The Newest Garrett · 27 words posted 02/16/2007 08:09 AM
Our first child, a boy, arrived five hours ago in Washington, DC. I’ll be offline for a few days whilst studying the intricacies of burping and napping.
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Back from Vacation · 93 words posted 11/09/2006 11:57 AM
I’m back from vacation in Southeast Asia. One of my perennial challenges is sorting, tagging, and editing photos. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is an excellent workflow tool and is currently in public beta. If you haven’t tried it yet, it’s worth checking out.
I’ll write up Lightroom in greater detail shortly, as well as review a book on RAW conversion.
In the meantime, here’s a gallery of some of the best shots from the trip. You’ll find soldiers from the coup in Bangkok, kickboxers in Burma, silversmiths in Laos, and Chinese Opera in Singapore.
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Microsoft Cell Phone or MIT $100 Laptop? · 353 words posted 01/31/2006 11:14 AM
As the New York Times has reported, Microsoft may plan to make an end run around the MIT $100 laptop by creating a cell phone PC, with inputs/outputs for TV and keyboard:
Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder and chairman, demonstrated a mockup of his proposed cellular PC at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, and he mentioned it as a cheaper alternative to traditional PC’s and laptops during a public discussion here at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
Craig J. Mundie, Microsoft’s vice president and chief technology officer, said in an interview here that the company was still developing the idea, but that both he and Mr. Gates believed that cellphones were a better way than laptops to bring computing to the masses in developing nations. “Everyone is going to have a cellphone,” Mr. Mundie said, noting that in places where TV’s are already common, turning a phone into a computer could simply require adding a cheap adaptor and keyboard. Microsoft has not said how much those products would cost.
Which device is better? There’s a clear answer: both.
Development entrepreneurs, just like players in any marketplace, have to compete for mind-share and capital. Some aspects of the open-source laptop program will encourage substantial market distortions: in particular, the laptop’s consumers typically won’t pay for it. Instead, government and private funds will put the laptops in the hand of its end users. Lest one doubt about the effect of third party payers on efficiently allocating consumption of resources, look at the current state of the US health care system.
It’s a win-win situation if Microsoft’s entry into a market spurs the MIT program to lower its costs, expand its reach, and build a better product. And Microsoft may be on to something; cell phones in poor countries already meet many of the development goals that drive the distribution of laptops.
I’ve used this space for several years to highlight development projects in countries like Laos and Nepal. It’s not easy to get it right, but without a doubt: more players in this field are better than fewer.
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Cambodia 2002: A Photoset on Flickr · 24 words posted 01/20/2006 05:00 PM
I’ve posted a brief, new photoset to Flickr: Cambodia 2002. The pictures were shot with an old Canon AE-1 and have a warm, lo-fi vibe.
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Lee Felsenstein on the $100 Laptop · 192 words posted 11/18/2005 10:51 AM
Lee Felsenstein, one of the primary forces behind the Remote Village IT Project in Laos, raises questions about the feasibility of MIT’s $100 Laptop. Felsenstein sees two classes of problems with the $100 Laptop plan: technical (underpowered laptops and insufficiently dense mesh networks) and structural (top-down planning and distribution).
The Jhai Foundation, chaired by Lee Thorn, has attempted to build and distribute rugged, low-cost computers designed by Lee Felsenstein. It’s hard to know how much of Felsenstein’s critique is sour grapes: the Jhai PC is nearly extinct, while in both ambition and press attention the $100 Laptop project easily eclipses the Remote Village IT project.
I’ve featured two interviews on the challenges developers face in getting low cost machines into the hands of people in developing countries:
- Lee Thorn on the Remote Village IT Project in Laos; and
- Mahabir Pun on setting up wireless networks in Nepal.
From that small sample group, one might conclude that the following ingredients increase the chances of a successful developement project:
- Local, culturally sensitive management control;
- Outside technical expertise; and
- Limited scope.
Whether the $100 Laptop project has drawn the same lessons from previous development work remains to be seen.
