So what do we lose if we don’t have the internet?
This isn’t a trick question. I’m currently in Sri Lanka, a country which has had a long and interesting history of telecentres/community technology initiatives (they call them Nenasalas).
The most recent program, launched in 2004 with major funding from the World Bank under the auspices of the newly formed Information and Communications Technology Agency (ICTA) the program I was told, had been responsible for the creation of some 600 telecentres throughout Sri Lanka. I was further told however, that of these 600 only some 100 were still operating and many of those had shifted over to become for profit ventures more akin to cybercafés than to public access telecentres.
The larger context for this is that Sri Lanka is a heavily rural society 78% of the population according to UNESCO with some 13,000 villages. Thus even if e-Sri Lanka had succeeded with its telecentre program it would have only represented a drop in a very large rural bucket towards broad based Internet access and a “crossing of the digital divide”. On the other hand Sri Lanka, as with all the countries of South and South East Asia have taken to mobile communications with an overwhelming passion (60% overall penetration in 2009 —as compared to 4.7 % Internet penetration (ITU).
And this should be seen in the context of some quite significant comment and critique by very knowledgeable Sri Lanka communications analysts http://lbo.lk/fullstory.php?nid=1024820944 and http://lirneasia.net/2009/10/sri-lanka-a-nenasala-telecenter-%E2%80%93-the-story-of-two-photos/ .
This is all completely consistent with my own impressions from some travels in and about rural Sri Lanka (in fact, everywhere outside of a few pockets in Colombo) where the Internet was virtually invisible (i.e. no public access facilities, no Internet access visible in shops, no URL’s as part of shop or billboard advertising, irritated negative responses to queries in hotels and so on and so on. The only Internet access was available through the quite sparsely distributed cybercafés which were dominated by 16-24 year old males rather loudly playing games. It was rather like traveling in other parts of the world some ten years ago when the Internet was a relatively new and somewhat exotic phenomenon for most people and markedly different from country such as Malaysia and Vietnam which seem to have gone over some invisible digital height of land and are now cruising forward and building outward into underserved areas and populations from an almost pervasive Internet/digital infrastructure.
Meanwhile it should be noted that every farmer in the field and every passenger on the bus seems to be in more or less constant and animated communication with someone via their mobile (one other element that should be noted here is that the cost of mobile communication both voice and text in Sri Lanka and even internationally from Sri Lanka is astoundingly cheap – at least for someone coming from North America – with rates per minute more in the vicinity of skype charges than what I am accustomed to).
So there is the question, given that the major program for bringing Internet into the countryside was not only inconsequential in terms of the requirements, had visibly failed but it is also in the process of sunsetting along with the overall-Sri Lanka initiatives of which it is a part; and given that mobile communication is moving towards universality in Sri Lanka (and not incidentally that the mobile operators are moving towards providing broadband access for those willing to pay for it); is there, then a reason to still be concerned with providing Internet into rural areas of Sri Lanka (and by extension into somewhat national contexts such as South Africa and many if not most other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa?
Or to put the question another way—what do we lose if we (or rural Sri Lankans) only have mobile communications with optional access to the Internet and we by-pass the personal computer completely? What happens if that becomes the communications paradigm for a range of countries such as Sri Lanka who, having not managed to effectively respond to the digital divide to this point, decide basically to give up the fight and leave it all to the ambitions and creativity of the mobile operators.
I spent most of an afternoon tossing that question around with Chanuka Wattegama of LIRNEasia and Isura Silva of FUSION a division of Sarvodaya of which I will write in a later blog—two of the most knowledgeable people in this area in the country. I won’t presume to put words in their mouth so what follows will be my reflections on and subsequent to our discussion.
The first thing that is lost is the most obvious but perhaps of the most impact and that is the absence of the PC with the simple office programs—word processing, spreadsheets, presentation etc.—software means that the diffusion of the skills that go along with the use of this type of software is absent. The effect of this may be limited for those in subsistence economic situations but it does limited the possible “professionalization” of the range of economic and administrative activities for those who otherwise would be unlikely to move in that direction without some external pressure or incentive.
