Help the world bridge the digital divide by learning an easy-to-use method that allows everyone to enjoy the benefits of the Internet using just a phone and their voice. Computer and technology expert Emdad Khan pinpoints the factors that affect the use of technology, including the language divide. While the English-speaking world dominates the Internet, it's possible for all people to reap its benefits using just their voice in their native language. The Voice Internet ushers in a new era of access to technology. It eliminates the need to learn a new language, is affordable, and overcomes problems associated with many devices, such as needing to use a small keypad and screen. Get ready to learn; how Voice Internet technology rides on existing infrastructure; how to take further steps to harness the benefits of the Internet; and; how this technology can positively affect economies and cultures. If you are a decision maker, governmental policy maker, teacher, entrepreneur, philanthropist, or someone concerned with helping humanity enjoy access to the Internet, then this guidebook provides you with the knowledge to take action. Bridge the gaps that limit the usage of technology and open up the Internet for Everyone.

Internet for Everyone

Reshaping the Global Economy by Bridging the Digital DivideBy Emdad Khan

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Emdad Khan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-4251-7

Contents

PART ONE—The World of Divides and Gaps........................................................................11. A Quick Look at Today's World....................................................................................32. The need to Bridging The Digital Divide..........................................................................223. Existing Approaches CANNOT Really Bridge the Digital Divide......................................................31PART TWO—The Way to Truly Bridging the Digital Divide.........................................................434. Approaches to really Bridge the Digital Divide—Technology and Solution.....................................455. What is the Language Divide and How to Bridge It.................................................................626. Approaches to really6 Bridge the Digital and Language Divides—Deployment..................................707. Voice Internet—an enabling technology for Several New Products and Services................................80PART THREE—Towards a New World of Prosperity..................................................................938. What's next after the Digital and Language Divides are Bridged from Connectivity Standpoint?.....................959. Reshaping the Global Economy by Bottom of the Pyramid People.....................................................10910. What can happen after the World Economy is Reshaped?—The Dream, Challenge and Reality.....................142APPENDIX A..........................................................................................................157INDEX...............................................................................................................163

Chapter One

A Quick Look at Today's World

In this world of over 6.5 billion people, over 4 billion people are poor—40% live in poverty, and 16% live in extreme poverty. The World Bank defines poverty as living on less than $2 a day, absolute or extreme poverty as living on less than $1 a day. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz in his fascinating latest book "Making Globalization Work" says "Think for a minute what it means to live on one or two dollars a day. Life for people this poor is brutal. Childhood malnutrition is endemic, life expectancy is often below fifty years, and medical care is scarce. Hours are spent each day searching for fuel and drinkable water and....". Apart from inadequate income, two other issues are heavily associated with people living below the poverty line: insecurity and powerlessness. One World Bank report published a nice statement from a young poor woman in Jamaica that captures the sense of powerlessness: "Poverty is like living in jail, living under bondage, waiting to be free". In general, poor have few opportunities to speak out. When they speak, no one listens; when someone does listen, the reply is that nothing can be done; when they are told something can be done, nothing is ever done.

On the other side of the coin there are the rich people, much smaller in number, but they own over 80% of the world wealth!!! They enjoy all the benefits of the civilization, they control the world economy, they control world business, world laws—they control almost everything except poverty. Well, not quite true though. They try to minimize poverty by donation, philanthropy, foundations etc. Obviously that is not enough since the poverty has been increasing for a long time now. In 2004, the United Nations took a new initiative to minimize poverty and improve the equity distribution in this unfair world. This is called the Millennium Development Goals. [LinkMDG] We will take a look at that shortly. But before that, let's take a closure look at this enormous gap between rich and poor; what are the causes, what are the types of gaps, are there other similar gaps, can these gaps be bridged, if so how and the like.

Broadly speaking, the inequality is inherent in mother-nature. The natural resources of the world were not uniformly distributed when the world was created, different races were born in different parts of the world getting different resources, not every human is born with same capabilities, not every human develops the same level of intelligence even under the "same" environment etc etc. In short, by birth we are all different; the equity is different to begin with. So, as we grew as a human race, more gaps and inequities got developed. Today, we have rich-poor gap, gap in natural resources, gap in ethnicity, gap in male-female capabilities, gap due to the computer revolution (The so called Digital Divide), the gap due to disabilities and so on. Even a much simpler gap can be seen through students in a class. Assume that a class has all the good equipments—like a computer for each student, a nice projector so that everyone could easily see the lecture notes and everyone could hear the teacher very well. However, not all students in such a class will perform equally. This implies that even if we do our best to minimize all the gaps, because of its inherent property some gaps will remain. That is why Darwin said "only the fittest will survive".

