Future Now
The IFTF Blog
John Thackara has a good send-up of the recent announcement by AMD and Architecture for Humanity's $250,000 contest for the design of technology centers for the developing world.
Dan Shine, director of the AMD's 50x15 Initiative, says "the creative designs developed in this competition will contribute to our ambitious goal of connecting 50 percent of the world's population to the Internet by 2015."
Had the organisers spent more time in South Asia, or in Africa, they'd be aware that six million mobile phone accounts are being opened each month, just in India, right now, today, without the participation of a single "technology centre".
AMD's 50% figure is likely to be reached years before 2015 because of the smart ways poor people share devices and infrastructures.
AMD's new competition is as misguided as the $100 laptop project. It's based on an outdated model of individual device ownership that may seem normal at the TED conference in Monterey, but has little to do with daily lives of the people it's supposed to benefit.
I would concur - and we've written extensively about the capacity for innovation in developing countries in a recent Technology Horizons report, Innovation in the Urban Wilderness.
blogger.iftf.org/Tech/docs/SR-1050_Innovation_in_the_Urban%20Wilderness.pdf