This may be of particular significance in the context of primary and particularly secondary schooling where those with direct access to computing (and the Internet) particularly in the home but in the absence of this through some public access facility are able to produce better looking assignments, undertake research assignments better, follow up on course work as might be useful and so on. So the abandonment of public access computing may be a further form of discrimination placed upon low income and rural school attendees as compared to their higher income and urban counterparts who inevitably have better access to these facilities.
A second thing that is lost is the access to the broader range of information, news, opinions, personal contacts that are so readily accessible via the Internet. Mobile communications of course allow for all of this either through one to one communications or via mobile Internet but in the first instance there is the need to already have knowledge of what it is one is seeking before one establishes the contact (knowing someone’s name and number as a minimum requirement) which limits the range of access/reference that is likely to occur. Similarly the incremental cost that would go with exploration on a mobile would almost certainly restrict most users from going much beyond the usual restricted pathways for obtaining information.
From a “developmental” perspective there are additional limitations. “Development” is increasingly being seen as a holistic if incremental change that is change occurs on a number of dimensions at the same time or in close proximity to each other. Hence the newer approaches to development that focus on literacy, health, women’s rights, as well as income/employment and so on. From this perspective the relatively narrow channels through which messages and information necessarily must flow in mobile communications – point to point, individual to individual, transaction centric and so on – is a restriction on the developmental influence of the device.
Computing with the Internet allows for a much wider range of communication and interaction including video, radio, multi-party, global reach and so on. Thus creating a developmental program or initiative including an PC and Internet based component and f2f components are able to address multiple issues related to the desired goal rather than only narrowly focused and primarily transaction or person to person interaction based ones.
But over all of this there is a question as to whether a country like Sri Lanka can in fact enter into the modern digital era without extending digitization and digital literacy much much more widely into the larger population. Each of the particular specific applications, or information units, or transactions that one might wish to see become universally available in say rural and low income Sri Lanka may, if one is sufficiently clever and determined be programmed in such a way that they can be provided exclusively through the use of mobiles. However, it is the overall creation of a digital platform, a digital awareness and set of expectations and assumptions that is lost when “you don’t have the Internet” and it is these ultimately which provide the foundation from which digital creativity and innovation can flow and by means of which a country like Sri Lanka can go through that phase change to shift from a pre-digital society to a digital society and thereby lay the foundation for transitioning into an Information Economy.
Gurstein's Community Informatics 
Rohan Samarajiva
February 20, 2010
“Give up the fight and leave it all to the ambition and creativity of the mobile operators?”
Well, isn’t that a smooth rhetorical move! Ceasing to repeat a futile and wasteful act is giving up the fight, and who would want to be labeled a wimp? And which of the critics of the telecenters said anything about the ambition and creativity of mobile operators as being the only alternative?
To talk of mobile networks connecting people to each other and to information and giving them the ability to engage in transactions and remote computing is not to limit the discussion to mobile handsets. The extraordinary takeup of mobile dongles in the developing world suggests that the mobile networks will be used to connect to the Internet by users from various devices: Chanuka has documented that telecenters that do not connect through dongles affixed to desktop computers are throwing money away (http://lirneasia.net/2009/04/4034/). Netbooks on the one hand and smartphones on the other are converging the functionalities of computers and mobile phones while also bringing down the costs of connectivity to levels unimaginable just a few years ago. The creativity of more actors than the mobile operators is at play here.
The mistake that is being made is to imagine a highly constricted version of mobile-based connectivity when the manner by which one connects to the Internet via mobile networks is changing very rapidly. This is like trying to discuss travel on an expressway solely in terms of what is feasible on a dirt road.
The other sleight of hand is to say that the aspects of computer use that are not dependent on the Internet (such as typing up resumes) will all be irretrievably lost should the government-subsidized telecenters shut down. Peter Benjamin showed years ago that indeed most S African telecenters ended up as disconnected computer training shops (http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/ICT/telecentres/summaries/Telecentres_in_South_Africa%28Benjamin%29.htm).
If there is a demand for resume preparation or whatever, the market will meet it, using subsidized or other computers. And has the writer not heard of OLPC and other low-cost computer solutions that will allow young people to use computers more normally than in virus infested common use settings?
