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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.'"
What if the USA stops helping to create wars and manipulating the markets around the world, and helping to create unstable and volatile political situations, that are the conditions that eventually lead all this so called 'third world countries' to be in the terrible situation they are now ... ?
I mean, the USA became RICH thanks to this countries!!. Kill democracy, create wars, sell weapons to both sides, then use it's puppets in the World Bank to get this countries in debt with everyone, Help to create dictatorships, and then go and buy oil and other natural resources really cheap. Corrupt the local cultures and then sell Mc Donalds and stupid movies around the world ...
You know, all the Shit the USA has been doing for the last century to get rich a the expense of the rest of the world.
No, we don't need your stupid help MIT. We need you to stay home, and stop playing to be the world police.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
An appropriate place for a plug for Engineers without borders"
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
Didn't read TFA, this being slashdot and all, but isn't there a shitload of old true-and-tried local technologies that are not anymore common knowledge in famine and civil war-ridden countries? I'm talking about stuff like traditional fuel-efficient ovens, food storage solutions, hygienic dry toilets etc..
Bringing that stuff back would have major impact on daily lives and be logical first step of this kind of program.
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.
This is why thinking like this is needed. Expensive but efficient technology needs to be commoditised for Third World production to bootstrap their economies.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
From Jarod Diamond's point of view the west did not become wealthy because of us doing things "right". It became wealthy purely through geographical luck.
Aarguments have been raised in opposition to his book, but I still think that it is a worthwhile read.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
The unequal distribution of wealth and resources generated in the colonial period has become even more pronounced in the postindustrial or information age. Members of societies with access to good educational opportunities and advanced technology profit far more from the emerging global economy than do members of less developed societies.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Of course, it still doesn't mean that nation being poor means doing something wrong. It may also mean that someone got something right first, at the expense of the others.
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.
Oh, and
d) The "movers and shakers" of the world would die without the third world nations, but the third world would thrive without the "movers and shakers". If you believe otherwise, you're either deluded and ignorant, or 12 years old. Every rich nation in the world today is only rich riding on the back of cheap labor to produce gigantic amounts of consumer goods to fuel their consumption-dependent economies. Taking away the third world would be taking away factories, plants and workshops. How long do you think the "movers and shakers" would survive without that?
My guess is not very.
I hate printers.
Nearly 90 percent of research and development dollars are spent on creating technologies that serve the wealthiest 10 percent of the world's population
If reversing that is the goal, why only help the third world when it seems that nearly the entire globe is that way?
Twinstiq, game news
Many of the circumcision / HIV studies are flawed (Google "circumcision HIV"). It could even have the opposite effect as circumcised men may be less willing to use a condom because they have less sensitivity.
Circumcision can reduce the HIV/AIDS by a significant percentage. However, access to circumcision and doctors is the problem in third world countries. If MIT could develop a circumcision device that the third world lay person could operate in a safe manner, this would be a big help in reducing HIV/AIDs and the suffering.
Also, there are some of us in the first world that could also use such a device. Circumcision without the embarrassment of a doctor's visit and in the privacy of one's own home. I'd look to get my hands on one to cirucmcise myself at home, and perhaps the first world's use could subsidise the manufacturing costs for the third world.
Have you tried employing the use of a cigar cutter for this? If you heat up the blades, then it can cauterize in the same motion.
Not that I've personally tried this.
Bullshit; you couldn't get in.
You'd suck a mile of cock to get accepted to that sort of university.
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?
Let's make really cheap, low-cost, useful, and robust devices to help people. Why didn't I think of that! Bet nobody else has thought of that before either!
Thank you for that utterly pointless and irrelevant mini-rant. Now get back in your cave.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Which is why Japan is so poor, right?
People that live in third would countries can choose to work in those factories or continue having the lifestyle of their parents and grandparents. They see working indoors as a plus. It would be wack for me to feel guilty for having been born and programmed in the United States. Do you feel guilt? Do you make up for it by using your computer to blow peoples' minds? Har. Do you have a problem with fat people? Why don't you go build something, skinny?
