You’d think that a conference session titled “Greener Gadgets: The Future of Consumer Technology,” would be focused on the latest environmentally-oriented cutting-edge technology to emerge from places like Silicon Valley. In fact, the take-away from the session panel was that if you’re really interested in learning how to build low-power, long-life, non-toxic devices with a small ecological footprint, the kind of places you should visit are Africa and India.
David Floyd, managing director of British company Freeplay Energy, explained why, using the example of a solar-powered radio his firm had developed for classrooms in Africa (the goal was to allow national governments to broadcast educational programs to schools over the airwaves.) Solar power was essential because so few places in Africa have access to electrical power. Other companies had approached the problem by trying to combine an off-the-shelf solar panel with an off-the-shelf radio, but the power demands of the radio, designed for the Western world where electricity is plentiful, doomed those radios to failure.