It is highly wasteful to keep pouring millions into subsidized telecenters that people do not use, simply to ensure that young people have the opportunity to type up resumes. If the writer had kept his eye on the roadside signboards in Sri Lanka more closely he would have seen the proliferation of computer skills training centers and courses. Do these establishments not have computers? Do they not allow those computers to be used for a fee?
The opposite of “giving up the fight” is to continue to pour money into telecenters. Seems to me that Einstein describes this behavior well: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
gurstein
February 20, 2010
Maybe I wasn’t sufficiently clear Rohan, I didn’t mean to suggest that the “fight” was simply around telecentres or no telecentres. For me telecentres are a means to the desired end which is some degree of digital development (and equity) as a basis for local empowerment and active participation in the overall society/polity. Telecentres are a means that have been developed and with highly variable success have been implemented in support of this overall goal (and I concur with your reference to and the applicability of my friend Peter Benjamin’s findings in South Africa).
My point as you note was to indicate that mobile communication was currently not really up to the task and to lay down an (implicit) challenge to folks such as yourself (and of course there are many others, notably in the bilateral funding community) to either come up with some realistic alternative or to come back to the table and figure out how to make what we have now work rather than to abandon the field altogether which to me is the easy (but irresponsible) way out.
Also, I should mention that my point was a general one and I recognize that, in some, there may be specific local circumstances that mitigate against this strategy (endemic corruption or an incapacity on the part of responsible authorities to deliver are of course among such local conditions in some instances) but I think this simply reinforces the case for a “community” informatics (bottom up) driven approach to these developments rather than for example a state run top down ICT4D approach.
I take your point about not assuming a too “restrictive version of mobile based connectivity”. However, I think the general point still stands which is that while there may be convergence in the methods of connecting (to the Internet and to telephony), the availability and use of Internet and PC based applications are not currently widely distributed. In part this is because of cost, but also because of the “aesthetic” limitations of current lower cost handsets and the conceptual framing where Information related activities are generally assigned to PC’s while communications related activities are generally assigned to mobile telephony.
As to your analogy concerning the expressway and the dirt track, as I understand it most of the folks that the current e-Sri Lanka program are meant to be addressing are very much currently traveling on the dirt track (and with bicycles or tuktuks rather than Benz’s or BMWs) rather than on expressways and are likely to be doing so for quite a long time into the future as well. That of course, makes designing national digital strategies rather more complicated since it is necessary in most cases to find ways of accommodating both, but I think it is difficult to argue that there is no longer a need for a digital “development” strategy for the folks on the bus as well as the folks in the limo and even more so, if one believes as I do. that becoming digitally enabled is at this time a major and even necessary component of any effective strategy for broad based economic and social development.
And yes, the market will likely provide for preparing word processed resumes for those who need resumes although that wasn’t my point at all. Rather I was making and would repeat the point that the overall objective here is to “provide the foundation from which digital creativity and innovation can flow and by means of which a country like Sri Lanka can go through that phase change to shift from a pre-digital society to a digital society and thereby lay the foundation for transitioning into an Information Economy’. How waiting for the market to provide the 21st century equivalent of the village scribe will support that goal I’m really not sure.
I did notice the interesting proliferation of computer schools throughout medium sized towns in Sri Lanka as elsewhere in the world and certainly this combined with an effective investment in computer labs and training in public schools will in the fullness of time lead to a broadening of the society’s digital base (my personal feeling is that OLPC is not a useful strategy here except in very specific circumstances but that discussion is for another time).
What I also observed though, to my astonishment was the street of lawyers and surveyors adjacent to the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy where there was not a computer to be observed at all and which is certainly a living museum of manual upright typewriter technology and all of the related paraphernalia of carbon paper, white out, carbon spools and all the other stuff that in most of the world only people as old as myself still remember from their youth.
This isn’t to mock those estimable professionals honourably plying their trade but rather to suggest that whatever alternative strategy towards broad based digitization is being pursued it clearly hasn’t made any significant inroads in two of the communities which would benefit the most (in terms of immediate contributions to productivity) and which presumably would have both the education and the financial wherewithal to make the appropriate investment in capital equipment and the related training.
Which is more wasteful, spending funds on implementing a program for broad based digital awareness and introductory training or leaving one’s professional classes stranded with an antique and completely inefficient physical and administrative infrastructure?