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,
Basically, when you run the numbers, it seems like about half of all global death is from poverty.
This talk (I presented it about two weeks ago) gives some details, sketches out possible solutions, and puts the whole thing in context.
http://www.globalswadeshi.net/video/video/show?id=2097821%3AVideo%3A1943
Enjoy.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
The technology is one element of a systemic solution. Go play Warcraft (the original one.) You start out with one grunt. You harvest resources, enhance capabilities, and improve your situation through incremental means. Throughout the process, you've developed an infrastructure that will support your population.
Aw hell! Some bastard sent troops into my Town Square and is tearing the place to shit! Yep, you can expect the local warlord/gang/bunch_of_thugs to do that in the real world as well. You've developed a resource; someone will try to take it from you.
Simply tossing a technological measure at a community won't magically fix things. At a minimum, it'll free up someone to perform another task that wasn't an option before. It's worth doing, but needs to be part of a larger program that helps with developing comprehensive infrastructure.
"The simple fact is, you can only make use of what your environment offers, and in third world countries, that is not much"
Change "environment" to "culture" and you'll be far more accurate.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
On the other hand though, how long do you really think it would before there were mirrors of the "movers and shakers" in the third world as they thrive? There's *always* inequality, the evils you rant against are not simple products of the western world, bear that in mind.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Simple linear interpolation proves circumcision reduces HIV:
1. Uncut males may acquire HIV.
2. Remove that nasty wedding tackle at birth: no possibility of future HIV acquistion.
3. Remove X% - reduces HIV risk by some amount.
More studies are needed, but a good start would be the surgical reduction of male penises by various amounts (say 10%, 40%, and 80%.) We could then correlate these reductions with rates of future HIV infection.
Naturally, we should do these studies in Africa because those people have a lot of AIDS, and it's only ethical to help them as much as we can.
1. cheap, reliable electricity generation
2. cheap, reliable air conditioning
Those two things alone would make an unbelievable difference in the lives of pretty much everyone in the Third World.
Clean micro-power would obivate the need for (1) expensive to own/operate gas/diesel generators and (2) large infrastructure investments.
Cheap, reliable air conditioning would benefit both industry (food storage and transportation) and normal life (things really are nicer in AC).
These two would change life radically in the third world...for the better.
This is a relatively regular initiative which has been producing good results on a sporadic basis for decades. At least this has been my experience in Canada. I feel certain that people in many other so-called 'first world' countries have given it a go as well. It would seem, however, that a more durable approach might consist of going to the people in the areas where the need is felt and assisting them to make their own technologies from locally available materials to answer locally felt needs. Not the same ego-boo but immensely more useful. "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for life" (My apologies to the original)
Ted Kaczynski, welcome to Slashdot.
Table-ized A.I.
Step 1) STOP HAVING BABIES!
By force? If its not done by force, then evolution will eventually override any incentives provided. Even now I know some women who's body releases endorphins (feel-good hormones) when they are pregnant. Thus, they get pregnant to be high, and produce more daughters with the same hormone.
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.
One interesting theory in why the west out paced the rest of the world in technological advancement in the last thousand years was exactly that, population density. During medieval times in Europe, the population was crippled by plague several times. First by the bubonic plague, later small pox, etc. It gave the surviving people a wealth of natural resources relative to their populations. This wealth allows for people to specialize in trades, rather than just subsistence farming. Specialization leads to steady efficiency increases.
Now obviously this kind of organic technological advancement is practically impossible in Africa today. First, any of the basic resources worth a damn, ie coal, iron, ect. Are being used or bought by companies outside the country. Secondly, the basic resources that help people improve their quality of life are not abundant in Africa to begin with. Thirdly, because the wide availability of machine guns, it is very easy to oppress a lot of people with a very small number of thugs.
