Technology Expert Tackles Real-World Issues

Written by Shala Hainer Friday, November 11 2011

Snapshot: Michael Best, associate professor, Georgia Tech
Michael Best, associate professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, has served as a faculty associate of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Information Technologies and International Development journal. He holds a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served as the director of the Media Lab Asia in India.

He focuses his research on how information and communication technologies can impact social, economic, and political development in low-income countries in Asia and Africa. He studies how technology such as mobile phones and internet access can affect these places, particularly in post-conflict areas undergoing reconstruction efforts. Men are usually the ones who reach out for technological education in these areas, so Best's team has restructured some programs to reach out to and include more women.

A resident of Atlanta, he is often called upon to consult with organizations such as the World Bank, ITU (the United Nation's agency for information and communication technology), and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Womenetics: Explain a little about your research.
Michael Best: I look broadly at the role of computers and communication on economic, social, and political development in low-income countries. It's a fairly broad mandate. Currently we focus quite a lot on civic engagement and political and election environments in West Africa, but I've done a fair bit of work in things like rural access in South Asia and Southeast Asia. And definitely, these all have women's issues and health education as elements.

Womenetics: How did your experience as director of the Media Lab Asia in India impact you and your research?
Best: I learned a lot. But mostly what I learned about was much more how politics and institutions work rather than how technology or people work. I learned that governments can't make you succeed, but they sure can make you fail. I learned you have to watch your back a bit. Not so much from the Indians themselves, but from the broader network of personalities involved in a very complicated project. I also learned how one needs to think deeply about institutional sustainability and political sustainability issues – how the best laid plans cannot always sustain past an election, where suddenly the political stakeholders who were the advocates of your program are no longer in power. So I learned a lot of practical, real-world things. I learned how hard problems with development truly are. I learned why we haven't just up and solved poverty issues.

Womenetics: What are some major obstacles in increasing communication technologies in low-income countries?
Best: Money! And I have not really overcome it. Seriously, my work is mostly resource constrained. Funders are not always interested in the kind of work I do, trying to develop and deploy computers and the internet in low-income settings. Furthermore, not all money is of equal value. Some comes with debilitating constraints on either how it can be used or how quickly it must be spent. For example, it is hard to raise capital that will allow for multiyear study, evaluations, and deep and ongoing reflection.

Some obstacles are financing, and in some cases it may be public policy. But in general, the issue is why you want that infrastructure and how do we decide what technology is appropriate for a particular people and the cultures we're working in. Those are the hard problems. These include technical problems, such as how do you create a computer interface that works in Tamil as well as English. But more deeply, it's about meeting these communities where their needs and wants are, which are not always what an engineer sitting in Seattle, Wash., or Atlanta, Ga., might want.

Womenetics: You have many ideas on how to recreate the computer for rural and low-income areas, including incorporating different languages. What ideas do you see becoming a reality in the near future?
Best: It used to be that the Worldwide Web URLs (the stuff you type into a browser after "www.") only spoke English and most of the content on the web was in English. Microsoft Windows, at one point in time, was not available in Hindi even though it is a language of more than 200 million people. Today, English is no longer the predominant language of the web, and Windows is available in Hindi and many other languages. So already it is a reality that computers and the digital network that connects them incorporate many different languages.

But there still is a ways to go. Most computers still consist of a standard QWERTY keyboard, even though many languages have no "Q," "W," "E," etc. We need fundamental redesigns of computers to support, at a basic level, non-English languages and to support people with no print literacy. This redesign is needed across many aspects of today's computers. Why do we use a computer "desktop" in rural environments that do not need or use desks? Indeed, we have seen little or no change in the basic decades-old desktop metaphor of manila folders and files -- this metaphor dominates on computers running Windows to Apple products and most smart phones. When will we see a commercial computer product with a metaphor focused on agriculture or family or personal history?

Beyond these design considerations, I am concerned about computer pricing; they simply remain too expensive. Many will have heard of the $100 laptop that in practice costs $200. Reality never met the good intentions of these laptop creators for a truly affordable device. But recently, in India, they have announced a $35 tablet computer. Wonderful if this is true; but until I see it deployed at some scale with this price point, I will remain somewhat circumspect.

Low power consumption is another area where the arc is toward a system better for low-income rural settings, but we are not yet where we need to be. The mobile market has driven innovation in low-power handhelds, and now the tablet market is doing likewise. The days of a computer having to draw the power equivalent of a string of very bright incandescent light bulbs is happily over. But power is still a problem in many low-income rural settings, and the promise of a computer that can be powered by a hand crank or cheap simple solar systems has not yet been realized. Still, I hope we will see continued innovation in this area.

Womenetics: Have you noticed a technological gender gap in your research overseas? If so, what are your thoughts on how to close that gap?
Best: Absolutely. In some recent survey work my team conducted in Ghana, we found that 80 percent of visitors to two cybercafes were male. Females were strongly underrepresented. In earlier work of mine in India, we were encountering similar gender disparities. But there are a number of ways this gap can be closed. First off is to make the computer and internet services more relevant to women. This can include special attention to applications for women's health or livelihood development or even leisure and entertainment options that have particular resonance for females.

Second, if we are talking about public computer facilities, such as cybercafes, having women employees and intermediaries can increase women's involvement. In addition, the design of the programs and facilities can help close the gender gap. In one public computer center I worked on, my collaborators instituted a weekly women-only day when men were excluded from the facility. This created a very friendly and supportive environment. In addition, at this facility we made a trivial design change. The computer center had started to get a bad reputation as a place where some men went to surf for pornography. So we changed the center's layout, positioning all of the computer screens to point directly and visibly out to the street. All people passing by could now see exactly what people were doing on the computers. Social pressure now restricted men's behavior, and the community began to see the facility as a safe place for everyone, men and women alike.

Womenetics: You've mentioned that your trainers in a computer lab outside Monrovia discovered an unexpected need from their students: the need to talk about their experiences during years of civil war. How did you alter your research plans there to accommodate this need?
Best: This was both an unsettling and inspiring outcome of a computer lab we collaborated on in a Monrovia suburb. The facility targeted women and former combatants with livelihood training. We put in place a computer training facility and started classes in standard computer literacy. But within a few weeks, our computer trainers approached us with an extraordinary request: They wanted some psycho-social training so that they could help their students not just with basic computer literacy, but also with issues arising from the trauma from years of civil conflict. Why would this be happening during our computer training programs when it was not surfacing as much during the other livelihood programs, such as tie-and-dye or baking? Well, we are not sure, but I do have a theory: To the students, this simple computer instruction represented an important interface with their future. The computer reflected a break with their war-dominated past, and it came to represent their aspirations and hopes for the future. This forward focus uncovered for the students wounds of the past as well as dreams for the future.

I would not say we did much of anything to accommodate this beyond following the lead of our excellent computer trainers. They put in place some training and enhanced the center's facilities for psycho-social counseling. This was really the Liberians recognizing a need and organizing their own response.

Womenetics: What advice can you give to young women who are considering majoring in an engineering or science field in college?
Best: Do it! And please consider Georgia Tech!

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Based near Atlanta, Shala Hainer has been writing and copyediting since 1995. Beginning her career at newspapers such as the Marietta Daily Journal and the Atlanta Business Chronicle, she most recently wrote and edited articles for several nonprofit organizations before purchasing a flower shop in 2006. She earned a bachelor’s in communications from Jacksonville State University.