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Searching Google, Where Internet Access is Scarce
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."
FP
If only I was somewhere without internet access, I wouldn't have to read inane comments like "FP". (or maybe I could call the operator and have the comments read to me)
If the connection between the intercom and the operator is good enough for voice, that is good enough of a bit rate for googling things. Then just putting a computer there will make things much more efficient. (you won't have to hire a operator, for one thing)
for who wants to be a millionaire.
\u262D = \u5350
"Hello, operator? Yes, can you please read me all of Anonymous Coward's Slashdot posts from today? Yes, thank you, I can hold....."
*hours later*
"Oh my, can you really say that on the internet? Such a wag!"
... but I'd be willing to wager the 'poor people' referred to by the OP have far more pressing questions that a device such as this one is basically useless for, like "What the hell am I going to eat today?".
In fairness, I'd say that this device is more of a novelty. From their website:
"The users ask a wide range of questions, including cricket scores, paddy farming advice, codes to download songs on their mobiles, homework questions, University exam results, train schedules, commodity prices, and where to get a personal loan."
How about using the resources spent developing and deploying this device in more tangible efforts, such as providing better agricultural tools, seed, proper training, etc?
Honestly, while I think these 'feel-good' devices are a fantastic way for their creators and their well-heeled supporters to feel like 'they're making a difference', ultimately they're pretty much worthless in general practice.
I suppose we could call this 'speaker net'.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
How much wood would a wood-chuck chuck if a wood-chuck could chuck wood?
At this point, some African and African-American supremacists object by saying that IQ tests are racially biased in favor of "White" people. That objection is simply false. The Japanese, who are not "White", achieve the same score that "White" people achieve on the IQ tests devised by "White" people.
Returning to the issue, we should note that Africa has contributed almost nothing to science or technology. Most of it was invented by Europeans, European-Americans, and (to a lesser extent) Japanese. This skill in science and technology brought tremendous wealth to the West (which includes Japan).
The only people who are responsible for African and African-American failure is Africans and African-Americans. They wrecked their own societies due to low IQ.
Look at the utter ignorance and stupidity of Africans.
Now, look at the achievements of, say, Germans. They co-invented calculus (with an Englishman), invented the jet aircraft, and built part of the foundation of quantum physics. Quantum physics gave us nuclear power plants, the cleanest source of energy in the world.
My parents and partner use this sort of service all the time, I am the one at the end of the voice communication network. Kids also use it when lazy.
back when i spent some time living in Lawrence, KS the local Uni (KU) had a 24/7 help desk line. it was entirely useful if not entirely necessary, and much appreciated when other avenues of information gathering failed or were not available.
Villagers used to come to him, give a small offering, ask a question, and get some advice.
Now the villagers go to the box that the government provided. This is a direct attack on his power.
Want to bet that these boxes will be blamed for next year's poor harvest?
No matter how primitive, people fight like hell to have a monopoly on information and power. More developed nations play the same game at a different level.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Person: "Operator, what is Goatse?"
Operator: "Please hold"
*4 seconds later*
Operator: "AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH"
Not to put too fine a point on it,...
but why would anyone in the distant backward village want to go on the internet?
And a more important question.
Why do the technically advanced people in the overdeveloped parts of the world feel this overwhelming compulsion to force all this inappropriate and culturally disruptive technology onto the tribal people of the world?
Listen, we are not all the same. If someone is living in more or less the same way that their people have lived for the past two thousand years, then their way of life is sustainable and suitable for them.
So you (you being the technological elite, and that's you if you're a Slashdaughter) should just leave them the fuck alone.
You aren't helping them in any way. You aren't making their lives any better.
Yes, they're 'primitive'. Yes, they're technologically backward. Yes, they could probably live ten years longer if only had the advantage of the technology that you feel so compelled to bring to them.
But, so what!?! What's it to you? What difference does it make to you how they live?
You need to lose your missionary complex. This obsession of bringing technology to the distant regions of the earth regardless of any real need for it is only the latest manifestation of the same obsession that drove your great-grandparents to go to the distant corners of the earth in order to save the souls of the heathen.
This obsession is your real problem. Their lack of technology (or having an unsaved soul) is not a problem for them. Actually, YOU are a problem for them.
So do yourself a favor, and do them a favor,...Stay home. Leave people alone. Deal with your own mental diseases. Not everyone wants and needs your techno toys as much as you do.
I believe they also take phone requests.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Even if the difference in IQ were true and scientifically verifiable, there is still a bell curve for intelligence distribution. Which means that there are still millions of Africans (and African Americans) who are higher IQs than millions of European-Americans.