Rohan Samarajiva
February 20, 2010
I quoted the exact rhetorical legerdemain (“Give up the fight and leave it all to the ambition and creativity of the mobile operators?”) and refuted it. The response: “Maybe I wasn’t sufficiently clear Rohan, I didn’t mean to suggest that the “fight” was simply around telecentres or no telecentres.” The quote is as clear as could be. Clarity is not the issue. Error is.
Now we have broad generalizations based on casual observation. The manual typewriters on DS Senanayake Mavata in Kandy point to “leaving one’s professional classes stranded with an antique and completely inefficient physical and administrative infrastructure?”
Wow.
The courts in Kandy used to be in that location from colonial times. Several years ago, they were moved, leaving these law offices stranded. The progressive lawyers would most likely have moved to the courts complex on Gopallawa Mavata, leaving the rest behind. Worth investigation, I guess, for one who is interested. Or as my old law teacher used to say, some clients are dogs and follow lawyers when they move; others are cats and keep coming back to the office irrespective of which lawyer sits in it. Perhaps these offices are kept to catch the cats and transport them to the real offices?
I have no idea what they are doing with typewriters, but it is quite possible that they are using them to produce documents in Sinhala and Tamil. There is an actual economic logic to using typewriters rather than multi-purpose and very much more expensive computers to produce single-use typewritten text, especially when labor is cheap. But as most people who have actually dealt with lawyers in Sri Lanka would have said, if asked, most standard legal documents such as rental contracts, powers of attorney, etc. are produced on word processors, in English as well as in Sinhala and Tamil.
I am happy about this, having conducted the first IT familiarization seminar for the lawyers back in 1987. But I have been away from the law and legal profession for a long time. I hope a young lawyer with more knowledge will add to my casual, but not-so-casual, observations.
gurstein
February 20, 2010
I think the issue Rohan, is not whether the most advanced members of a profession (or a society) are now digitally enabled — from my experience virtually all are–including with the latest iPads, Kindles, iPhones, and so on–and with very exceptions, in all corners of the globe.
Rather the issue that I think should be addressed is whether the least advanced in the profession (or in society) are even in the same universe of technology enablement (let alone on the other side of a digital divide). The lawyers on DS Senanayake Mavata in Kandy all seem to have their cell phones ringing constantly while they type away on their antique typewriters (in English BTW).
So the answer to the question that I started out with i.e. “what do we lose if we don’t have the Internet” still seems to me to be — that what we lose is the creation of an inclusive “digital economy/society”.
So, and this is not a rhetorical question–if you don’t like the formulation “Give up the fight and leave it all to the ambition and creativity of the mobile operators?” what are you offering in its place?
I think you know where I stand on that issue (with broad/community based programs for digital access/digital literacy) but I don’t yet know where you stand.
Best,
Mike Gurstein
Franz Nahrada
February 21, 2010
Interesting discussion. I think telecenters will only make a point if there is community activity that can be meaningfully linked with global communication. Its not inclusion for inclusions sake. Rather I think there is a logic which connects a physical meeting point of a local community to virtual meetings. This implies a physical activity connected to a virtual one. Maybe the ideal form of this logic is still to be found. For me, telecenters would make sense as the nodal points of a global cooperative community economy. We are just in the beginnings of this.
indi
February 21, 2010
Sri Lanka has cheap mobile broadband access everywhere. I use a $500 netbook with 3G built in and I’ve been able to connect (3G) from Jaffna, Vavuniya, Trinco, Batti, Haputale, on the train, in the hills, on the beach, etc.
In Trinco we were staying at a house that had no electricity but I was still able to connect to the net. I’m in India now and Sri Lanka’s mobile broadband service is WAY better than here. I would rather have the rural 3G around Anuradhapura than the 2.75 in Mumbai.
Just because you don’t see people computing as you drive through doesn’t mean they’re not doing it. I know a ton of kids in rural areas for whom mobile broadband is the only way they get a connection. Check out a bunch of the kids in the Sinhala Bloggers Union, or anybody on Twitter.
Just cause you don’t see Internet use in cursory travels doesn’t mean it’s not there. I use the Internet like a fiend all over the country and it works great. I know a lot of kids that do, and companies have seen fit to invest in the infrastructure. Look around elakiri.com for example.
