Some companies get it, like Philips. Their Voi...

Dari World Changing : Bagaimana Philips sedang mencoba alat telekomunikasi mobile baru, yang mirip gabungan antara mp3 player + ponsel. Guna menekan biaya (produksi dan operasi) dan tidak mensyaratkan pengguna harus melek huruf serta memanfaatkan tidak diperlukannya komunikasi "real-time" dibuatlah alat yang bisa merekam pesan yang akan dikirim dan diterima. Jadilah alat komunikasi yang sangat murah, yang tinggal dicolok ke semacam telpon umum dan bisa mendownload serta meng-upload pesan2.

 

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Some companies get it, like Philips. Their Voices In Your Hand project was started three years ago, a humanitarian-and-capitalist effort to not just make existing technology cheaper or more accessible, but to start from the ground up and invent a cheap handheld internet/phone designed to fit the needs of some of the poorest people in the world. The project is now in a field-testing phase in the favela of Recife, Brazil, and they have been smart enough to let the testing results take them in a direction they did not initially anticipate. It appears that real-time connectivity is not the biggest issue, so devices which are essentially modified mp3 players you occasionally connect to the web in telecenters to send and receive voice and text messages are good enough (and much cheaper than cell phones).

 

This allows a leapfrogging many people haven't thought about before: it's not just the leap over landlines to handsets, it's the leap over paper mail, which doesn't work for you if you're illiterate or don't have an address because you live in a shantytown; many in Brazil's favelas are both. It also allows low-cost local broadcasting/narrowcasting of health & community information or local musicians. With this, and some of Africa's repurposing of cell phones, it will be interesting to see what products developed specifically for the "bottom of the pyramid" will be like.

 

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