Low-Tech Solutions to Third World Problems

Technology proceeds at such a breakneck pace that sometimes we feel like we're rocketing into science fiction territory: Animal cloning, unmanned aircraft and space tourism are all recent realities.Yet in many third world countries, technology has not been used as the people are too poor. S$2,000 is a fortune to a villager in Cambodia. Companies do not invest in technology to help the poor since there is no market for such products, no market in the sense that no one can afford to pay for them. But there is a need, a desperate need to use technology in simple, cost- effective ways that will improve the lives of the poor.

The tech world is misunderstanding the concept of appropriate technology for developing nations as “low-tech,” leaders in the growing field of practical invention said today at the 2007 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Conference. In fact, the panelists agreed, it’s likely more difficult to design these technologies for rich, technologically-developed countries, which don't have to worry about limited resources.

"They're not low-tech in the sense of dumbed-down," said Ashok Gadgil, a scientist who won a Breakthrough Award this year . "They've taken a huge amount of intellectual effort to design them and keep them simple. They are simple without compromising effectiveness."

Innovations that make life easier for the world's poor need to be affordable, repairable, reliable and environmentally sound, stressed Peter Haas, executive director and founder of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG). And the biggest misconception about implementing new gadgets in the third world is that knowledge only flows globally from the north to the south, he added. "There are geniuses in every village ready to make significant changes to the environment; they just don't have the access to tools, resources or time."

Shawn Frayne, an independent inventor whose wind generator alternative also won a Breakthrough Award this year, said that while corporations such as DuPont and General Electric have done a solid job of developing incremental innovations, they’ve forgotten some of the simpler ideas—and problems—that exist today. "In the next 100 years, what's required are new fundamental inventions, and those are going to come from the developing world."

These designs already have taken off in new directions. Jock Brandis has seen his 2005 Breakthrough Award-winning peanut sheller expand across Africa with what some might call open-source new uses for his Rube Goldberg-ian contraption. "It's like a I threw a pebble in the water,” he said, “and the ripples have turned into tidal waves.”

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