So we come to the question of how to fix the vast imbalance in the Africa. There is no silver bullet, at least none that anyone with respect for human life would endorse. In general, the only model we have for taking a third world nation and bringing it up to modern standards is by colonization. Colonization has been looked down upon for about the last fifty years, but if you take a step back at the big picture, it has been a catalyst for change which usually meant an improvement in the standard of living for those colonized. There are plenty of counter examples, but I believe there have been more success stories than not. The best examples being: India, China, and South Africa. While many human rights issues occurred because of colonization, other pro development things occurred. Mostly technology influx, but also increased nationalism and infrastructure build-out.
In the case of South Africa and India, the colonists inspired mass uprisings and increased the sense of national identity. Not all "nations" have this. Many countries were simply created politically by western nations. By oppression, these colonists inspired nationalism in the oppressed. What is the value of a strong sense of nationalism? Nationalism inspires a sense of the greater good, it allows a people to undertake great public works projects, it allows them to have a strong federal government, and most of all it helps neighbors stop quarreling.
So in the end, we can't colonize Africa again. Western nations don't have motivation to anyway. However, a key step in helping developing nations is understanding how developed nations got there. Technology alone will not be sufficient. While these project are of course noble and good in their cause, they are only bandaids that do not treat the root problems. I saw a special on 60 Minutes the other day about malnourished children in Africa and this really great cheap solution they had found to fight malnutrition. Great, more children make it to adolescence. There is no correlation that a larger population will promote economic development. Will these children's children still be eating the same imported aid to survive?
Instead of doctors without borders or engineers without borders, we need ditch diggers without borders, or plumbers without borders. Giving a guy a bike that can make corn into flour is cool, but what's the point if you gave him the corn already?
Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
So.. every rich nation is rich because they produce a tremendous amount of wealth. How insightful of you. Do you want a ribbon?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
A neighbour is a senior project manager for a development charity, and his view is that a lot of Africa's problems stem from too few people. Below a certain density you do not have the GNP to develop transport, or the manpower to clear swamps and get rid of malaria (for instance.) This is why most Third World development takes place in crowded cities rather than rural areas.
But as to why you are a troll. One North American baby = nearly 12 African babies in terms of resource consumption. In terms of resource consumption, the US uses as much as a Third World country of around 4 billion people, and the EU probably uses as much as 2-3 billion Third World people. Now do you get it? The answer is for US, you (and to a lesser extent me) to stop having growing populations, not the Third World. Then we don't need to build kleptomaniac corporations that steal all their resources.
The average North American uses twice as much energy as the average Briton or German, and two and a half times as much as the average Italian. Germans and Italians have a pretty good lifestyle; I'd much rather live in Munich, say, than most American cities. New York has almost European population densities and energy efficiency, yet it is a desirable place to live. If you could just drive sensibly, live in adequate but not bloated houses, and stop trying to commute fifty miles each way to work by three tonne truck, you would free up enough energy to make a significant difference to the entire Third World. And then you would not need that huge army and the array of missiles, because nobody would be coming after you.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
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.
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.
I wish I hadn't already replied to someone to mod you up. This is very true. Example: Africa. Their situation is caused by a lack of natural resources to begin with (notably, clean water) and governments that come and go.
Thank you for that utterly pointless and irrelevant mini-rant. Now get back in your cave.
No need, he (like all of us) is sitting in his mom's basement, which is dark enough already.
Ok, but does it work by making sex less enjoyable, or by making it less risky?
There is no medical benefit to the circumcision itself. There are religious reasons you might have the procedure done, but from what I've heard, if you're already circumcised by an MD, the religious official still has to snip something, so you're not really doing yourself a favor there.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.)
Instead of doctors without borders or engineers without borders, we need ditch diggers without borders, or plumbers without borders.
Well, there's no point in having plumbers and ditch diggers if the population is so significantly unhealthy that they can't actually enjoy such things as plumbing.
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."
I think Ted Kaczynski would make a wonderful Slashdot denizen. Smart, politically aware, able to write well about a variety of interesting topics. Okay, yes, he blew some people up, but does that really make him that much more unhinged than the rest of the people here?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
You might want to reflect on your own reading comprehension for a while. Read it again, and then tell me who the author says is actually producing all that wealth. Hint: where is all that "cheap labor" situated?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I've lived in the second poorest nation in South America (Paraguay) and visited quite a few more. US policies are the proximate cause for many many of the developing world's troubles.
