New Media Research Institute

3rd World Distribution and Access:

What are the most important issues that need to be addressed related to 3rd world distribution and access, cognizant of the limitations of developing countries. These limitations being 1) lower computing capabilities/lower band width access 2) cost – acknowledging that that are most widely used are things that are free. 3) Accessing tools/information is inherently difficult.

ISSUE 1:
What are the tools?
Use of cell phones as data upload and download tools - best vehicle (either by pictures, entering data).

ISSUE 2:
What is the incentive for people to contribute?
– Ex. School wants to study malaria, or pollution – school enters their data and can get info from neighboring regions/schools that affect their environmental quality.
What types of data are most useful to each country (hierarchy of data needs)? Has to be low band width, low cost. Can have hierarchies/levels of data sets – so if you are in a developed country, you can download the most complex data sets, developing countries with lower computing capacity can choose to download simplified datasets.

ISSUE 3:
What are the language barriers?
It will be important to translate information – (example website: e-pals – translation site)

ISSUE 4:
How do you integrate the cultural components of ocean/ocean use? This is going to be very important for engaging indigenous peoples who have different values and traditions than western civilizations. Some cultures have traditional ocean management systems that have worked well in the past, and can provide cultural wisdom. How do they share their information (from the bottom up, rather than a top down approach).

ISSUE 5:
How do we figure out what information is the most important to people in developing countries? What packages of information are going to be most useful? Is this DO’s responsibility to determine this or is it the users in developing countries. Likely not.

ISSUE 6:
Can DO provide a mechanism to link communities that is low bandwidth? Do these exist/are they already available?