Should we try to reduce all these gaps? Can we really make these gaps go away? If so, how can we do so? These are the few key issues we will discuss throughout this book. Our premise is that the gap is an inherent property in this world. So, not all gaps can be eliminated or reduced to the same degree. For example, natural resources—a country cannot just acquire its missing natural resources. We have some good control on some gaps and relatively less control on other gaps. The Digital Divide, for example, is a gap that can be reduced to a good level when we compare it to reducing the gap between the rich and poor. Yes, bridging the Digital Divide, will eventually help reduce the gap between the rich and poor but there are many other factors that contribute to the rich-poor gap.

In general we should try to minimize all the gaps—no questions about that. But we would need to set our expectation right—that there will be some gaps no matter how well we try to minimize them as gap is inherent in the system. However, by lowering gaps to a good level and keep on lowering will continue to yield a better world and hence that should be our goal.

Many organizations, foundations, civil societies, and individuals have been trying to minimize these gaps. One such key organization is the United Nations (UN)—in 2004, the UN took a new initiative to minimize poverty and improve the global distribution of wealth. This is called the Millennium Development Goals [LinkMDG]. Many people are working together to achieve this worthwhile global dream by 2015. These MDGs are

- End Poverty & Hunger

- Provide Universal Education

- Ensure Gender Equality

- Good Child Health

- Good Maternal Health

- Combat HIV/AIDS

- Ensure Environmental Sustainability

- Ensure Global Partnership

Many people around the world have written extraordinary papers, books, and reports on rich-poor gaps, poverty reduction, globalization, bridging the Digital Divide and many related topics. One such book is—"Making Globalization Work" by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz very nicely pointed out the key issues with globalization and how such issues can be addressed to make globalizations work worldwide for both poor and rich to ensure minimizing some of the key gaps mentioned above. Another good book is "Creating a World Without Poverty" by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus [Yunus 2007]. Yunus proposed a new approach called "Social Business" where the key objective of the business is to provide social benefits rather than the traditional objective of profit maximization.

Another good book is "Out of Poverty" by Paul Polak [Polak 2008]. Paul provides a very good description of how to get out of poverty using some very successful examples. "The Fortune at The Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits" by C.K Prahlad [Prahlad 2004] and "How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of the New Ideas" by David Bornstein [Bornstein 2005] are two other good books.

Stiglitz has pointed out that in spite of so much works done by so many organizations (including the World Bank and IMF—International Monetary Fund), poverty has been increasing rather than decreasing. The key reasons are:

a) Organizations (including corporations) involved in this process try to solve it but without really giving up their key goals like high profitability and having good financial control. Associated policies actually helped lenders much more and borrowers much less.

b) Because of (a), many governments took loan with unfavorable terms and paying high interest; thus forcing them to spend less on the development. It has caused a big "debt burden" for many countries. It has also contributed to the global financial instability.

c) The need for "reserve" for each country (indirectly came from the Global financial system), caused money to actually flow from poor to the rich (instead of the other way around)—for example US is borrowing (or developing and poor countries are lending) $2B per day (this figure is lowered to some extent after the financial melt-down during end of 2008) by selling its T-Bill with a very low interest rate. If this money could be lent at higher interest rate or not lend at all, each country could spent the same for key development. This has resulted in an unstable Global Reserve system.

d) Economic globalization has outpaced political globalization.

e) Globalization without good Global rule.

Stiglitz recommendations include

1. A new World Financial Reserve System that help money flow from rich to poor.

2. Democratization of Globalization.

3. Strengthening political globalization to make it comparable to economic globalization.

4. Making the trade fair between rich and poor countries.

5. A good and stable way to eliminate the burden of debt.

6. Improving corporate role for social responsibility, less cost for poor countries, less profit from poor countries, limiting the power of corporations, improving corporate governance, and reducing the scope of corruption.

Such suggested policies, recommendations and plans are very good. However, as Stiglitz points out, implementation of these proposed solutions would be difficult mainly because the stake holders would not really give up their key goals like high profitability and having good financial control whereas the suggested recommendations do not encourage high profitability and high financial control for valid reasons.

Even though these might be difficult to implement, these are undoubtedly good goals. However, these are at very high level. To really minimize all gaps, we would need more specifics, especially complementary recommendations at implementation level so that we can achieve the desired goals. In fact, for some of the key problems, we would need to look at from the bottom-up. A good example is converting the base of the pyramid people (mainly poor people) into a huge resource rather than keeping them as a social burden by involving them as part of the solution rather than as part of the problem. Paul has shown some good examples to get out of poverty by increasing daily earnings from $1 a day to several dollars a day. His key suggestions are:

a) to understand the root cause of poverty (especially extreme poverty i.e. people living with less than a $1 per day income) by directly talking to the poor people to clearly understand their problems and root cause, and then developing appropriate and affordable solutions for their problems so that they can earn more through their own existing efforts. For example, for farmers, the key issue was to do more in production as well as in sale so that their earning was enough to get out of poverty. The root problem in this regard was lack of a low cost irrigation tool. Paul and IDE (International Development Enterprise with Paul as one of the Founders [LinkIDE]) had worked together to fund and provide a good solution to the irrigation problem and helped millions of people to get out of poverty. Such solutions also include developing and marketing technologies for water access and control, providing expertise and training, and increasing access to markets.

b) To identify new related products to generate new revenue with minimal efforts. In this regard one example is that Paul & IDE helped people to plant new fruit trees and use that to generate new revenues.

