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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.'"
The problem is that there is a wide range of poorer nations, every of which is "Third World". There are more advanced nations, like Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, there are some in the middle of the road, like India, Egypt, Pakistan, and then there are the desperately poor, like most of Africa.
The technology needed by each group is different. A cheap way of digging a well is not what the people living in a city slum need most. OTOH, a cheap computer will not be much help people who live in mud huts somewhere in Africa.
So, instead of trying to help the 3rd world countries with tech, we might just try not to harm them with our business practices and subsidies.
I'd be more impressed if these types of events weren't just a way for the overly affluent to jet set around trying to justify an overly excessive and unsustainable lifestyle.
Speaking as a planet, we simply can't afford you!
A lot of these nations are poor because the Western nations have invaded, raped, pillaged and destroyed their cultures in pursuit of minerals and precious stones.
England enslaved India not because of their love for the curry, but because they wanted to dominate the spice trade.
Leopold invaded Congo for the rubber (which was derived solely from natural means).
I could go on, but /.'s disk space is probably limited.
I am opposed to the argument that poor people are poor because they are doing something wrong. People can be born wealthy, or they can be born poor. The simple fact is, you can only make use of what your environment offers, and in third world countries, that is not much.
90% of research dollars may be spent on creating technologies that are targeted at the richest 10% of the population, but that doesn't mean they don't benefit the other 90%. Think of mobile phones, for example - originally aimed at the Western business elite, but they went on to revolutionise the African economy by creating a fast, efficient communication network between villages where it wasn't feasible to roll out wired infrastructure.
a) The wealthiest 10% (referring to the population of the first world) live the way they do because the wealthiest 0.0001% of the world find it profitable to maintain them in a state of fat, mindless consumption.
b) Where do you think your TV, DVD player, cellphone, shoes, socks, PC are manufactured? I guarantee you that the hard labor required to manufacture these goods is not carried out by the fat, lazy people of the first world. They are too busy doing mindless administrative jobs in the office and then asking for time off due to a stubbed toe.
c) Your "survival of the fittest" attitude is a pathetic attempt at rationalizing your own profligate, wasteful and totally unsustainable lifestyle. You're like a child trying to tell yourself that stealing cookies is actually OK. Go travel, realize that the people in the third world actually are people, who work hard for their families and have the same hopes, dreams and ambitions that you have. The only difference between them and you is that their opportunity is undermined by the first world in the name of "profit" and they don't use abhorrent, broken logic to justify their own existence.
I hate printers.
No, we don't need your stupid help MIT. We need you [US] to stay home, and stop playing to be the world police.
Be careful what you wish for. Something even worse may step into the void.
Table-ized A.I.
It's great to see (reading the NY Times article) that this summit includes people from developing countries. Often, these sorts of things just involve people from developed countries dreaming up 'solutions' that sound awesome but wouldn't actually work on the ground, because the focus is only on the technologies and there isn't enough understanding of the people and societies in the developing countries or areas the technology is meant for.
I talked to a volunteer with Engineers Without Borders Canada who had this crazy story about rural villages in Mali (in western Africa). In almost every single town he visited (poor farming villages, actually) there was a deep, covered well and pump providing clean, healthy drinking water. And nobody used them. Instead, women from the villages would walk a few kilometres to collect water from a stagnant, parasite-infected pool of water.
Which seems ridiculous to us, maybe, except that collecting water by the pool was an important social event for these women (that standing in line at the well didn't duplicate at all), and that people thought the metal of the pump was unnatural - especially compared to a water source 'in nature', and that no one had really convinced the families in these villages that water from the pump would make their babies more likely to survive.
But it really goes to show that the best-intended engineering or technical solutions (in this case, a foreign NGO's decision a decade or two ago that every Malian village needed a water pump) won't succeed without a better understanding of the people they are meant to help. And that in the end, developing countries will never "make it" because of solutions 'handed down' by first-world organizations; in the end people there need to be empowered to improve their lives and their countries. First-world organizations can help with that, but we can't pretend to understand their communities' needs better than they do.
What you say is a big amount of bollocks.
I suggest you go visit IN PERSON any such country that you berate 'raped, pillaged, destroyed' by teh eviiiil western nations and see for yourself the real causes of their current state.
That should constitute for you a real eye-opening experience.
Taking away the third world would be taking away factories, plants and workshops.
Or, they would come back to the first world, and prices would either go up or down (probably the former.)
The "movers and shakers" of the world would die without the third world nations,
What's your next guess?
The first world has vastly higher productivity both industrially and agriculturally. We produce surpluses, while third world countries starve under their local dictators.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."