I think you’re completely wrong to say SL is 10 years behind. We’re definitely 10 years ahead of India and probably percentage wise cover more of the country than even the US. The Internet is great here, I think you’re just missing it. As I said, check out Twitter and elakiri and whatever and see what’s going on. It’s not something you’d catch from a car window.
gurstein
February 22, 2010
Indi.ca, my original blogpost was confirmed in all of its details by two of the folks I met with while in Sri Lanka who had been identified to me as experts in the area in advance and both of whom are currently very active with mobile broadband. With their permission I would be pleased to privately give you their email addresses and you can discuss the details of the current access situation in Sri Lanka with them–it is not something I claim any expertise in at all.
My overall point was of course, not about “access” at all but rather about whether the current strategies for achieving access would be sufficient to realize “effective use” and there I would really want rather more detailed information than your comment about a ton of kids in rural areas and the Sinhala Bloggers Union however estimable might be both of these developments.
gurstein
February 24, 2010
Following Rohan’s lead, I’m going to include your Harsha de Silva’s not which originally appeared on the LIRNEasia site and my reply as comments on this blog as well.
Harsha de Silva
February 24, 2010 at 10:26 pm | Permalink
Coming in to this interesting discussion late…nevertheless… I wanted to touch on the point Michael makes on the inability of ‘effective’ or developmental use via more-than-voice applications on mobile platforms [As explained by you “only have mobile communications with optional access to the Internet by-passing the personal computer completely”]. Note I am purposely keeping the scope wide enough to catch-all.
Now let’s take a simple example of a green gram farmer from rural Sri Lanka [By the way, most rural folk are engaged in agriculture]. What kind of development is he looking for? Get the best possible price for his green gram so his income can be enhanced might be as good as any answer. So the information-interaction-transaction he could be looking for can take several forms. Perhaps current prices for green gram if he has already harvested; possible forward prices for green gram say for next week if that is when he plans to harvest? Or even futures prices for delivery in a month’s time if he can store his green gram?
Check on how many green gram farmers are logging in to the ICTA-powered subsidized applications of the Department of Agriculture available on a big screen monitor at their neighborhood Nenasela to register with the green gram service for effective or developmental use ‘deliberately’ designed for these ‘digitally excluded’ people to use your lingo http://www.agridept.gov.lk/agmis_crops.php?cropid=55
Answer is zero for green gram; as is the case for all 48 crops [a month ago there were a few though…]. Why? Farmers are not likely to do it. For starters it’s just too much of a hassle to go to the Nenasela… and it’s not convenient. I have personal experience with farmers from as far back as 2003 and I know.
Enter the mobile operators and content providers with ambition and creativity. See what we are doing in Sri Lanka http://www.e-agriculture.org/19.html?tx_ttnewstt_news=1884 True, it’s just started [end December 2009], but already we are in the middle of registering not 5 or 50 but 5,000 farmers at just one [central] location. And this developmental information is not “point to point, individual to individual, transaction centric and so on…” as you say, but allows for much wider multi-party interaction ending [ideally] with a transaction
Lesson is that developmental or effective use can not be a must not be seen in one’s own prejudiced template. True, for some a PowerPoint presentation on a PC may be that developmental use; but for another it surely could be the dynamically analyzed information on green gram futures [of course connected via the Internet at the backend] and the subsequent interaction with three possible forward buyers culminating in a transaction that would be much more profitable for the green gram than selling his green gram in the current setup.
No point in pouring more money on the green-gram register sitting in a nice wide screen PC at a Nenasela; put that money in developing the best possible mobile communications application with optional access to the Internet!
Cheers
Harsha
gurstein
February 24, 2010
Harsha,
Thanks for this very interesting example and one BTW which I looked at and discussed with several people, including the mobile operator while I was in SL (in fact I’ll be blogging on that in the next very few days). Your example shows and I have no doubt that you are correct in your overall assessment of the relative merits of mobile support as compared to Nenasila support for this application. This is a newly available set of opportunities (given widespread and very low cost mobile access/use charges in SL.
