New Village – “Leapfrogging the Grid”
on a Micro Scale*

Professor Terrell Ward Bynum

A “Concept Paper” prepared for distribution at the World Energy Technologies Summit: “Leapfrogging the Grid”
Presented at the UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France
on February 10 & 11, 2004

Click here to download this paper in PDF format.

Traditional Saying: Give a person a fish, and he will eat for a day; give him a net and teach him how to fish, and he will eat for the rest of his life.

1. Introduction
2. Description of “Old Village”
3. Clean Drinking Water
4. Educational Opportunities
5. Improved Health Care
6. The Need for an Information Center in Old Village
7. “Local” Employment in the Information Age – The Birth of “New Village”
8. Conclusion – Cultural Considerations

5. Improved Health Care
The availability of healthy drinking water, made possible by the ultraviolet water bottle, would be the beginning of significant improvements in health care in Old Village. Using palmtop computers and information available over the Internet, village teachers could instruct the population on a wide variety of health-related subjects. Changes in the behavior of the citizens of Old Village, consistent with the community’s own values, could bring about dramatic improvements in health. In addition, some members of the community could be provided scholarships to enable them to attend schools and colleges in other lands and thereby become nurses or paramedics informed about contemporary medicine and sanitation practices. These Old Village citizens would then return home to run an information-age medical clinic.

An electronically equipped medical clinic – The newly trained nurses or paramedics who return to Old Village could set up, with a modest investment of foreign aid (about 50 thousand American dollars), an electronically equipped medical clinic that uses small, battery-powered medical devices to measure a patient’s temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar, and a variety of other medically relevant characteristics. In addition, equipped with powerful, hand cranked laptops, and medical software, a nurse or paramedic could get helpful medical advice and assistance from the computer itself. If the computer is unable to provide the needed assistance, the nurse or paramedic could use a cell phone or email (see section 6 below) to seek advice from medical experts in other lands. Doctors in distant medical schools and hospitals could even examine patients virtually using increasingly effective “telemedicine” techniques. For 200 American dollars, or less, the clinic could secure a small solar-powered refrigerator for vaccines and other medicines that must be stored at low temperatures. These capabilities, combined with newly available medical supplies – purchased through improved village income (see section 7 below) – would significantly improve health care in Old Village.

Impacts:
Good health and quality medical care are among the many benefits enjoyed by people in an “information society”. Old Village, if it became such a community, could provide these benefits without having to pollute the earth and heat the atmosphere with an industrial infrastructure. Instead, miniaturized electronic devices powered by small, easily recharged batteries – or by solar panels, mini windmills or micro water turbines – could make this possible at a very modest cost.

6. The Need for an Information Center in Old Village
It is clear from the above discussion that Old Village must have an “information center” (called an “RIC” – rural information center – in sub-Saharan Africa). Such a center would provide connections to the Internet plus local mobile phone services. In sub-Saharan Africa, some of them already provide electronic libraries, computer schools, and community video halls in addition to telephone and Internet services.⁴ The RIC in Old Village would need a small cell-phone tower for local telephone services and a modest satellite dish for long distance telephone and Internet communications.

The cost to equip such an RIC would be about 50 thousand American dollars. In addition, three or four citizens of Old Village would have to be educated and trained to run and maintain the RIC equipment. One of these newly trained technicians could maintain the RIC’s equipment and also repair laptops for teachers and nurses, as well as the occasional palmtop for a student or a parent. Initially, foreign aid or a private investor would provide funds to set up the RIC and train its personnel. Eventually, as the economy of Old Village is transformed into an information age economy (see section 7 below), the village would be able to pay for the RIC itself, and also pay a return on the original investment.

The small cell phone tower and satellite dish with associated electronic equipment would need more electricity than could be generated by hand cranking or other “mini methods” of charging batteries. To achieve this, while avoiding pollution and atmospheric warming, the village could use solar panels, or small windmills, or water-driven micro turbines, or other rapidly developing technologies with a very modest price.

7. “Local” Employment in the Information Age – The Birth of “New Village”
Given clean drinking water, quality medical care, good schooling, and a well-functioning information center, Old Village would be in position to transform itself into “New Village” – a 21st Century, information-age community that has leapfrogged over the industrial age. This is possible because people who know how to use computers and modern communication devices can work at home, or in a local “business center,” pursuing a rapidly growing number of information age careers that can be conducted over the Internet or via telephone: data entry services, telephone answering services, database management, software engineering, data mining, accounting, graphic arts, typesetting, editing, translating, web site design, web site maintenance, and on and on. In New Village, the average family income from such careers could climb into the thousands of dollars per year, instead of a few hundred dollars. This newly created wealth within the community could pay not only for ultraviolet water bottles, improved medical care, better schooling and an RIC; it also could provide funds for additional advantages and opportunities of the information age.

8. Conclusion – Cultural Considerations
This brief “concept paper” has focused upon the technical feasibility of using already available information and communication technologies to leapfrog over the industrial age right into the information age. It is important for the world to see that this can be done with a very modest investment of funds – and without polluting the environment or warming the atmosphere.

It also is important for people who live in underdeveloped countries to realize that miniature computerized devices, especially when combined with local generation of electricity, can be culturally and psychologically empowering! These technologies can place in the hands of individuals and local communities themselves the power to improve and economically transform their lives in ways that are consistent with their local and personal values. Properly used, therefore, miniature computerized devices can increase freedom, opportunity and hope, and return to individuals and their local communities the power to be in charge of their own lives and futures. Technology that brings about freedom, opportunity and hope is worthy of society’s attention!

Of course, this paper does not deal at all with many relevant and very difficult political, religious, and cultural concerns. For example, people in underdeveloped lands often are suspicious of electronic technologies, because they view them (with good reason!) as means used by a few powerful countries, and a few wealthy companies, to get rich while ignoring the fact that they could be undermining the values of other cultures. If “leapfrogging the grid” is to be possible and encouraged – and ethical!– it must deal seriously with such issues.

*The author wishes to express sincere thanks for helpful comments from colleagues at Southern Connecticut State University, especially (in alphabetical order) Christine Broadbridge, John Critzer, Krystyna Górniak-Kocikowska, Darika Nantiya, Arthur Paulson, and Richard Volkman.

⁴ See, L. Natalie Sandomirsky, “Women and Information Communication Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa” forthcoming in Krystyna Górniak-Kocikowska and Elzbieta Pakszys, Eds., Women and Information Technology [tentative title], forthcoming.

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