The Education Problem: Raj Reddy (Part 15)

I conclude my conversation with Raj discussing some theoretical benefits of his plan to take high speed network access to the villages. Additionally, Raj explains what he feels is necessary for this vision to come to reality.

SM: Anything that improves or provides their livelihood can be the killer app. RR: Yes, that is the killer app; getting them a job, getting them their livelihood. After the livelihood is entertainment. The interesting thing to me is what I see when I go into all of these villages …

I come from a village, and 30 years ago the only person that had a TV was my sister. Now when I go there I see 40 houses with a TV. If there is value, people will buy it. People are desperate; there is nothing to do in the villages. If you can give me something to do, I will give up my third meal for that.

The third thing is education and healthcare. If I get sick, when I was young, they would have to put me on a cart and take me 10 miles away to the doctor. That was a pain, but by the time I got there I was half dead from the travel. If I could have unlimited bandwidth, I could do a conference call, and tell the doctor the problem. They could then give me some medication, and you do a three way call to the pharmacist, and they send me the medicine.

All of the bills could be subtracted from some ecommerce system. All of that could be set up now if only they had access in their homes. They need affordable access.

The same is true for education. We just talked about learning by doing. Well they can learn all of this from home. You do not need to be in a classroom. You can talk with your mentor via distance learning. Everything can be done this way.

Finally, simple communication. Telephony, video telephony, etc… Word, Excel and Power Point won’t help, but things like Skype will certainly be useful. Asynchronous chat, video email, voice email, will all be valuable. Communication is the last killer app.

The conundrum is the following: if you are illiterate, you cannot use email. If you cannot read a help manual, then you need video help. What I need, as a villager, is 100 times more computing for 1/10th of the cost. I need a thousand fold improvement in information technology before I can really benefit from it.

SM: You have to go to fiber or something which is very high bandwidth. RR: As well as getting faster computers very cheap. There are also issues of “learning to learn”. I need to teach them how to go to Google to learn, but if they can’t read then they need village Google. That is my third project. My fourth project is the content; entertainment content, educational content.

The high level picture is there are these important problems; connectivity, computing, capacity and content. I call these the four C’s. Each of them has a lot of interesting research problems. I can’t solve all of them, but I go around jabbing on other people telling them to go do it! Sometimes I am successful and sometimes I am not. I started this fiber in Africa project five years ago. It is going as slow as it possibly can, but I know sooner or later it will sink in.

SM: As long as it gets done it is fine. The progress of civilization is what is at stake. RR: Exactly, and eventually it will happen.

[To Be Continued]

[Part 13]

[Part 13]

[Part 12]

[Part 11]

[Part 10]

[Part 9]

[Part 8]

[Part 7]

[Part 6]

[Part 5]

[Part 4]

[Part 3]

[Part 2]

[Part 1]

This segment is part 15 in the series : The Education Problem: Raj Reddy
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