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MIT Helps Third World With Hands-On Approach
Hugh Pickens writes "About 60 people from 20 nations will descend on the MIT campus July 14th for the second annual International Development Design Summit to begin an intensive month-long process of creating technological solutions for the needs of people in the world's developing nations. The goal of the program is to develop simple, inexpensive devices that in some cases can be produced locally and make a real difference for people and communities. The event is the brainchild of MIT Senior Lecturer Amy Smith, a returned Peace Corps volunteer and a past winner of the MacArthur 'genius' grant. Previous products of Smith's design class include a bike-powered corn sheller, a metal press that can make clean-burning fuel out of agricultural waste, and an electricity-free incubator. The workshop promotes a shift in focus among companies, universities, investors and scientists toward attacking problems that hamper development in the world's poorest places. 'Nearly 90 percent of research and development dollars are spent on creating technologies that serve the wealthiest 10 percent of the world's population,' Ms. Smith said. 'The point of the design revolution is to switch that.'"
An appropriate place for a plug for Engineers without borders"
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The technology "needed"? Funny, there's this odd history book that seems to think that humans lived in Africa for a while before Europeans arrived. I'm not sure, but I hear that in this mysterious time before time, they even didn't have cellphones or the Internet!
What is needed is an end to things like this. Until the first world nations stop raping third world nations and supporting tinpot dictators just for the sake of guaranteeing access to their resources, human misery will continue wholesale.
I hate printers.
For some reason the news office didn't link to D-lab. But there are actually plenty of groups at MIT doing stuff like this,
including the Public Service Center's IDEAS competition, several Mech-E student ptojects, Design for Change,
and the spin-off Design that matters.
These groups work on a lot of interesting things. Some of them, like the Kinkajou projector, see somewhat esoteric or "luxurious,"
but others are pretty basic and nifty. There are a lot of bicycle flywheel-moderated pedal powered devices that seem to fill genuine
needs, as does the famous peanut sheller.
Were that I say, pancakes?
is turning into quite a movement.
http://appropedia.org/ is like wikipedia but, predictably, for appropriate technology.
http://hexayurt.com/ is a nice little emergency shelter (that's my project.)
http://globalswadeshi.net/ takes Gandhi's ideas (like the spinning wheel) and generalizes them into a global picture based on appropriate technology innovations
http://akvo.org/ does water technology
http://openfarmtech.org/ does a wide range of systems for a very high standard of living
and there's a lot more out there.
http://www.globalswadeshi.net/video has a series of video interviews with people working on appropriate technology in this general vein.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
ObPlug: Paul Polak's "Out of Poverty" program. http://www.paulpolak.com/ He has a deeper-than-surface understanding of 3rd world micro-economics. He introduced simple but effective technologies in many places which have completely transformed the lives of whole villages. Drip irrigation, cheap water storage, treadle-pumps, etc. He also has a book at amazon. Haven't read it yet, but it's on my wish list.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1576754499/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance
On a related note:
(IMO) our universities must become more than diploma mills for the children of the wealthy, they should (primarily) be incubators for real, functional change. MIT and a few other universities take this seriously and (most importantly) fund it. (See recent articles on break-through solar technology.) I hope they will open-source the fruits of their research.
We somehow need to shift focus from getting-rich-quick to saving a world that needs it. We can't afford to let the 21st century really can't be like the 20th.
People in third world countries make very little money, so they can't save any. When they get old, they need their children to look after them because they don't have any savings and are unable to work [enough to make a living]. Unless you want to die alone of starvation, you NEED to have many babies.
Also, children are much more likely to die in third world countries so it is good policy to have a few spares.
Finally, contraceptives are expensive and/or, depending on your religion of choice, their use may be considered a sin.