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Hubert Van Es on that Famous Saigon Picture · 160 words posted 06/06/2005 10:10 AM
Thirty years ago, Hubert Van Es took one of the most famous pictures from the Vietnam conflict:
Thirty years ago I was fortunate enough to take a photograph that has become perhaps the most recognizable image of the fall of Saigon—you know it, the one that is always described as showing an American helicopter evacuating people from the roof of the United States Embassy. Well, like so many things about the Vietnam War, it’s not exactly what it seems. In fact, the photo is not of the embassy at all; the helicopter was actually on the roof of an apartment building in downtown Saigon where senior Central Intelligence Agency employees were housed.
He tells the story behind the story in the current issue of The Digital Journalist. According to Van Es, the photo shows the roof of an apartment building used by the CIA, and not the roof of the United States Embassy.
Great reading for photojournalists and travel photographers.
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100 Years of Graham Greene · 228 words posted 10/02/2004 10:44 AM
Graham Greene, one of my favorite authors, was born 100 years ago today. The BBC has an excellent Centenary page with links to audio interviews.
Robert Girardi once called The Quiet American “a perfect novel.” I’m inclined to agree; it’s hard to believe that Greene wrote so presciently about the limits of the French colonial enterprise and the folly of American intervention in Southeast Asia fully ten years before the United States invaded Vietnam.
I’ve never been to Saigon, but I believe Mr. Greene captured the time and the place as well as anyone could have. Today, most street corners in the old quarter of Hanoi feature little kids hawking stacks of pirated copies: “Quiet American Mister! Quiet American!” Whether one reads it as a love story, a war adventure, or reportage, the Quiet American is one of the best short novels ever written.
He has fallen out of fashion these days: the left takes offense at his mid-century British sensibilities (shame on him for being a creature of his time), and biographers tell us he was a bore in his private life (as if that could have any bearing on how one reads his fiction). Fundamentally, though, Graham Greene had a keen eye for human frailty and a healthy suspicion of most of the isms that so plagued the 20th century.
Happy birthday, Mr. Greene, wherever you are.
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Mahabir Pun Nepal Wireless Interview · 2111 words posted 07/05/2004 02:55 AM
After receiving his Master’s Degree in Education at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, Mahabir Pun returned to his native village, Nangi, and founded the Himanchal Education Foundation. Mr. Pun is currently at work establishing wireless networks in rural Nepal.
I conducted this interview with Mr. Pun over a series of email exchanges. Thanks to Sabeel Rahman for helping me formulate the questions, and to BoingBoing.net for bringing the original BBC story to my attention.
since1968: You’ve set up wireless networks in five villages. Can you talk about the physical process of setting up the networks? How are they powered?
Mahabir Pun: The network has been set up in five villages, located in different ridges of the mountain ranges through two relay stations. The elevation of Relay Station 1 is 10,800 ft and that of the Relay Station 2 is 12,000 ft. The villages that are networked are lying between 6,000 ft and 7,500 ft. Relay Station 1 is connected to the nearest ISP through dial-up networking, which is about 22 air miles away.
The relay tower at Relay Station 1 is actually a tall tree. We have tied antennas on the top of the tree pointing to different directions. The radios, laptops, and other accessories at Relay Station 1 and Relay Station 2 are powered by a 75w photo voltaic panel and a 400w wind generator.
Even with the two sources of power, it has been very difficult to run the radios all day at relay stations because of the lack of power. It is because this is monsoon time and there is almost no sunshine and no wind. The power problem will be for three months. Right now we are running the radios at the relay stations about four hours a day.
since1968: Why now? When did you start the project?
Mahabir Pun: We tested 802.11b wireless equipment in 2002 between two villages with the help of a Belgian and a Finnish volunteer. They decided to come to our village after they read about us in the BBC news in 2001. Before that I did not know anything about 802.11b wireless technology. After the testing, we were quite hopeful that the technology would work to network the villages. Therefore we tried to find financial support to install the network. A student at the University of California at Los Angeles got a grant from the Donald Strauss Foundation, which made the project come into a reality. We bought the equipment needed from the grant money.
since1968: Most of my readers are in the United States or Western Europe, and the news we get about Nepal usually relates only to the political situation. Can you talk a bit about day-to-day life?
