Searching Google, Where Internet Access is Scarce 130
Internet searching means that finding information mundane, obscure, or fantastically useful is just a few keystrokes away — but not if you're without a connection to the Internet (or can't read), both the norm for many of the world's poor. itwbennett writes "Rose Shuman developed a contraption for this under-served population called Question Box that is essentially a one-step-removed Internet search: 'A villager presses a call button on a physical intercom device, located in their village, which connects them to a trained operator in a nearby town who's sitting in front of a computer attached to the Internet. A question is asked. While the questioner holds, the operator looks up the answer on the Internet and reads it back. All questions and answers are logged. For the villager there is no keyboard to deal with. No complex technology. No literacy issues.' This week, Jon Gosier, of Appfrica, launched a web site called World Wants to Know that displays the QuestionBox questions being asked in real time. As Jon put it, it's allowing 'searching where Google can't.' And providing remarkable insight into the real information needs of off-the-grid populations."
Re:Put a computer where the intercom is! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Put a computer where the intercom is! (Score:5, Informative)
Just how DO you teach a (practically) stone-age tribesman to use a computer?
Stone age tribesman? Take a look at the questions they're asking: who is on top on football, popular NBA players, info on the Obamas, quality of life in different regions of Uganda, the causes of sexual health problems, transmission of diseases, etc. They live in an underdeveloped country, but that doesn't mean they're underdeveloped people.
If a service like this could be sustained long-term and made accessible to more people, I think this could be a great tool. In particular, the questions about conflicting religions and sexual health are striking - there's a lot of ignorance about health, religion, and science in Africa... but that ignorance is a reflection of the state of region, not the willfull behavior of the people. Access to the Internet can provide an "out" for those that want to learn but have limited options in their village.
Re:Maybe I'm just being too cynical... (Score:4, Informative)
I used to feel the same way when reading about the proliferation of cell phones in rural areas in African countries. The last thing they need is those bloody expensive luxury items, right? But, as it turns out, cell phones provide a similar and highly useful type of service, and allows people in out of the way areas to get information on farming and diseases, food and crop prices at various markets. Already this is changing the way food is grown and sold.
And what is so bad about finding out about train schedules? Who wants to waste 3 days waiting after missing a train? People moving crops or who are otherwise working hard to feed a family can't afford to waste those three days, probably less so than you or me. Personal loans? Unlike loans in the West, these will probably not go towards a down payment on an SUV or a swimming pool, but more likely will be spent on essential farming tools, or perhaps as seed capital for a small business. That's what this microcredit stuff is all about... I think it's great if a tool like this makes such efforts available to a wider audience.
Providing tools and seeds rarely helps and often destroys local markets. That is the real "feel good" stuff. There are many of such fancy and widely applauded aid programmes... please go see what became of similar programmes that were implemented 10 years ago. Broken pumps, broken tractors that cannot be repaired locally, once immaculate white school buildings, still waiting for those first teachers and those first books, pencils and blackboards to arrive. That's what you will find.
Real aid is helping people to help themselves. Access to information might seem unimportant to developing nations but it has already been proven to be a game changer right down to local villagers. Don't expect them to ask only earth-shatteringly insightful questions through this thing either, and certainly do not berate them for using it for entertainment purposes as well. These are people like you and me, not some hunger-crazed wretches scratching in the dirt for food with no time for anything else. Moyo said it best when she said: "If you see an African on TV, it's either a fly-ridden victim of famine or war, or.... it's Nelson Mandela". That is the image that we need to lose... sadly it is precisely that image which fuels the industry called "aid"
Re:I wonder how these operators are trained (Score:2, Informative)
I began wondering about this same problem as several questions were distinctly medical (and sounded pretty urgent!). The good news is that QuestionBox is trying to recruit medical professionals to assist with these calls (can't find the link now, but it was on the QuestionBox website).
I'm sure there are plenty of $topic_of_interest geeks out there who would love to volunteer a bit of their time in this sort of capacity, and being telephone-based it's a highly distributable service. Of course, nothing beats a good research librarian in general background knowledge and ability to sift out the garbage.
FWIW, QuestionBox appears to have internships, of what nature I don't know:
http://www.questionbox.org/you.html [questionbox.org]
Re:Put a computer where the intercom is! (Score:3, Informative)
The question is made more difficult by the fact that Stone-Age is not being used in the strict archaeological sense, but as a shorthand to describe any civilization where the level of technology available to the average person is more than a certain number of years behind ours. I would be willing to be that these "stone-age tribesmen" have access to smithing knowledge, which would instantly disqualify them from the strict definition of "stone-age".
Re:I wonder how these operators are trained (Score:1, Informative)
The operator is not just googling the answer. They now how to route specific kinds of questions. They have knowledge databases tailored for local needs. You can look for details on questionbox's homepage.
Iron tools end the stone age (Score:3, Informative)
When does a culture stop being stone-age?
A culture's stone age [wikipedia.org] ends once it gains technology to shape metal. Then it proceeds to an iron age [wikipedia.org], which lasts until literacy becomes widespread. Some cultures in areas with copper and tin ores have a bronze age [wikipedia.org] between the stone age and the iron age; others skip it.