Mile Zero

December 29, 2008

The irony of the Internet and mobile communications, which link us together in what village idiot Tom Friedman calls a "flat" world, is that the promise of them is so poorly kept. Much has been made of mobile phones--with or without Internet access--as a "leapfrogging technology. And some businesses have leapt at that opportunity: Visa, for example, looks at the microcredit market and salivates like a trained dog. But there's a blind spot the size of Africa for most handset manufacturers, it seems. Samsung only lists South Africa for the continent on its website. Motorola files Africa under "other" on its net sales figures with 8% of the total (a category that I suspect also includes large chunks of South America). Apple--well, the iPhone's been subsidized in a lot of countries now. But I've got a feeling it's priced a bit out of the range of many consumers in the Global South. Like its competitors, its business model is flashy connections for rich people.

The one company clearly not ignoring the bottom of the pyramid is Nokia, which sells hundreds of millions of phones every year on a range from Symbian superphones like the N and E series to bottom-line models aimed at "emerging markets." Nokia doesn't get a lot of respect in the US, partly because its marketing is stunningly bad and partly because its S60 devices are not typically offered by American carriers. But the company sells hundreds of millions of simple, durable phones to developing markets, markets which Nokia specifically targets (features like multiple phone books, for instance, aren't particularly useful here but make a lot of sense where the phone may be shared or rented out). They're doing a lot of research on sustainability and use--Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase's blog is a fascinating glimpse into real-world uses of mobile tech. The company funds a number of projects for mobile innovation. And they've recently shown signs of trying to pitch themselves as a service provider for people in lesser-developed economies: their Ovi portal just rolled out a free e-mail app aimed at first-time users that requires no computer for set-up or use at all.

At the same time, Nokia recently announced a program it calls "Life Tools", a set of informational and educational services powered by SMS instead of GPRS (or, as we might expect in the USA, EDGE and 3G packet data). To start, the program will distribute market and weather information to farmers, and it will include English language training. A section for ringtones and astrology is also included, although it's obviously given less emphasis in the press release.

Although top-down technology projects like this rarely work, in my experience, this is honestly a pretty impressive attempt at addressing development problems with mobile tech. It's affordable, reliable, and relevant to the needs of customers (something which I'm not convinced OLPC ever understood). Design in Africa says that "Nokia shows how its done once again" while Kiwanja's Ken Banks is a bit more reserved. Banks raises a couple of good cautionary points that had also occurred to me--but let's come back to that in a minute.

First, let's look at what Nokia's doing right here. At the most basic level, they've admitted that there are parts of the world outside of the G20, which (as I noted above) is surprisingly rare. It's particularly surprising considering that the bottom of the pyramid (or BoP, as practitioners call it) is where the next big consumer segment will probably emerge. I mean, if you sell to the developed countries, these have become a pretty saturated market. Everyone's already got a phone here. That means you have to compete on shiny features and high-powered hardware, which is a turbulent place to be--just ask Motorola, who have been coasting on the RAZR for four years now, to ever-decreasing results.

Not only that, but the developing world's an excellent place to foster innovations that might also be profitable in rich countries. As Ethan Zuckerman is fond of saying, if it works in Africa, it'll work anywhere. It's easy to see how Nokia might be hoping to roll what it learns about building cheaper, sustainable, and more reliable electronics into its higher-end projects.

Software is less likely, of course, to move from lesser-developed countries to their rich counterparts. But give Nokia credit for embracing (sometimes, at least) open source technologies and relatively open ecosystems. All kinds of hardware can be attached to their phones, from keyboards to sensors to Wiimotes. They're simple to extend and program using Python, Javascript, Java, or C. The browser is WebKit, and they've got a port of Apache, believe it or not. You can install software on the phone without a computer, straight from the web or via SMS link. And no-one's acting as a gatekeeper or bottleneck: while the Symbian Signed initiative is a major misstep (one that will likely be remedied when the OS is open-sourced in 2010), in my opinion it's still better than a walled garden app store. In other words, although they may seem primitive to Americans, they're relatively open, cheap platforms for innovation and problem-solving.