Quick example: Cotton. The US heavily subsidizes cotton, and then dumps surpluses on the world market for cheaper than Parguayans can grow it. They get trapped in a debt cycle, because they have to use pesticides (made by and loaned by Monsanto) so the cotton grows, and then they have a less than amazing year, and they go into the hole. Their Monsanto contract says they must keep growing cotton until they can pay off the debt.
It's really really ugly. Plenty of places have plenty of problems at their own, but at an absolute minimum, US foreign policy is contributing to their problems (likely substantially).
Okay, yes, he blew some people up, but does that really make him that much more unhinged than the rest of the people here?
Yes.
Table-ized A.I.
a Shawarma store is a small business. Owned by the same people that works on the place.
Starbucks is a big chain, and the money goes back to the states.
There is a big difference between people trying to survive wherever they live and multinational companies.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
One of the most difficult problems 3+ World Communities have is the acquiring of fresh water. Another problem is that once fresh water is acquired, others would come and take it, AND the method to make more fresh water. If MIT could find a Low Technology solution to this one issue, then these cultures could work on the next great problem, "Finding a Good Deli."
You are bang on. I live in India and I know what it is like for the poor here. It is not stupidity that keeps them poor - but the fact that poverty significantly reduces their options.
If you are dirt poor and heavily in debt to a few loan sharks, your options are very, very limited. Most people in the third world live under a huge burden of debt and the circumstances that surround it.
So if they fall ill for even a couple of days (and many of these people are daily wage earners), they will stand to lose everything they have because the loan sharks will come and raid their house and take away everything they can lay their hands on.
MIT and many of the western organizations seem to think that it is the lack of information that keeps people poor, or it may be lack of education. But the truth is that it is these organizations who suffer from the lack of accurate information.
Did anyone else read that as "electric free defibrillator"?
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.
Seems a little silly compared to this sort of thing.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
The first world produces surpluses?! Have you seen the state of the US federal budget lately?
No net goods importer (as all first world nations are without exception) can be said to produce surplus, by the very definition of the word. The first world only produces a surplus if the word "surplus" is used synonymously with "waste".
I hate printers.
How long before the current economic situation (thanks, GW!) results in the majority of these technologies being needed in the good ole USofA? Is there going to come a day when the rich & affluent citizens of Zimbabwe are sending us cheap bicycle-powered corn shuckers?
"Trade with third world countries is a mutual benefit"
There may be mutual benefit, but it has often been decidedly lopsided in favor of the richer nation, with the imbalance obtained and enforced through military means.
China didn't see much benefit in the opium trade imposed by Britain.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
A lot of that slave labor and colonization was financed through capital investment, it's true.
And it is tremendously naive to think that trade with 3rd world countries, even in the current era, is 100% mutually beneficial even in the present.
If I hold a gun to your head and offer $5 for your car, and you take the $5 rather than get shot, was that trade mutually beneficial? Perhaps more beneficial than getting nothing or being shot - but you are still not receiving fair value.
Note that this is not how ALL of our trading with 3rd world nations occurs - or even most. But it is definitely SOME and we are making a mistake to think that first world nations or their corporate entities don't act like this when they want to.
For examples, google about Shell's actions in Nigeria, and King Leopold's exploitation of Africa in the 1800's...
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
Not true in terms of their choice. Economies have changed. In many cases people aren't able to make a living doing what their parents or grandparents did. And "They see working indoors as a plus." Please. I agree with not feeling guilty about where you were born. But we in the First World are lucky and privileged in so many ways which we haven't earned, either. We can work hard and have the best lives we can with what he have to start with, and that's what we can feel good about - because that's what we've done.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
A fraction of US Defense spending for ONE YEAR could feed every man, woman and child on Earth. http://millionsofmouths.com/blog/nfblog/2006/11/13/global-expenditure-on-defense-over-1000-billion/ Overpopulation isn't the problem. Prioritizing how leaders spend their nation's money - that's the real problem.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.