Kentaro Toyama
http://fsi.stanford.edu/news/the_promise_of_information_
This is the lead article of a forum on the role of information and communication technology in global development.
A ten-year-old boy named Dhyaneshwar looked up for approval after carefully typing the word “Alaska” into a PC.
“Bahut acchaa!” I cheered—“very good.”
It was April, 2004, and I was visiting a “telecenter” in the tiny village of Retawadi, three hours from Mumbai. The small, dirt-floored room, lit only by an open aluminum doorway, was bare except for a desk, a chair, a PC, an inverter, and a large tractor battery, which powered the PC when grid electricity was unavailable. Outside, a humped cow chewed on dry stalks, and a goat bleated feebly.
As I encouraged the boy, I wondered about the tradeoff his parents had made in order to pay for a typing tutor. Their son was learning to write words he’d never use, in a language he didn’t speak. According to the telecenter’s owner, Dhyaneshwar’s parents paid a hundred rupees—about $2.20—a month for a couple hours of lessons each week. That may not sound like much, but in Retawadi, it’s twice as much as full-time tuition in a private school./.../
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