Above all, Nokia actually seems to be interested in being a better global citizen, not just a better market player, which is one of the reasons I'm such a huge fan of the company. Granted, purely in business logic, being pro-development and pro-environment makes sense for a company: it's more profitable selling phones to people who possess money and health. Still, Nokia's entry into development still makes me nervous. I want to give it the benefit of a doubt and hope for the best, but caution still seems advisable for several reasons.

First of all, let's be frank: Western corporations don't have a great track record in development. I'll never forget what one African said at a conference I helped run while at the Bank: "These countries are not poor," he admonished the development institutions in attendance. "They were impoverished." And indeed, the history of interference from large companies has not been a happy one, from the controversy surrounding Nestle's infant formula to the use of military forces by Shell in Nigeria. Moreover, the influence of multinational companies on graft and bribery should not be discounted: while it is certainly a good governance issue, those who pay the bribes--and reap the benefits--need to be held accountable as well, if not more so.

There's a genuine reason, then, to be cautious whenever a company announces that it's making a major push into lesser-developed economies. The exploitation and damage that could be done--that has been done--is immense. And even with the best of intentions and smart people behind a project, the possibility for unforeseen consequences wrecking havoc among those least able to defend themselves is unsettling. Take it from someone who used to be a peon at the World Bank: having smart, well-intelligent personnel is no guarantee of success (or anything else, for that matter).

Ken Banks raises another cautionary point: Nokia's setting itself up to potentially control a massive amount of the information technology space, including most of the vertical infrastructure (services, software, and hardware). How far will they go with that kind of power? As Banks speculates, could they also integrate mobile payment systems, capturing that market? Will they partner with local services, or will they steamroller over them? The ability to integrate and share innovations is a powerful one--for development, for Nokia's bottom line, or both. If the future is built on proprietary Nokia tech, there's potential for lock-in rivalling anything that Microsoft, Google, or Apple could have ever hoped for.

I don't care for the fact that so much of this comes down to trust. Do I trust Nokia to keep doing good? Can we trust a company to act honorably when they've got real incentives to cut corners for profit? Can they be trusted to remain open when it counts? Noticeably, Nokia's open source initiatives are oriented a bit more toward their high-end customers than their emerging market phones. Optimally, I think we'd all like to see development from the bottom up, with local companies profiting. At the very least, competition would be good--and Nokia could be seen as simply working for competitive advantage in a marketplace soon to boom. As I've said, there are perfectly valid, harmless reasons for them to be there.

But as long as they're the only big handset manufacturer who's even really thought about selling to the BoP, instead of using low-end to build mindshare in developed countries, we won't really know the answers to those questions. That strikes me as a troubling state of affairs. There are worse companies to be taking these steps, I think, and yet that's small comfort given what's at stake.

May 15, 2008

This letter from former OLPC security director Ivan Krstic is well worth reading. Krstic lays out the history of Nick Negroponte's "constructionist" educational failures, the managerial issues that have doomed deployment of the OLPC laptops to client countries, and the basic philosophical problems that continue to dog the machine's Sugar UI system.

There's also some tug-of-war in there about the conflicts between Linux, Windows, and evangelism on both sides, but I don't think that's nearly as interesting: it's fodder for the watchers on the sidelines, but not (entirely) why this project has failed.

As one of the people who predicted, early on, that it would indeed fail dramatically, I won't deny that it's a little satisfying. But mainly it's just sad. Poor countries paid good money for these machines. They bought into the Negroponte's hype. Well-meaning Americans did the same, hoping to benefit the lesser-developed nations through the Get-One-Give-One program. Those resources could have been used more effectively, and now they won't be.

It's worth pointing out, just to be clear, that the problem here was not technological. I don't think anyone doubted that the laptops could be built, or that they would be very cool toys. The OLPC has been a failure because it literally assumed that given the technology, learning would follow. It assumed that the laptops could form their own self-healing infrastructure, separate from any existing institutions. No need for a network: we've got mesh wifi! No need for power: we've got hand-cranked generators! No need for support: we're open-source!