Mahabir Pun: Whatever you hear about the Maoists fighting and power struggle in Nepal from the media should be mostly true. I live in the mountain and I don’t get to read any news from the newspapers. Perhaps you hear more news about Nepal than the people in the mountains hear.
The Maoists don’t shoot people randomly. As long as they think that there is no threat from an individual or group, one can stay in the villages and work. It is very true that the life has been very difficult to live with the Maoists because they force people to support them. They vitually have control in the rural areas. They are free to move almost everywhere in the mountains because the security forces can’t patrol all the villages. The only way one can survive in the mountain villages is that one should not speak and act anything against them. Even if people don’t agree with or support the Maoists, they have to shut their mouth up to keep themselves alive.
Take my example: I am working in the mountains trying to set up wireless network and trying to bring better educational opportunities for the children living there. The reason I am alive in the mountain and the Maoists have let me stay there is because I have shut my mouth up. Keeping my mouth shut has been the hardest thing for me to do.
since1968: How do the villagers use the networks?
Mahabir Pun: Mostly for communication purposes, since the network is the only means of communication available. The distance from one village to another village is from 8 to 15 miles. The distance to a yak farm from our village is two days walk. The communication between the villages and with the yak hearders has been so easy now. It has saved so much of the villagers’ time.
Although there is a shortage of power at the schools, relay stations, and proxy server station, the villagers still can send and receive their messages through [Microsoft] NetMeeting or through e-mails using our POP server. The POP server is run by Jonni Lehitranta in Finland. We have provided NepalWireless.net accounts to seventy eight people so far and will provide more. Students from two high schools are using the network to write e-mails to each other and to their pen-pals abroad.
Paudwar and Nangi villages are using the network to run their income-producing projects such as yak farming and camping grounds located in the high mountains. Now the management committee of the projects are using the network to communicate with each other and with the yak herders through NetMeeting or email. For that we have given laptops to the camping ground and Yak farming staff. The interesting thing is that the yak herders and the camping ground staff have almost no formal education, and they had never touched the computers before last September.
since1968: As part of a similar project for connecting rural villages in Laos, the developers localized Linux for Laotian users. What operating system do you use? Do you localize for Nepal? If not, why not?
Mahabir Pun: Right now we are using Windows server. Therefore we have not been able to localize the server for Nepal. I know that we can do that with Linux server, but I don’t know much about Linux. One of the volunteers from the US (Philip Mucci) has promised to come to Nepal this year and help us to localize the server, but he is a busy person and he has not decided yet as when he could come.
since1968: I’d like to return briefly to villagers using the computers. Who is in charge of the program in each village? Who controls access to the computers? In one program used to track soy prices in Indian villages, the person put in charge of the computer had marginal social standing. The program found that being able to use the Internet was another avenue of social mobility. Do you see similar patterns of social mobility with your program in Nepal? Is that one of the goals of your program?
Mahabir Pun: Right now the school has been the center for the connection in each village. Therefore one teacher at each school has been working as the “incharge” of the connection. However, our plan is to build a communication center in each village and give the village committee full responsibility to run the center. The committee will choose a person as an “incharge” of the center.
There aren’t much social levels in our society in the mountain villages because most of the people come from the same tribe. All the villagers are farmers and have about the same level of economic status. Therefore I don’t think that the people in our villages will think about moving one step upward in their social status.
since1968: That might surprise a lot of western readers—I think we assume that one of the big reasons for introducing computers to developing countries is for social mobility. You went to college in the US, correct? Can you compare your observations on social mobility here and in Nepal? If social mobility isn’t a goal of introducing wireless networks, isn’t there a risk it will be one of the unintended consequences?
Mahabir Pun: The community in the villages in our region belong to mostly one tribe – Pun Magar. Over 98% of the population in a village come from this tribe. In some of the villages there area few people from other tribe too.
