Intel Chairman Craig Barrett’s keynote speech yesterday was a marked departure from the usual electronics-show fare. Rather than talk about the “glitzy glitzy tech we see on the floor of CES,” Barrett focused on the company’s Small Things Challenge, which dares people to get off their butts and help out the less fortunate, and how technology can sustainably improve the lives of the billions of people in developing countries–”simple tech changing lives one step at a time.” He tossed out four examples of how this works in the real world:
1) My favorite project involved a school bus turned into a roving computer lab in Baramati, a village near Pune, India. The computer lab, which has a microwave Internet link and is powered by 12-volt batteries, drives around to different schools, where kids hop on and start learning, learning, learning. (Here’s a short documentary on the project.) The project is sustainably funded by parents who pay $3 per year to have their kids get on the bus. This awesome little idea has steadily grown, and now the’re looking to get 17 more buses.
Barrett said when he visited the town and asked one little girl what her favorite subject was, she said “Tuesday”–the day the bus came to her school. Cute!
2) Kiva.org is microfinance meets Web2.0. Entrepreneurs in developing countries (vetted by Kiva) post details about their business goals on the site, and anyone in the world can lend money to the projects. Barrett said the repayment rate was about 98 percent, similar to what Nobel-winner Muhammad Yunus and his microlending Grameen Bank see in their projects in Bangladesh. A neat video showed how Kenyan self-starters used the site to get boosts for their companies; a soapmaker named Musu Mara got a loan to buy oil in bulk, cutting down on her costs.
3) A 3D-rendered interactive game made by Warner Brothers aims to help change Kenyans’ perceptions and behaviors related to HIV/AIDS. Each player in the game chooses one of five typical characters in a poor neighborhood in Nairobi, and the characters have to make choices in realistic, subtly educational situations. The game is called “Pamoja Mtaani” (“Together in the Hood”), includes some bona fide Kenyan hip hop, and is in trial now.
4) A medical-monitoring device, built with contributions from OQO and Accu-tech, is helping folks in the hinterlands of India get better health care. The device takes diagnostics like an ECG and wirelessly transmits it back to well-trained doctors, often in bigger cities, who can keep tabs on patients from afar.
