On December 2, 2010, there was a panel discussion titled “Can Technology Solve Global Poverty?” in Cambridge, MA, hosted jointly by the Boston Review and the MIT Political Science Department. (The Jester appreciates the platform provided by the Boston Review — thanks to editors-in-chief Josh Cohen and Deb Chasman!) The panelists were Kentaro Toyama, Nicholas Negroponte, Rachel Glennerster, and José Gómez-Márquez, and moderation was handled expertly by Archon Fung. Brief bios of the panelists are all available here: http://bostonreview.net/about/ideasmatter/#toyama; a video of the event should appear there soon, as well.
There was some drama on stage, but the panelists’ views were nothing new for people who follow this space. So, just a quick summary…
– Toyama: Technology magnifies human and institutional intent and capacity. In international development, technology is rarely a solution by itself. (Geez, this guy is a human broken record!)
– Negroponte: Laptops transforms education for children. Anyone who can’t see this needs a therapist!
– Glennerster: Look for whatever solutions work in international development, technology or otherwise. Then do randomized control trials (RCTs) of them to verify effectiveness.
– Gómez-Márquez: We need to design technologies and systems so that they will work in a hostile environment.
Overall, the Jester couldn’t have agreed more with Toyama, but there were some things that Toyama didn’t do well. For example, he didn’t clarify that he was talking mostly of ICT up front (although the Jester increasingly believes the amplification thesis applies beyond ICT and beyond international development). He also came off as anti-technology, or anti-ICT4D, which is not quite true. He’s just pro-foundational-investments-in-human-capacity-that-rarely-require-much-technology.
Glennerster and Gómez-Márquez both held extremely reasonable positions about technology, namely that sometimes they can be helpful. The only problem with extremely reasonable positions is that while they are invariably true, they provide no additional insight.
Toyama’s core thesis primarily leads to arguments against (1) the indiscriminate spreading of technology without a full understanding of impact, (2) any hype around technologies potential that ignores the necessary human or institutional requirements for success, and (3) ignoring of opportunity costs when cheaper solutions abound. There is nothing wrong with cost-effective technology being used in the right way to amplify existing positive intent and capacity, as the Jester recommends for ICT4D-ers.
Of these, Point (3) on opportunity costs was discussed on the panel. (Everyone except for Negroponte appeared to agree with (1) and (2).) The Jester fully agrees with Toyama’s point about opportunity costs. When presented with multiple ways to solve similar problems, which should you choose? One slogan often goes, “It’s not either/or, do all of them!” This is an approach that might appeal to the United Nations, where participation and consensus is the goal, but the reality is that funds allocated to international development are always limited. If you “only” have a budget of $100 million for a million students, you can’t both buy them all computers and do meaningful teacher training. You have to choose how to allocate the budget.
That choice often, though not always, comes down to a simple question — Which intervention provides more bang for the buck? Unfortunately, ICT rarely comes in on the cheaper side, particularly in low-labor-cost environments (note to self: Jester, hurry up and get to Myth 9: “Automated is always cheaper and better”). Negroponte seemed excited to reveal that OLPC only costs a dollar a week per child, but as Toyama and Glennerster both responded, there are interventions that cost 100 times less, with known and significant educational benefits, and even a dollar a week is too much for countries that barely spend that much total on education per child. (Actually, the Jester even doubts Negroponte’s dollar a week number — note to self: hurry up and get to Myth 8: “Hardware and software are a one-time cost”!)
Glennerster and Gómez-Márquez were both very persuasive in the importance of designing interventions well, so that they work even in hostile environments. Toyama had difficulty responding to this point, although he should have done better considering that he used to make similar remarks himself. Gómez-Márquez, in particular, made an intriguing comment that you could design things so that they work even under adversarial conditions. This sounds fantastic in theory, but in reality, someone somewhere in the system must have the intent to solve the the problem, for any technology to work (this is similar to what computer security people say about computer security). It might be a minister, an NGO leader, a local entrepreneur, a group of mothers, or some combination, but every technology requires positive human capacity behind it to activate. (In a post-panel conversation, Gómez-Márquez acknowledged this point.) Gómez-Márquez talked about identifying what might be called “champions” in a given environment, and then providing them with the right tools. Toyama would undoubtedly agree with this approach (the Jester agrees, too) — it means that the technology is amplifying the champions’ intent and capacity. ICT4D projects whose stated intent is to identify and amplify champions make perfect sense.
Glennerster brought up the topic of vaccines, which are a theoretical pebble in the Jester’s pointy shoes. Such technologies do pose a partial counterexample to the theory of technology as amplifier, because at the least, they don’t amplify negative intent (unless, the Jester supposes, some of them can turn to poisons when not used as indicated). But, even vaccines are subject to bad institutional capacity, and they are certainly not immune (ha ha — the Jester should be punished for every pun he sheds) to the amplification thesis. In the end, vaccines are regularly and routinely distributed unequally, which is exactly why yellow fever still exists in the developing world, despite the technological existence of reliable vaccines. Disproportionately, it’s poorer countries that continue to have these problems and it’s usually because the vaccine supply chain is not in order.
Of course, none of this says that we shouldn’t develop the technology — the Jester so far hasn’t suggested that PCs or mobile phones should be uninvented. (Not yet, anyway!)
Finally, the Jester came away with new appreciation for Negroponte’s persuasiveness, if not his logic. Although Negroponte lost his cool at times (and perhaps did more to hurt his own cause than to advance it), he does genuinely appear to believe 100% in the power of laptops alone to radically transform children’s education for the better. And possibly as a result, his tone, if not his rational argument, is incredibly seductive. The Jester found himself nodding along hypnotized, while Negroponte compared laptops to vaccines and suggested that nothing that required experimental evaluation was worth doing.
These last points will be addressed in the Jester’s next post. The Jester passed on commenting on Negroponte in a previous post, but it seems necessary. Negroponte’s salesmanship requires repeat doses of a rational antidote!