Technology or photo-ops?

 Following yesterday’s blog, a reader from the US has added some first-hand feedback on projects like the e-village in Sri Lanka. He writes: “I personally visited a couple of the telecentres (in South Asia) and have very mixed feelings about them. On the one hand, the people running them were clearly dedicated to trying to improve the lives of their neighbors. On the other hand, both I visited were poorly located and difficult for villagers to reach and the VSAT connection is very expensive - about $300/month. It is hard to see how the effort can be sustained without continual donor or government subsidy.”

His main point - that dropping 4PCs in a village in South Asia is a great photo-op, but unless the technology is connected to people’s lives, the computers serve little purpose - couldn’t be more apt. Getting information about the developing world from web pages like this one is clearly not good enough.