We don’t have any written history of our tribe. Based on the folk tales and oral history our people were originally nomads and used to travel in the mountains hunting wild animals for food. Later they settled in villages and started farming because there were not many wild animals available for hunting. Our people mostly rely on sustainable farming to these days too. Each family have their own land. They raise cattle, goat, and chicken. They grow corn, potato, vegetables, beans, etc, for food. Other than rice, they don’t have to buy food from outside.
Military service is the only source of cash income for the villages. During the First World War and Second World War, the British had recruited young people from our tribe in their army. Since then joining the army has been the main occupation of our people to bring cash income. In the past few years, people have also started going to Gulf countries for work. Other than that there is no source of cash income for the people.
In this way there is not much social levels in term of economic possession in the villages. Moreover, they have the same level socially because they come from the same tribe. They have enough food to eat and they somehow make some money needed to buy clothes and other stuffs for their living. Most of them so far are satisfied with what they have with them.
Therefore most of the people had not thought seriously about sending their children to schools for higher education until two decades back. However, the situation is changing very fast with the coming of new information technologies and building of highways. People in the villages are also learning about different ways of living from different media. Now they are getting more interested about sending their children for higher education so that they can have “better life” other than farming. So far they are not haunted much to make a lots of money and get to higher social status. In this way I can say that our people have just started to think about moving up in social status in term of economic gain.
In this context, my goal of introducing the computers and wireless technology in the rural schools is to provide opportunities for the students to learn about the new technologies and to provide better formal education using the wireless networking technology. That will help to prepare them to compete in the materialistic world to find better jobs. I know how important it is to have better education in order to get better jobs because I have been to school in the US and I have seen it there.
Another goal to bring the technology is to use it for communication purpose. So far the only means of communication that exists is post office. However, not all the villages have post office. The existing rural post offices are not functioning well because of the Maoists rebels. There are no telephones in the mountain villages and it is hard for us to communicate with each other and with the outside world. The reason I am working very hard to network the villages is because I believe that better communication system is important for the overall development of a community and a nation.
However, the fact is that it will take several years for people to seriously think and work hard to adopt the new technologies and get full benefit from them. Even if it is going slow, I would keep working on the project.
since1968: Aside from funding, what were some of your obstacles in launching the program?
Mahabir Pun: Right now there is no main obstacle aside from funding. The Maoists and security forces have let us use the wireless network so far. However, they might come any day and ask us to bring down the connection citing the security reason. If they ask, we have to bring the network down.
The reason we have this fear is that both the security forces and the Maoists have shut down the rural telephone centers if they think that there is danger from the centers for them. There are virtually no rural telephone centers in Nepal now. Some places the maoists have bombed the telephone towers and centers and some places the army has ordered to shut down the centers.
since1968: Good luck with your project and thank you for your time.
Mahabir Pun: Thank you. Please visit our school and village at www.himanchal.org.
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Hanoi: The Last Best Time · 102 words posted 06/10/2004 10:32 AM
Vietnam was growing as rapidly as any of the countries in Southeast Asia when my wife and I traveled to Hanoi in the fall of 2002 to celebrate my birthday. We chanced on the city at the perfect time: the population is young, the streets are crowded but quiet, the food and coffee are spectacular and cheap, and there is, as yet, no Starbucks.
All of this, of course, will change. For one long weekend, we felt blessed to visit the city at the last best time.
View a slideshow of Hanoi (requires Flash).
Pictures taken October, 2002 in Hanoi, Vietnam with Canon AE-1.
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Lee Thorn/Anousak Souphavanh Interview · 1840 words posted 12/18/2002 05:10 PM
The Jhai Foundation focuses on building relationships with the people of Laos. One of the foundation’s current projects is the Jhai Computer, a pedal-powered Linux computer designed to connect Laotian villagers to the internet and to each other.
Lee Thorn is the head of the Jhai Foundation. Anousak Souphavanh is a Laotian programmer working for IBM who assists the Jhai foundation with Linux localization.
since1968: How did you become involved with American-Lao activism?
