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May 26, 2006, 04:02 PM ET
Adapting PC's for the Developing World
People in the developing world don’t need the same kind of computers and PDA’s designed for white-collar workers in rich nations, but digital technology can help them, argues Kentaro Toyama, assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India, the software giant’s lab in Bangalore.
Mr. Toyama talked to The Chronicle by phone this week while attending the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, in Berkeley, Calif.
“There’s a growing desire on the part of the entire industry as a whole, both in academia as well as in corporations, to see whether or not we can actually maximize the impact we have on the whole world,” he said. “There’s an increasing recognition that the vast majority of the planet, something like 4 billion people, have at this point really not gotten any kind of benefit from computing technology, and so the question really is, not to necessarily solve all the world’s problems, but in those places where technology could make an impact, how we could have an impact?”
One of the projects cooking at the lab is software that allows several computer mice to be plugged in to the same computer, so that multiple users can manipulate programs at the same time. The software is designed to be used in schools where a gaggle of children often crowd around a shared PC. “As an adult, when you step back and look at it, it looks like total chaos,” but kids who participated in a test loved it, he said.
Another research group at the lab is working to design software for people who are illiterate. The program would read aloud any text or menu items. “Just dropping technology into a rural village is not going to solve problems in itself,” Mr. Toyama said.
Each day on Wired Campus, The Chronicle's technology reporters highlight key IT developments and put them in perspective.
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