Paul has also made several other very good suggestions including "designing for the other 90%" (traditional design focus on the rich 10% customers whereas a low cost affordable design can provide a profitable solutions to a much larger 90% market) and how other organizations can help people to get out of poverty and prosper.

C.K. Prahlad has outlined how fortune can be made from the bottom of the Pyramid people by showing several examples using successful projects in various parts of the world. He highlighted the ways that enterprises can follow to deliver products & services to the developing world in a manner that help developing world to prosper while at the same time enterprises can make fortune from poor people in the developing world.

C.K. Prahlad's ideas are very good and some corporations have started focusing on those. However, today's corporations mainly focus on the top 10% people as Paul mentioned in his book. Changing this for many major corporations to focus on the remaining 90% people will be difficult and will take a long time. Designing for the top 10% and doing business with them has a different paradigm than doing business with the bottom 90% who cannot easily afford to buy, return on investment (ROI) from whom would not be high and the like. However, once a good number of corporations show the way successfully, this trend will change and many corporations will adopt and focus on doing business with bottom 90%.

Yunus has shown how microcredit can help many extremely poor people from the bottom of the pyramid to get out of poverty. Yunus has also shown great social benefits through various Social Businesses.

The recommendations made by Paul Polak, C.K Prahlad, Mohammad Yunus and many others are very good recommendations to get out of poverty and should be continued and enhanced when possible. But to do even better, especially, for the extremely poor (to not just get out of poverty but to be more successful financially), we will need to do more, and that is the main focus of this book. The recommendations made in this book are applicable for extremely poor, poor, middle class and to some extent for rich people. By "truly" Bridging the Digital Divide, we can enable such people to focus on education; and by going beyond bridging the Digital Divide, these people can focus on entrepreneurship and innovation resulting in real economic, social and other developments for themselves (i.e. transforming the "Digital Divide" into "Digital Opportunity"), and a huge low cost resource for the rest of the world.

This will also indirectly help some of the issues mentioned in Stiglitz's book. For example, it will help the global reserve system. Why? Well, if we analyze carefully, the real reason, countries are buying T-Bills mainly from US, in spite of such a high cost, is to ensure that their economy is less volatile—providing higher confidence to others to do business and trade with them. But then why mainly US T-Bill? Because as a country and its currency, the US is very stable that one can really depend on (this is changing to some extent because of the recent financial melt-down but many still believe that US will come out of such a down-turn soon). And the real reason for US stability is because of its high sustained innovation and entrepreneurship for a long time. The same can be true (at least to a good extent) if a poor or developing country can really start doing innovation and entrepreneurship, and make & sell new products/services globally. When this happens, the need to keep high "reserve" will be minimized and other countries will have much more confidence in any country really creating and selling new products and services worldwide.

"Truly" Bridging the Digital Divide will also extend some of the ideas that Polak, Prahlad, and others have mentioned. For example, helping the people in slums with the benefits of the Internet, entrepreneurship and innovation will enable them to do much more in increasing their income and society's income.

We will limit the scope of this book to the issues with the Digital Divide and Language Divide ONLY and their impact on other gaps including how bridging the Digital Divide can really change the World economy, but we are not going to specifically address issues related to how to bridge other gaps, although bridging the Digital Divide will help bridge many other gaps including the rich-poor gap.

The Digital Divide

The digital divide is the gap between those with regular, effective access to digital technologies and those without. In other words, those who are able to use technology for their own benefit and those who can not. Major digital technologies are the computer, Internet, PDA (Personal Digital Assistance) and smart cell phones. "Effective Access" has two broad forms—(a) availability of a digital device and (b) learning how to use a digital technology.

Our society has changed significantly since the advent of the computer. Computing power has changed how we do business, how we communicate, how we store information and how we compute, just to name a few. Like any new technology, computers were very expensive initially and only businesses and some Governments could afford to buy them. When the Personal computer was introduced in early 1980, the price became within reach of many consumers. However, the number of such consumers who could afford to buy a computer was still much lower than those who could not afford to buy one. This gap due to the computer revolution is called the Digital Divide. This divide, however, started shortening as the price of computers continued to fall.

(Continues...)

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