Lee Thorn: I loaded bombs that fell on Laos in 1966. When I decided to return in 1998 I brought some medical supplies. Through that I met some great people and my PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder] symptoms began to subside. For example, I now often sleep through the night. Out of gratitude to my new friends in Laos, I decided to start a project with Bounthanh Phommasathith, whose village was destroyed by American bombing.
since1968: Can you describe the Jhai Remote IT Village project?
Lee Thorn: It is a computer and communications project. We are creating a system for communicating words and data. We designed to the exacting specifications of villagers. We are providing computers and a way to get onto the internet in villages that have no electricity nor telephones nor cell phone possibilities because of terrain. In five villages we are placing new rugged, no-moving-parts, low power-consuming computers, dot-matrix printers, keyboards and rollerballs. These are powered by foot cranks – stationery bicycles with generators running against the rims hooked to batteries. The batteries are hooked to the computers and printers via cable. Each villages’ system can “see” a point on a hill via a WiFi (802.llb) antenna. The access point on that hill can “see” an antenna on a hospital about 10 km away. The access point is powered by a solar panel and sits in a tree – with a conventional alarm on it. The antenna at the hospital (chosen because it is 100 m from a microwave tower) is hooked to a “server” – another Jhai computer that has a PbaX card in it and is hooked to two landlines – one to the Lao Telecom system and one to the internet. This allows villagers to talk, email, and “chat” with others using a LINUX based KDE localized program.
since1968: Have you worked with the engineers who built the Simputer? Isn’t there a large overlap in your goals and technology?
Lee Thorn: We know about them and some of our engineers have met some of theirs. I am not technical, so I’m not sure about the technology, but our goals – bridging the digital divide – are similar. I believe our system will work for villagers like the ones we are provided it for in the pilot. We hope to launch in February – we need a little more money, not much. We designed exactly to their expressed needs. That seems to be unique.
since1968: The literacy rate in Laos is reported to be below 60%. How do you ensure that everyone benefits from the Jhai PC when so many people can’t read or write?
Lee Thorn: The system is owned by the villages and is run by literate middle school kids – literate in Lao. No one in these villages has much English. Sort of like my village of San Francisco. Here very few people speak Lao.
since1968: There’s also a large literacy gap between men and women in Laos. Some development projects, such as those by Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, focus on empowering women. Will the Jhai PC project promote gender equality in Laos?
Lee Thorn: Yes, it promotes gender equality – 2 out 3 trainees so far were women.
since1968: To someone who doesn’t speak the language (me), Lao script looks a lot like Thai. Are you localizing the Jhai PC to support Lao script?
Anousak Souphavanh: Yes, Lao and Thai had a lot in common, i.e., culture and language. Lao scripts are derived from the old Sanskrit and Pali. What I am doing is to localize the existing (popular) Linux Desktop environment called KDE. The Jhai PC is designed so that it can run Linux and KDE as the choice of Desktop environment.
since1968: Localization isn’t just about supporting an indigenous script. Does the desktop interface popular in the West make sense in Laos, or have you developed a localized interface as well?
Anousak Souphavanh: For myself, I really have no problem with the English user interface. However, we are talking about Lao people with various education backgrounds. Most, as far as I am concerned, are local people; the only thing they know are the words like “hello” and “goodbye.” So Lao localization will give users the look and feel in Lao language. This Lao localization project will strive to bring the benefits of Information Technology down to the Lao masses. I want to make technology accessible to the majority of Lao that does not speak English.
Almost all software and operating systems and websites in available in Laos and around the world today Lao are in the English language.
As we know it, many people in Laos are currently excluded from computer use, the Internet, and the World Wide Web by absence of software in the language, which the majority of Laotians speak. A number of software systems of wide use have been localized in various international languages like Thai, Chinese, Arabic, etc. However there has been virtually no software localization into any of the major language of Lao. Linux is a robust and stable operating system and also freely available. So I have taken the step to localize Linux operating system. My aim is to design a localized “user friendly” interface at the system level, which look more natural to the local user. I have also taken steps to localize suitable components within Linux OS (like KDE desktop environment) to enable applications to create, edit and display contents in the Lao language. Availability of local language software will play a crucial role in the process of taking the benefits of Information Revolution to the local community. In this way I can also prevent the restriction of resource usage.
since1968: You’ve estimated that a Jhai PC would cost about US$400 in production. That’s still out of reach for the typical Laotian villager. How can you bring the costs down?