But what your example doesn’t show I think is whether there is a related positive impact on the farmer’s level of overall literacy, computer literacy, digital awareness, skills development etc.etc. There may be but the relatively simple transaction model that is being developed may expand into other forms of transactional interaction but I’m at a loss to see what the broader impact could be — the example of the ATM is revealing I think… Learning how to navigate an ATM machine doesn’t contribute anything to one’s overall knowledge about banking, or credit let alone small business development etc.etc. That doesn’t mean that the ATM isn’t valuable — it certainly is — but rather that broad based entry into the “information society” will likely require a lot more than is be presented here.
Best,
Mike
Pamela McLean
February 26, 2010
I am joining this discussion late and know nothing about Sri Lanka. However I am interested in some of the wider issues – which I understand relate to
– public, shared, community access to the Internet
– government subsidies
– take-up of technology
– mobile phones
– challenges in rural areas
It is often observed that “take the technology and they will come” does not work. However it is also recognised by many that “the technology” (access to the Internet) does need to be provided, and that a community approach may be more appropriate than a personal one.
Government subsidised telecentres are one possibility. Another could be through supporting smaller projects that would be, arguably, more easily sustainable and replicable way, I think of a project that my friend Fola would like to implement in Ago-Are in rural Nigeria. and how Ricardo in the UK is trying to help him. I wonder what would happen if subsidies could be given to people like Fola to help them set up small local public facilities – which could gradually grow and finally become self supporting.
This is Fola’s story. He is a teacher who used to live in the city. He was sent to work in a village – so far in the bush that he had to travel by motorbike in order to make a phone call. The nearest place he could be reasonably certain of an Internet connection was the State capital, which is a long journey from the village – not really practical to go there and back all on the same day. He was desperate to stay connected and invested in a phone to access the Internet – which he explains was not easy on his “meager salary”.
Fola is now married and his wife has a PC. He links his phone to her PC in order to get the benefit of a full sized screen and proper keyboard. He would like to link his phone to several other computers that are available locally, and set up a public facility for email. (There would not be sufficient bandwidth for anything more than email using his phone as the connection).
All his initial experiments have been supported at a distance by technical advice from Ricardo in the UK. (This is another story in its own right which may be of interest to ICT4D or ICT4Ed people.)
The big stumbling block for Fola is the risk of paying the money for a monthly subscription for the phone – given that there is no reliable electricity supply. He needs to be sure of running the service for a minimum amount of time each month. He struggles to find the money for his own very limited time online and cannot afford to invest in a monthly contract for phone time if the electricity outages will stop him getting his money back.
What if, instead of going to full sized telecentres, external funding went to people like Fola to help them set up small email bureaux – a first step in community connectivity. Such a bureau would be provided by local people for local people, by self motivated people trying to build a business for themselves Once started the bureaux could then grow in various ways according to the interests and needs of the local community.
If each bureau was initiated as part of a wider initiative, then the proprietors who wanted to could work together providing peer-to-peer support, Ideally this would all tie in with some kind of research project to monitor successes/failures/challenges/solutions etc, and best practice would gradually emerge.
More about Fola here http://www.dadamac.net/blog/20091004/hand-held-learning-and-ago-are-rural-nigeria and here http://www.dadamac.net/blog/20100217/folas-phone-and-baby-boy
Obviously the relevance and practicality of implementing such a project would vary from country to country, and maybe I am a bit off topic – but I sdo ee large ares of overlapping interests and objectives. When I see discussion of well intentioned top down projects that do not seem to deliver all that was hoped and I also see struggling grass roots projects that cannot get started for lack of funds – minimal funds compared to the top down projects – then I believe it is worth sharing information and seeing if, somehow, lessons can be learned in both directions.
gurstein
February 28, 2010
Great comments Pamela, thanks.
It’s always good to get to the specifics where the complexity of these issues comes out as is very well revealed by your story of Fola and his attempts to get usable access in a rural area in Africa.
Garth Graham
March 2, 2010
I think this report, issued today, is substantive, at least in relation to framing the issues of convergence that face the emergence of the “mobile Internet,” if not directly the issues of development in Sri Lanka:
Richard Bennett. Going Mobile: Technology and Policy Issues in the Mobile Internet. Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. March 2010.
Click to access 100302_GoingMobile.pdf