Software Everywhere — David Beers on Mobile Computing

My injudiciously titled post "Forget the $100 PC" drew the ire of Nicholas Negroponte supporters after Robert Scoble blogged about it Sunday. I say "injudicious;" David Rothman preferred the term "moronic." So, I thought I'd extend an olive branch today and explain a little more what I meant when I said that cell phones are already delivering on some of the promise of $100 laptops for the developing world and should be tapped to deliver a lot more.

I very much like the goals of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program and I like many things about the prototype laptop, too. As I hinted vaguely at the end of that post, my misgivings about the program are less about the technology than about how it is to be introduced. With the plan being to produce a breathtaking 15 100 million of these computers it makes me wonder how much time is going to be spent educating and building support in the grassroots for the idea. Branko Collin summed up my concern when he said:

Don't para-drop these things. The OLPC needs to be a 99.9% local project to succeed. Currently it seems to be largely a Western project.

How do you do that, though?

It seems to me, a good start for turning OLPC into a homegrown project is to leverage the homegrown (or at least well-established) computer use that's already there. And yes, mobile phones, which are deployed even more broadly in the 3rd world than they are in industrialized nations, are a fairly powerful computing technology--even the cheapest ones are. They just haven't been used that way very much. Yet.

Of course, laptops and cellphones are very different things. The "converged" phones that blur the boundaries are out of the price range of even most Western consumers and still not much like a laptop. Even so, I can see low-cost Java-enabled mobile phones soon being powerful enough to use as the core of a modular PC-like computer system. In looking at this possibility I don't want to take away from using mobile phone software that runs only on a phone screen to improve access to computer technology in the developing world--this is the first and, to me, most obvious opportunity that is ripe for the taking today. But I do want to explore what might be the next logical step: inverting the relationship of the PC and mobile so that the PC becomes a display and input accessory for the device.

Products like BlackDog and airWRX are on the right track with pocketable, "always-on-you" computing environments that blossom onto an available screen and give you use of a keyboard and mouse when they are connected. Integrating this capability into the design of a mobile phone isn't technically difficult or costly: mainly it requires a good chunk of flash memory, a USB port, and the right software.

For example, Nokia S60 phones already support running a scaled-down Apache web server that could serve up web apps and eBooks to one or more thin client terminals--albeit through a WAN gateway with network data charges, not local USB or Bluetooth. The next version of Java ME (MIDP 3) will enable even the cheapest phones to run MIDlets in server mode. Network Improv's airWRX project takes this inversion of client and server in the right direction: serve up rich SVG applications from mobile devices to desktop terminals connected by USB or personal area network. Liam Breck at Network Improv calls this "continuous computing":

Achieving continuous computing requires a means to carry your apps & data with you at all times, and engage them via whatever devices are available. The flash drive [or mobile phone] application server delivers that; current systems do not. PC architecture binds apps to a single powerful unit, which is generally too bulky to carry continuously. The alternative of siting personal apps & data on the internet hasn't caught on because it requires costly managed hosting and a network vastly more accessible and reliable than the internet is today.

It seems like using a mobile phone in place of a flash drive as the application server site would make continuous computing a practical idea for the kind of people OLPC is hoping to help. In fact, there are several reasons why this approach might be a better way to do the $100 "laptop":

1. Mobile phone distribution and use already works in the 3rd world. Good old fashioned capitalism seems to be doing the trick here. There are hundreds of millions of handsets, active markets for wireless minutes (a street-level retail trade that itself has created a lot of economic opportunity) and wireless infrastructure and coverage that is already surprisingly good. This is a good foundation on which philanthopy can build up the technology--whereas laptop PCs are new, unfamiliar, and probably less in demand.


2. Mobile phones have broader uses than a laptop. Improving personal communication in the developing world is at least as important for economic development as improving the education of children. Penetration of mobile communications has been directly correlated with economic development and the disempowerment of despotic regimes, both of which feed back into education, health, and social stability. Personal devices one wide-area networks have the most leverage because they empower you wherever you are, not just at school or in your home.
   
   I admit that the multi-use aspect of a cellphone can be a problem if the children need the computer for their education and Dad needs it to check the market and figure out what he's planting. On balance, I'm inclined to think that's a problem that arises from success, which is better than the problems that arise from failure. It means people need more and cheaper phones, not that modular computing centered around the mobile phone is the wrong solution.


3. Laptops are monolithic and notoriously costly to repair or update. With a separate screen/docking station, keyboard, mouse, and CPU (the phone itself) we have a componentized product that can be more cheaply repaired or upgraded. Think long term.


4. A modular system enables one screen to support many personal computing environments. No matter how many computers OLPC is able to distribute, there will be a demand for more, even within a single household. If peoples' data and applications are housed in separate modules that they carry with them (their phones) it's easier for them to share the other hardware. This practice aligns well with how Africans already share technology within a village or neighborhood.


5. Content on a phone can be used when you're mobile and can't be sitting in front of a big screen and keyboard. If you travel much in the developing world you know that people spend a lot more time waiting than we do in the industrialized world. You wait in line. You wait for the bus to get you somewhere. You wait for your parents. You wait for something you need to arrive so you can be productive again. If a lot of your "stuff" is available to you on your phone--even if you don't have a great screen and input capability--you can recapture those long expanses of time. You can read an eBook or play a word game to practice vocabulary. I'd go so far as to suggest that mobile computing makes a bigger difference to people living in a place like the Congo than it does to your average roadwarrior in the US. Even if the "user experience" on a small screen and a 12-button keypad is not up to the standards of Treo-toting Westerners.

To pull together and distribute a modular computer like this, OLPC would need to work with the wireless operators to solicit bids for the production of phones that have the right specs, software, and connectors to work with the other components. There's a precedent for this kind of deal, as Motorola won just such a contract to supply 6 million $30 phones for the African market last year--and made a profit from it, by the way. OLPC should purchase the phones they need for free distribution in the schools along with the other components, but the phones and other components should also be sold on the open market just as mobile phones are today in these countries.

OLPC should also work with the operators to provide free over-the-air software updates and content. I haven't read anything about what OLPC hopes to do in terms of getting software into people's hands, but the fact that mobile phones are connected to a wide-area network makes the prospect of delivering and updating software a more manageable one, if still one that requires a lot of thought and innovation to make it simple. This technology is still cutting edge and an endeavor like OLPC could really give device management standards like OSGi a boost.

My overly dramatic taglines notwithstanding, I like the idea of the "$100 PC." I love the things I hear about the innovative display technologies that Negroponte's team has developed. I think the hand-crank recharger is inspired. Both innovations would be part of the modular solution I would put forth. Furthermore, I admire Mr. Negroponte for his insistence that what the developing world needs is the best technology, not warmed-over day-old computers from the West. With the developing nations actually being pioneers in the usage of mobile phones for banking, payroll, and virtual debit cards, I see an openness to push the envelope there that makes it a natural (if surprising) place for the cutting edge to meet the real world.