No need for teachers: the kids will teach themselves.

But teaching is not something that comes from a box. It's part of a larger system, an institution built out of people. It's really hard work. You have to work hard to teach badly, and even harder to teach well. You can teach using technology. But technology on its own, as a general rule, is not in and of itself an education.

I didn't predict these exact failures when I wrote about the project a couple years ago. I was much more inclined to think in terms of capacity development. But in many ways, I'd argue that the lack of attention to capacity on the project's part is intertwined with its lack of attention to other basic social and pedagogical issues. Just as OLPC wasn't interested in building electrical or informational infrastructure, they weren't really interested in the workings of an actual classroom, or the problems of equipment distribution. Just as they simply assumed that their technology would make capacity development irrelevant, they figured that deployment and education would simply self-organize under the force of the OLPC's philosophical mandate.

Unfortunately, the real world doesn't particularly care about your philosophical mandate--just ask Marx.

April 15, 2008

Today is tax day, as you probably know. I knew that it would bite me hard, but hopefully--seeing as how I'm no longer working full-time at the World Bank--I can look forward to a much simpler, more withheld tax experience in the future.

Yesterday I called the tax office at the Bank just to check on something. "I've heard that you pay half my self-employment tax," I said. "Is that true?" "Not for you," the accountant said. "We only pay that for term and open-ended employees." It is always nice to have a reminder that even while I worked 40+ hours a week for the Bank, on paper I was working for myself--and now I get to pay for it.

I suspect that the reason that the Bank decides to just drop the tax burden on its low-level employees is that, as I've noted before, most employees of the World Bank do not pay taxes, since they're working outside their home countries for an international organization. Perhaps it's just a sense of fairness: why do paperwork for Americans when the rest of the staff needs no such help? The fact that our situations really are dissimilar does not seem to have entered the equation.

Still, I don't particularly want to gripe about how the Bank treats its employees, even the American ones, because they did pay me very well. I suppose that's worth some hassle every quarter. It could be worse: for some time, employees living elsewhere were paid on fixed salaries in dollars, which was not terribly comfortable when the currency began to fall relative to the Euro. Or at least, that's what I told myself when I sat down every few months to write out what seems like a mammoth check for my "self-employed" day job.

October 21, 2007

Friday was my last day working at the World Bank. Unless they bring me back in for consulting, that is, but that really doesn't count. Starting Monday, I'll be working at Congressional Quarterly as their Multimedia Producer--a position which is nebulous but promising. Because CQ is understandably cautious about appearances, there will probably be little or no political content here in the future. Please, let's keep the sighs of relief to a minimum.

I will miss the Bank. Its stated mission--"Our dream is a world free from poverty"--lent every workday an energy and determination that you don't get working for the bottom line. And the institution is filled with smart, driven people. Many of them come from the developing countries in which the Bank works, and they feel strongly about the cause of poverty. It has often been a pleasure to work alongside the staff, particularly in the Multimedia Center, which makes it a priority to look ahead and remain open to new ideas and perspectives.

At the same time, it would be a lie to say that the Bank doesn't have issues. I certainly don't agree with all of its policies, and in my three years there, I've seen dysfunctional units, poorly-run projects, and a fair share of bureacracy. I don't want to go into detail, but I will say that these problems are all the more frustrating because of the Bank's lofty goals. We have a responsibility to do better. And I'm sure that the World Bank will do so.

Because when it comes down to it, I think we need the Bank. The problems of development aren't going anywhere, and it can be tremendously helpful for a single organization to act as hub for those efforts. Not to mention the Bank's strength as a knowledge-sharing and learning institution, which I personally think is its strongest asset. I may be leaving the Bank, but I'll be watching it with hope and anticipation.

In any case, this space may be a little quiet for a while as I settle into my new position and get the production process straightened out. As soon as I have something to show for it, I'll post links here.

