ‘knowledge centre’ of the region,” says Tony Murphy, vice president of Gartner Consulting, who is familiar with research and development initiatives in the region. “And in this it is likely to be quite successful.”

Last February, Qatar Foundation unveiled its plans for Sidra Medical and Research Center, a collaborative project between the foundation and Cornell University’s Medical College in Doha. The endowment to be allocated to this project is $8 billion, probably the largest in the world for a medical facility.

“Almost everything that is being built here is the biggest of its kind in the world,” says Texas A&M’s Holste. He cites Ras Laafan liquefied natural gas train and QAFCO urea factory as examples of this trend. “Nobody is building bigger or more modern things.”

A winning model?

So which of these approaches is likely to pan out in the long term: the UAE’s generally entrepreneurial model or Qatar’s by-invitation-only and big-is-beautiful model?

“From the R&D perspective,” says Zayed University’s McGlennon, “Qatar has a higher chance of succeeding based on the way its initiatives are currently structured”

Still, the amount of spending on, and the level of a state’s commitment to R&D, though essential, is only one aspect of creating a knowledge-based economy. An environment hospitable to scientists, adequate intellectual property laws, foreign labour-friendly regulations, and efficient services sector (such as the banking sector) are all prerequisites for a knowledge economy to evolve. In some of those areas, the UAE is ahead of Qatar.

And some even see the whole comparison as a distraction. “They are both good models as far as they achieve the goals for which they were set up,” says Mohammed Hammoudi, Microsoft Qatar country manager. He adds that while Dubai has an expressed “commercial” character, and proved very successful at that, Qatar is going in the direction of R&D, and may end up as successful. Microsoft has offices in both Dubai Internet City and Qatar Science and Technology Park.

Farouk El-Baz, a former NASA geologist and advisor to Qatar Foundation, notes that although Qatar and the UAE have selected different paths in their development endeavors, both have “surpassed most other Arab countries in putting a high priority on improving education of their citizens. This will bode well for their future.”

He also points out that while Qatar has one approach, the UAE has many. “Qatar can develop a model to apply throughout the country, which would be more difficult to do in the UAE.” El-Baz, director of Boston University’s remote sensing centre, believes that the great success and visible impact of improving education in Qatar and the UAE will encourage other Arab countries to implement some of the successful initiatives, each in its own way.

Yet the visibility of Qatar’s and the UAE’s projects sometimes invites undisguised competition. One example is the surging interest in building science and technology parks across the region. Fifteen countries in the Middle East, including the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries, have already established, or announced plans for, such parks. Eulian Roberts, CEO of Qatar Science and Technology Park, welcomes this development because, he says, this sends the right signal regarding this region’s seriousness about R&D.

That competition might also be a challenge. “What I see as one of the biggest challenges for the region is to get past national competition attitude [and move] towards actually true, regular cooperation and coordination,” says Texas A&M’s Holste.

What remains a large looming problem for both Qatar and the UAE is how to ensure an adequate supply of skilled labour for the mega-projects being undertaken and the ambitious plans being drawn. McGlennon says that the constant turnover in short term contracts (two to three years) will not be very helpful to R&D, which is naturally time-consuming.

Indeed, already the shortage of skilled and committed labour is a palpable problem. Tidu Maini, Pro Rector of the Imperial College London and advisor to Qatar Foundation, says that a major challenge now is to hire the right people who find the foundation’s vision, rather than money incentives, its main attraction.

Qatar's Science Revolution

Published on the Science and Development Network (SciDev.net)

Qatar is building an education, science and technology infrastructure at record speed — but not without friction, reports Waleed al-Shobakky. Read on ...

Photo credit: Martin Marion (Cornell Univ. Students)

السيمبيوتر: المغامرة الهندية في حلبة الكبــار

السمبيوتر: المغامرة الهندية في حلبة الكبار

وليد الشوبكي -- مجلة العربي (الكويت)، فبراير 2007

السمبيوتر إجابة الهند على إشكالية الفجوة الرقمية. فهو حاسوب جيب يسعى لإتاحة فوائد تكنولوجيا المعلومات للمستخدمين في البلدان الفقيرة من المتعلمين والأميين سواء. وبين نجاحات هذه التجربة وإخفاقاتها ثمة دروس جديرة بالنظر -- تتمة المقال

Web 2.0 Can Benefit the Poor

New web applications can benefit the world's poor, argue Waleed al-Shobakky and Jack Imsdahl.

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PCs for the Poor: As Good As Their Hype?

Technologists are at odds over how to bridge the digital divide. What one group calls the ultimate solution, another dismisses as "the scam of the century", reports Waleed al-Shobakky.

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