New Village - "Leapfrogging the Grid" on a Micro Scale - Description of "Old Village" - The Research Center on Computing & Society

Text-only Version

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.

2. Description of “Old Village”
Imagine a remote village of one thousand people – let us call it “Old Village” – in an underdeveloped country far from any industrialized city or town – far from electric wires, telephone lines, gas pipelines, paved roads, and other typical infrastructures of the industrial age. Old Village has about 300 adults and 700 children. An average family ekes out a living by earning the equivalent of 100 American dollars per month. The roads in and around Old Village are muddy paths with deep ruts created by animal-drawn wagons. There is much water in and around Old Village – in swamps, streams and muddy puddles – but this water is very unhealthy to drink because it contains not only particles of soil and rotting plants and feces, there also are germs, viruses and various dangerous and debilitating parasites. Because the citizens of Old Village drink this water, they often are ill, and their youngest children frequently die from diarrhea. The village has two people who act as nurses in a makeshift medical clinic, but their medical training is poor and few medical supplies are available. Parents and the oldest children in a family are typically away from home during most days in order to secure enough income and resources for the family to survive. In addition, younger children stay home to take care of infants and toddlers, so it is almost impossible for children of any age to go to school.

The economy and lifestyle of Old Village could be transformed dramatically with the help of information age education and resources that could provide safe drinking water, improved health care, much better schooling, and significantly increased income for the whole community. All of these improvements are technically achievable at a modest cost in “foreign aid” from the industrialized nations of the world. Consider the examples described below.

3. Clean Drinking Water
One of the major medical and economic problems for Old Village is the lack of healthy drinking water. This problem often leads to the death of young children, and regularly debilitates those who do not die from it, robbing families of vital resources and stamina. Obviously, if an inexpensive and effective way could be found to solve this problem, the entire village would benefit dramatically – both from a health perspective and an economic one. Fortunately, a solution is “just around the corner” in the form of an inexpensive, electronically equipped “ultraviolet water bottle” that could provide unlimited supplies of healthy water for everyone in the village. Such a bottle does not yet exist, but the technology to create it is already available; and, using mass production techniques, the price of such a bottle would be very modest. Every person in the village would be able to have a one-liter bottle which would disinfect water for several years. If a mass-produced bottle cost 50 American dollars, a tiny “foreign aid” donation of 50 thousand American dollars would provide an ultraviolet water bottle for every citizen of Old Village to use for several years – a remarkable accomplishment with huge positive consequences. The economic benefits to the village might even enable future replacement bottles to be purchased by the village citizens themselves without additional foreign aid.

The ultraviolet water bottle:
In 2001, solar engineer Miles Maiden invented a device which he called the “Steri-PEN®.”² It is a small stirring rod that generates ultraviolet light and can be powered by AA batteries. It weighs less than 200 grams. Using ultraviolet light, the Steri-PEN® is stirred in a container of water and can disinfect a liter of water within two minutes. During its useable lifetime, the Steri-PEN® can disinfect 2300 liters of water, which (at two liters per day per person) is about a three-year personal supply. The Steri-PEN® purifies water to a level that meets the USA Environmental Protection Agency protocol for water purifiers, and it kills 99.9% of bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa and algae. The ultraviolet light from the Steri-PEN® is generated by a small electronic circuit that uses very little electricity.

With the invention of this new technology, it now seems possible to create an inexpensive water-purifying bottle that can be described as follows: The bottle would be made of very tough plastic that would not break easily, even in extreme temperatures. It could be easily carried around, and rough handling by children would not break it. An electronic circuit that generates ultraviolet light within the bottle would be embedded in a way that protects it from damage when the bottle is handled. The bottle also would have an embedded battery that is recharged by gentle shaking, or by turning a crank stored in the bottom. Alternatively, small rechargeable batteries could be inserted into a compartment on the side of the bottle. Such batteries could be recharged by an unattached hand-cranked device, or even by the body movements of the bottle owner during everyday activities. The inner wall of the ultraviolet water bottle would be a mirror that causes the ultraviolet light to “bounce around” within and thereby create maximum distribution of the light throughout the bottle. The lid of the bottle would be a filter-holder with a cupped shape. Specially designed filter papers (somewhat like those used in coffee makers) would be placed in the lid, and then water from nearby streams, ponds, swamps or puddles would be poured into it. The paper filter would be fine-grained enough to remove all visible solids – living and non-living – leaving clear-looking water inside the bottle. The filters could be mass produced in industrialized nations at a fraction of a cent each. Once water has been filtered into the bottle, the ultraviolet generator could be activated to kill all dangerous organisms within two minutes. As long as the original water did not have harmful chemicals dissolved in it, such an “ultraviolet water bottle” would produce clear and healthy drinking water quickly and efficiently, even from brackish swamp water or muddy puddles.

Impacts: The impacts upon Old Village would be dramatic and very positive: The overall health of the community would improve, and small children would stop dying from diarrhea. Older children and adults soon would have better health and more stamina, increasing the family’s ability to earn a living.

*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.

² For details regarding the Steri-PEN® portable water-disinfection system, please go to their web site.

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