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Brazil Using Smartphones For Planning the Future
shafiur writes "Brazil has bought 150,000 LG smartphones and has embarked on the world's first fully digital national census. Can they succeed when the US recently failed to go digital? The Brazilians say that the digital census has several advantages over paper and pen methods. They say that the data is more accurate since GPS data will pinpoint the exact location of a household. The GPS data is cross-referenced with satellite images to ensure that responses are correctly geo-tagged. The recently begun census will underpin future publicy-making decisions."
The US census did use GPS to pinpoint the exact locations of households. So Brazil can't do that much better....
Also, it's a wonderful way for the government to show the poverty-stricken people (I realize that term doesn't apply to everyone) how "awesome" western culture is, and why they should start the "culturization" process we've been famed for in the past couple centuries!
Care to bet how long before Brazil has to start cleaning up their pollution clouds?
Hate to break this to you, but Brazil is "Western"
Obviously you've never been to South America. Brazil is a relatively wealthy country, but it's a country of Haves and Have Nots. Poverty in the US is nothing compared to poverty there.
If the US had waited a few years until GPS enabled phones were available they might have had more success. The contract to supply the devices was started way back in 2002. Maybe next time...
They may be using modern technology to do the census, but they're using them in a primitive way. Modern statistical methods allow one to take a small sample and accurately determine the entire population and its makeup, at a tiny fraction of the cost.
The Census Bureau has been arguing for sampling for several Censuses now. It's not like they aren't aware of modern statistical methods. It's a no-go. Congress won't approve it. It might not even be legal since the letter of the law clearly specifies an enumeration of every individual.
Besides, the specific data from this Census gets opened in 2080 and will be a treasure trove for historians and genealogists.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
Do you know if they have cell service on all of those islands with satellite backhauls? Or did they have to physically aggregate the data from the devices?
For the most part, they logged the data to the devices, then brought them back to Port Vila (the capital) and transferred it to the central system.
GPRS service is available throughout much of the country, but at terribly slow speeds and very high prices (about US$4.00/MB). It is being used to transfer monitoring data from the several active volcanoes we have, but to my knowledge, not for much else. Even donors find the service too expensive and slow to rely on.
There are VSAT uplinks at various places around the islands, but the two telcos here rely mostly on microwave links to hop from one island to the next.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I hate to break it to you but there is no such agreement.
The exact scope of the Western world is somewhat subjective in nature, depending on whether cultural, economic, spiritual or political criteria are employed.
From a cultural point of view Brazil could very well belong to the West, however that is not what is being challenged here [in my opinion].
The obvious cultural, economic and political differences between Brazil and what is known today as described by the term "the West" (Western Europe, North America, Israel, Australia and New Zealand) are clear. Corruption is endemic, the justice system incapable, crime rates sky high, racial discrimination heavy, wealth distribution skewed.
It would perhaps be more pertinent to discuss this in light of Brazil's present and future economic situation.
As of today Brazil is not a developed country according to the IMF, OECD or the UN.
It is perhaps most clear when considering the unequal nature of Brazilian society and Brazil's ranking according to the Human Development index. Brazil is ranked far below the average OECD country (Figure #1).
I think the report speaks for itself: "By looking at some of the most fundamental aspects of people’s lives and opportunities the HDI provides a much more complete picture of a country's development than other indicators, such as GDP per capita."