Lee Thorn: We won’t. They are meant to be village resources, not family nor individual resources. Even in Laos a village can afford this system – once the system is built in quantity.
since1968: What economic benefits should the Laotian villagers expect from the Jhai computer?
Anousak Souphavanh: The benefits are as follows:
- They will be able to use Internet calling (VoIP) to their relatives living in overseas – USA, Australia, France, Canada, etc. – with fraction of paying to Lao major telephone companies;
- They are able to use the system to prepare their documents;
- They are able to learn the basics of English;
- They are able to surf the net via Lao localized web browser; and
- They are able to send email in Lao to their relatives/friends.
These are only small portions of what they are able to do.
since1968: I spend my day keeping up with Microsoft security patches, hoping that the code I write will run on various proprietary networks and systems, and worrying about licensing. You’ve built a computer that uses an open-source operating system and runs on car batteries and bicycle power. If the Jhai PC project works, it’s truly revolutionary.
Lee Thorn: Thanks. Maybe it is time for a revolution. The odd thing is that, as far as we can determine, no one but us has asked villagers exactly what they want in terms of voice, written and data communications, then designed to those expressed needs. (I’d love to find out that I am wrong about this.) I think this may be the source of the revolution, if there is such a thing as a single source.
Of course, Lee Felsenstein’s design is brilliant – he’s about the smartest guy I ever met.
However, the real revolution is based on the fact that we don’t do development, we do reconciliation, which means we help people help themselves at their own pace and with their own best thinking. We take the time to develop friendships, even when it is painful – and it is painful in these villages because everyone, just about, got displaced during the war by American bombing. We know friendships are not built overnight, but that friendship is possible – and that it is better than war, way better.
We’ve worked in these villages – especially Phon Kham – for five years. What makes our project revolutionary – if it is – is that we designed for specific needs for folks that have few advantages in material terms – but plenty of smarts. I learned this way of project design from my late friend, Ed Roberts, who was very influential in the Independent Living Movement for People with Disabilities. Ed told me that when a wheelchair is developed for some one like him – a respiratory quadriplegic – it tends to work for most who have less severe disabilities. It has wide application. It includes more than excludes. That’s how we operate in terms of model building and we do this because we are more interested in relationships with the folks in the villagers than anybody else’s priorities.
since1968: What can programmers and designers from outside Laos do to support your work?
Lee Thorn: They can send money to Jhai Foundation, 921 France Ave., San Francisco, CA 94112. We need US$9000 to do a one village test, US$19000 to do the complete five villages – and we want to get this done before the rainy season which starts mid-May. These are current hard costs with plenty of redundancy. They can also contact Lee Felsenstein, our chief volunteer design engineer and an old friend of mine, especially if they want to help build the PCs by hand and live near Silicon Valley. If techies have a burning desire to help in other ways, I suggest they go to our site www.jhai.org, get familiar with the system in more detail, then imagine ways they can fit in and contact Lee at lee@nerditude.com. Perhaps you have heard of Lee Felsenstein. He was design engineer for the Osborne-1, among other extraordinary accomplishments. Some of his stuff is in the Smithsonian. We cobble and tinker, as the NY Times points out, but some of the folks doing this are quite good at it. If some of your readers are not techies, maybe they could do the same search and present me with an idea for a way they’d like to help. I’m the kind of organizer that imagines he needs help of ALL kinds. My wife agrees that I am more than a little inept.
since1968: Thank you for your time.
Lee Thorn: Thanks for your good questions. If people have other questions, they can contact me at lee@jhai.org and I’ll try to get their questions to the right members of our team.
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Buy Jhai Coffee to support the Jhai Foundation.
Read about the project in the Economist (requires subscription).
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