Perhaps the endless, permanent 2000-year-old European civil war (currently in remission for the past 60 years, but not over by any definition) has had the effect of killing off all the tranparently stupid white people in young adulthood.
There has been only one instance in history where the European people have put aside their inflated differences and have been able to live together in relative peace with each other for a long period of time. That instance is the United States. And the USA is populated by people who were more or less thrown out of their origin countries by their social superiors. It was always the stupid, ugly, backward, and embarrassing people who were 'encouraged' to emigrate to America by the better class of Europeans. The useless dregs with the low IQs.
As for the accomplishments of the Germans, I have several Jewish friends who would disagree with the notion of German cultural, moral, and social superiority.
See if you can guess why?
In most Canadian cities you can just call your local public library with a simple question and they'll look it up for you.
Yeah, libraries are so pre-digital.
Three Squirrels
Your answer will be read after you listen to this short advertisement. You know it's just a matter of time.
"OK then operator, my friend was telling me about this electronic goats thingy-mah-whatsit, I believe he called them EGoats.. or.. Goats-E. Yeah that's it, could you describe to me what one of these Goats-e's look like please?"
This could be fun, imagine for a moment:
person: what is the meaning of life?
operator: 42
person Takes the word of operator as gospal, due to the lack of a certain book, concequently spewing false beliefs around a village. Who is going to stop the information from being read out of context?
For example,
2295. what are the best varieties of beans to plant
This is the sort of thing that, traditionally, first-world countries have bureaus of agriculture, county extension services, and agriculture departments at local learning institutions that help farmers with this tricky question. You need information on varieties suited to specific soil, climate and resistant to local pests and diseases and drought, and the question isn't going to gain useful results without more specificity- ie, "best" for what. The advice that comes up in Google offers information primarily aimed at amateur summer gardeners in northern climates trying to grow tasty summer vegetables, rather than equatorial hardy macro-nutrient providing staples. It takes some serious google-fu to arrive at results that are probably useful to this questioner, and you don't get them by entering his question verbatim. When I started Googling things like "bean equatorial resistant hybrid -cocoa -coffee" I started getting some interesting results, but it would still take a while to sort through that stuff and come up with real information on what beans are best-bets wherever he lives. I can't imagine him ending up with useful information off of this Google phone line though. It takes an experienced researcher to find this stuff on Google.
For this sort of thing, the best thing you could probably do with Google is figure out who he should actually be talking to. That is, I Googled "helping african farmers," which led me to Farm Africa. There's probably someone working for them who he could talk to who could really help him out.
This is just one example I went in depth on, but most of the questions are of this nature. For the questions that can be answered easily online, it seems like nine out of ten, the answer is on Wikipedia. I think these people are envisioning the internet as being much more organized, authoritative, and encyclopedic than it is. They have very practical questions, as might be expected from rural, undeveloped areas, and Google is not well designed to provide them with answers to many of them. I wonder to what extent these operators might have already been trained, or might be additionally trained, to hook these people up with non-Google provided information. From what I'm seeing, a huge number of questions could be answered much more effectively if there were any way to provide these people with access to briefly speak to a doctor (or at least a nurse or someone who can answer basic health questions) or an agricultural specialist.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Is there a way to configure /. so that ALL first posts are automatically hidden?
If not, this is a feature request.
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
Does Portable Wikipedia help?
I know this is just a project in its infancy, and given the recent intimacy of Uganda-Chinese relations, would a Googlebox built in by Chinese contractor be able to look up topics like Democracy or demonstration? Question Box has powerful potential; i wonder how vulnerable the box answers are to coercion, and whether deployment will be hindered by increasing foreign influence.
That little comment box on the left side? Grab a bar and drag it up.
Searching Google, Where Internet Access is Scarce
If Google's having trouble getting internet access, I wonder how Yahoo's holding up...
That's weird, considering they're an internet services company...
Scorta futuere amo!
Um, I thought part of the point here was that the Question Box is servicing areas otherwise totally off-grid ... which would kinda make having an iPhone an expensive exercise in futility (hint -- the back of the bush tends not to have much cell phone service, even here in North America [I have choppy reception at best]).
iPhones aside, and answering your specific point about voice recognition, any VR-based Googling system would still require the users to be literate in how best to phrase their Google queries. Remember, the target audience for this service has zero Google-fu. Never mind all the time wasted by any voice system reading the results of Google searches. Having a trained Google master one dedicated button-click away, someone who knows how best to search and who can ask follow-up questions as needed to refine the query, and then reply with *just* the relevant information, provides a lot more value, IMHO.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
People are not even remotely as dumb as this paints them!
