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Pyr.mea.IT is an Exploratory Research project started in late 2006, with an aim to create technologies and solutions that would help deliver IT to the billions of under-privileged people in the developing regions of the world.
Past and Present Team Members
Sheetal K. Agarwal, Dipanjan Chakraborty, Arun Kumar, Nitendra Rajput, Sougata Mukherjea, Amit A. Nanavati : IBM India Research Lab Delhi
Swati Challa, Nanda Kambhatla : IBM India Research Lab Bangalore
Sameer Agarwal (Summer Intern): IIT Kanpur
Project Description
Information technology has had significant impact on the society and has touched all aspects of our lives. More and more processes are now automated bringing in efficiency and quality of delivery. Up and until now computers as devices and Internet as the glue, has fueled this growth. It has resulted in several benefits to the society. The challenge now is to take this success of IT to its next level where IT services get developed, deployed and delivered to the masses.
By masses, we mean those people who
- are not yet IT literate and/or
- do not have the purchase power to use the current IT delivery mechanisms (such as the PC centric model) and/or
- are mobile and so will not be able to use PCs.
Interestingly, a huge portion of the world’s population falls into this category and primarily resides in developing countries. There are several existing projects that aim at delivering the benefits of IT to the under-privileged. However, most of them are focused on increasing the penetration of PC and Internet. We ask this question:
Is providing access to PC and Internet sufficient for this target population ?
An average person probably does not need access to PC/Internet. Access to Internet delivers globally relevant information since local content for developing regions does not exist in WWW today. Further, user interaction is typically through an intermediary (such as a kiosk operator or a literate person in the family) which is restrictive in nature. Abstract graphical user interfaces have been found to be difficult to understand and navigate by this user segment. Finally, cost buying and maintaining a PC and Internet connection is very costly for a large percentage of this population.
We believe, Information Literacy rather than Computer Literacy is key goal to target. For instance,
a Fisherman needs weather info before heading out to sea, a Farmer needs to look up commodity prices and a Milkman needs to know if the homeowner is in town.
In the Pyr.mea.IT project at IBM India Research Lab., we are focusing on delivering IT solutions to such underprivileged people. The project aims to explore whether Information Literacy can be made into a basic facility comparable to railroad and electricity ? Incremental improvements seem to be failing to achieve that goal presenting the need for a radical paradigm shift.
Specifically, the project is focusing on two intertwined themes (a) a supporting infrastructure to develop and deploy low-cost, high volume services, and (b) novel user interfaces to access these services. The goal is to have an infrastructure that enables development and deployment of the relevant IT services in a decentralized and autonomous manner. Rather than dedicated application servers, public domain infrastructure should be able to host most services much as the information is hosted on the World Wide Web today. Further, easier and pervasive interfaces will be required to provide a more intuitive access to the deployed services. Therefore, rather than bulky computers, devices such as handhelds and mobile phones should be able to provide ubiquitous access.
In this project, we have built technology solutions that capitalize on the growth of telephony in developing countries and utilize voice as a means to overcome illiteracy issues. We focus on providing solutions for underprivileged people in both rural and urban areas.
Currently, we are in the process of applying these technologies in the field as well as utilizing the feedback to enhance them and develop new technologies as well.
Last updated 30 Oct 2007
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