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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."
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)
... 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.