One experiment shows that nicely: Someone set up a tablet PC with an Internet connection on a wall of an Indian slum, some years ago.
After some weeks, they were browsing the web, watching videos on Youtube, etc.
Interestingly, being that supportive of stupidity is more a "civilized world" thing.
If you're stupid in some hard place like a slum, in the middle of Africa, or on the mountains of South America, you won't get far. But this does not mean that people will not get far. It means that they expect themselves to come up with a solution, because they have to.
While here when we fail, we get a support here, a help there, and an assistance to wipe our asses. And naturally we begin to also expect it. I know so many people who just state that they are dumb. Because then someone else helps them, and life is easy. This is efficient *for them*, so why not?
But in these remote areas, I recommend just putting a very sturdy computer with Internet access in a room, so that it can not break or get dirty that quick, and then let people play with it. Let them try it out.
I'd bet money that before your know it, they will know how to use that thing, and get out of it what they want.
You will watch things, like a kid playing with it all day long, and the parents and friends then asking if the kid could find something for them. Etc.
I have trust in humanity, because of one simple fact: When life is hard, we excel in coming up with solutions that help us survive. And we hold that skill up very high, in so many movies, games, stories, etc, etc, etc.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
"Desk Set," with Hepburn and Tracy. I suspect it's no different in 2009: trained reference experts answer the questions, and Google is just their new stack of reference books. Somewhere Hepburn and Tracy are smiling.
Seriously though, if some villager wanted the latest tweet from Stephen Fry read to them verbatim, then this would be great.
... google has news articel blight is threatening tomato crops in rhode island .. i found a list of five top crops for a pacific northwest vegetable garden ... oh here we go: high-grain fee may produce illness prone cattle... yeah... um... you want me to read the abstract to you?" ... sorry"
In the real world, a villager with no first hand knowledge of what the internet is and what it can do, will ask a question assuming it's going to be like some kind of oracle...
Villager: "So, how do I fix blight on my crops, and my cattle are sick too, what's wrong with them?"
[operator puts this into google now]
Operator: erm
Villager: *confused* "Um i'll just ask the witchdocter instead then..."
Operator: "yeah
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Do you remember a decade and a half past, when you had to unfold a map for directions, tune in at 9 o'clock for the news and open the Yellow Pages for a phone number? Do you remember when you had to travel to the library and read a book to settle a debate about whether Genghis Khan reigned in the 12th or 13th century? The tools we have at our disposal today are incredibly powerful. We take them for granted. Imagine living in a place where, forget the internet, there is no 9 o'clock news. And the library, if you can read, is distant and lacking. Access to the internet, even indirectly, must seem like a damned miracle. I just hope they don't ask the question box for the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
This is just ripe for abuse. "What's a goatse?" followed by long silence.
Please go through the thread you are replying to. The original poster pointed out that the phone/radio service being used for communication could be used to transmit data. I pointed out that the iPhone can do something well, so a cheap computer should also be able to do it. This has nothing to do with sending iPhones to remote villages in India and hoping they somehow find a cell signal.
And Google is pretty decent at parsing real world questions. For specialized common queries, bookmarks could be set up (for example, push this button with a cricket player on it if you want to know the results of today's cricket matches).
Fair enough, and my comment was out of turn, really.
This speaks more to the meat of my response. While theoretically possible, such a system would require much more work to set up, and much more training of the targeted user population, before it could be of much use, especially given the nature of many of the queries.
No Google-fu + Voice recognition + Voice-based reading of the results = Not yet implemented + Unfortunate waste of time.
Meanwhile, Trained operator + Simple intercom call box = Implemented already + More useful output.
I'm not say that VR *couldn't* be used, simply that it's not the appropriate solution for this particular problem. Having a trained human in the mix is vital -- either the users themselves, who would be trained how to enter useful queries and how to interpret the results, or an operator, trained similarly. Much less work to go with Option #2. :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
There is actually a service for this in Sweden, where a company has made it possible for anyone to send a text message to a certain number, where an "expert" (read: trained Googler) answers everything in his/her answer (also by SMS). I have not looked up if there's any audible operator available for the same task, but there certainly would be if the larger market asked for it.
There are 2 types of people in the world - those who understand decimal and those who don't.
Seeing no one else has, I should link to how our forebears managed at the time of Mad Men.
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
When does a culture stop being stone-age?
A culture's stone age ends once it gains technology to shape metal. Then it proceeds to an iron age, which lasts until literacy becomes widespread. Some cultures in areas with copper and tin ores have a bronze age between the stone age and the iron age; others skip it.
"Hello operator, I heard Megan Fox had a nipple slip..."
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
I suspect the #1 question will wind up being, "What are you wearing?"