August 30, 2007

"So pretend that you're a team at Chapeaux Hat company. What does Chapeaux mean? Right, it means 'hat.' So that's kind of a double entendre."

[for literally any situation at all]
"The example I like to use here is the iPod."

"'Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.' It was Abraham Lincoln who said that."

"And I'm sure that you all are very aware of budget. You're a bank, after all."

August 27, 2007

Sometimes, especially as we've been holding job interviews, people ask me what I enjoy most about working at the World Bank. Is it the feeling of satisfaction that comes from working at a non-profit, albeit a huge and controversial institution? Is it the multicultural environment filled with brilliant and interesting people? Is it the wide-ranging nature of the issues that we get to present to the world? Is it the compensation package? Is it the big, shiny building?

Well, I say, those are all very nice. But I also really like the chocolate. Because on days like today, when our colleagues from offices in Europe or Latin America drop in at headquarters for meetings or training, they usually bring chocolate from around the world to share with the rest of us.

I'm getting spoiled.

August 14, 2007

It is a little funny to watch the OLPC team run through their "world-changing laptop" schtick in the keynote presentation this morning, followed two sessions later by a Yahoo! team that points out that American students are as wired as anyone in the entire world, and yet one-third of them don't graduate from high school.

But if they just had a "constructionist" "school-in-a-box" with cute green plastic antennae...

Right.

August 2, 2007

This month, technically for the August 1st podcast but let's call it July anyway, we dipped into the archives to highlight one of the events that's always on our top ten most-viewed. Our new coordinator/writer is also working on a new description for its main entry. What is it?

There's an old joke that Economics is the only field in which two people can win the Nobel prize for saying the exact opposite thing. For evidence that economic disagreements can be spirited, especially in development, look no further than this entry from the B-SPAN archives. After former World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz published his controversial book, Globalization and its Discontents, which expressed his own discontent with the International Monetary Fund, he and IMF Research Director Ken Rogoff squared off in a 2002 panel discussion on its claims. The resulting debate has become one of the most relevant on the role of international institutions in promoting globalization.

You can listen to the dueling economists here.

June 29, 2007

Now that they're finally done, I've added one of the Learning Week podcasts to the audio section of my portfolio. It features Andrew Law, Head of BBC Worldwide Interactive Learning, and he talks about the impact of different formats and accessible media production on educational programs.

Although I'm not adding them to the portfolio, anyone who's interested in e-learning might also want to listen to the podcasts of David Kolb and Lorin Anderson. Kolb is one of the earliest proponents for experiential learning, and talks about its history and interaction with learning styles. Although he's arguably more important than Law, he required a lot more editing (sometimes more than 50 cuts per minute) to make his speech fully fluent. He still sounds a little odd sometimes, and I didn't want that to be a portfolio piece. Anderson was one of the academics who worked on an elaborate revision of Bloom's taxonomy in 2001. He discusses how the learning taxonomy is used for education, and also how to evaluate learning programs using these tools. It's slightly more obscure than Law's interview, but still interesting given the current emphasis on testing in education.

June 26, 2007

I have 26 days of leave accumulated over my soon-to-end two-year extended term at the Bank. 26 days--that's just slightly more than five work-weeks. And when I transition to a temporary short-term contract next week, the Bank will buy that leave back. Thoughts:

1. I am going to miss the benefits when I leave this job. I may complain about the tax hassle, but you can't beat the health care (even if I didn't use it) and the vacation time (even if I didn't take it).
2. Seriously, 26 days? I have got to get out more. Look, it's not that I'm a workaholic. I just like what I do. Really.
3. When the check does arrive, it's going to be manna from heaven. I can finally get that ING savings account I've always wanted. Because honestly, it's barely worth it with a brick-and-mortar bank anymore. Bank of America's savings accounts only earn 0.2% a year. I made $3.48 in interest for 2006. And people wonder why most Americans don't save.

Future - Present - Past