TAD Consortium August 2000 Information Update 2

The second Rainier Web-Index study examined the use of the Web as a communications channel by the FTSE 100 companies and the top Fortune 100 companies between March and July this year.

Rainier found that only 71 of the FTSE 100 companies in Britain could be contacted via email on their website. Twenty percent of these, including National Grid and P&O, failed to reply to simple requests for investor information after 3 months. Marks & Spencers and Thames Water were among the 29companies that could not be contacted via email on their website.

In the US, 23 companies could not be contacted by email via their website, including GTE, Hewlett-Packard and Intel. Of the 77 Fortune 100 companies that could be contacted by email, a third did not respond after 3 months. These included American Express, Motorola and Walt Disney.

US companies tended to take slightly longer to reply to email queries, with only 3 responding within 3 hours, compared with 20 of the FTSE 100 companies.

A further 45 FTSE companies answered within 2 days and 11 took more than 2 days. Of the Fortune 100 companies, 38 replied within 2 days and 19 took longer. In total, 15 FTSE companies and 20 Fortune 100 companies never replied, despite multiple requests submitted online.

"All too often, companies focus on the content and look and feel of a site without considering its integration with existing customer contact systems. The result is that two in every five of the Fortune 100 and FTSE 100 Web sites are little more than corporate wallpaper," commented Stephen Schuster, chairman of Rainier.

<http://www.rainierco.com/survey_2000/FTSE_vs_FORTUNE_2000_Press_Release.htm>

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SA INFORMATION SECURITY AUTHORITY ESTABLISHED

The Information Security Institute of SA has been established to provide information security certification to organisations that comply with the Code of Practice for SA information security management systems. [14 July 2000]

[http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/business/2000/0007140811.asp]

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Internet arrives in Haiti, and some wonder about priorities

By Mark Fineman Los Angeles Times, 7/23/2000

PETIONVILLE, Haiti - Dmitri Fourcand started out early one morning at Station 2 in the Art Deco cafe known as Click 123.

By nightfall, the graphic designer, 28, had marketed an array of products from his cyber-mall. He had made a tidy commission and had swapped dozens of e-mail messages with customers the world over - all without phone or power lines in a nation that ranks among the world's poorest.

"When I look at that screen, I'm not in Haiti anymore, Fourcand said as young Haitians all around him downloaded research papers from France, explored job opportunities in Florida and, yes, ventured into steamier subjects with far-off cyber-suitors in chat rooms.

"When I'm on the Net, I'm a citizen of the world. I can see how the world is evolving."

It is a scene that is repeating itself daily now in more than a dozen generator-powered cyber-cafes in this mountainside suburb of the Haitian capital. It is a phenomenon many analysts here say could revolutionize Haiti. And it is beginning to offer a precious sliver of hope for the younger generation of a country that 2 million Haitians have left behind.

Haiti is, after all, a nation in disrepair: There are just 60,000 phone lines in this nation of nearly 8 million people. Most of the country has no electricity, no clean drinking water, no paved roads.And at least two-thirds of the population is illiterate - after a succession of dictatorships taught that information was an evil.

"The Internet is important because it has the potential to open up the nation to the rest of the world," said Francois Benoit, the general manager of the company that pioneered the Internet in Haiti. Benoit's Alpha Communications Network is the first of three servers to set up shop, using a technology declassified by the US military in the mid-1990s. Spread spectrum technology, he said, has made it possible to relay Internet connections without phone or cable lines, and he says his company intends to extend the network nationwide.

Benoit's cyber-customers buy an antenna for $4,000 that links them to Alpha's satellite ground station, and then they pay a $250 monthly fee for the service.Although far cheaper than a new national phone system, the prices remain far beyond the reach of most Haitians.

"Let's get real. In Haiti, the first step is give the people something to eat," said Wilhem Trouillot, administrator and co-owner of the Click 123 cyber-cafe, which mostly draws Haiti's educated elite. In a nation where the annual per capita income is less than $400, the fees are steep: At Click 123, members pay $37.50 for a 20-hour block of time on the Internet. Nancy Roc, who opened a combination cyber-cafe and cultural center a month ago in the capital, Port-au-Prince, agreed that most Haitians can't afford such an extravagance. But Roc, a prominent journalist, stresses that the Internet remains in its infancy here.

"This tool has to be made available to the poor - to the masses - and it will in time," said Roc, who offers membership discounts to students and the poor." But it is a luxury and shall remain so for several years, and that's why you have the success of the cyber-cafe."

In fact, many Haitians use the cafes not to surf the Net but to reach relatives, using rented headsets to tap into Web sites offering free phone calls.

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UNESCO BACKS COMMUNITY RADIO INITIATIVES IN INDIA

by Frederick Noronha

HYDERABAD, July 21: UNESCO is keen to support the setting up of non-profit 'community radio' initiatives across India and the rest of South Asia, even as radio airwaves are currently being speedily opened up to major commercial players in this country.

"UNESCO is committed to encouraging the free-flow of information. It is already supporting the initiatives of community radio development in India, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka," UNESCO representative to India and director Professor Moegiadi told this correspondent here.

Prof. Moegiadi opened a national meet on community radio which ended here Thursday.

Educationalists and voluntary organisations from across the country, particularly South India, have been looking forward eagerly for the government in New Delhi to open the airwaves for broadcast by non-profit groups.

"We have set up a studio and are awaiting. Years back it seemed that community radio was on the point of being approved," said said S. Satheesh of the Deccan Development Society, located in Pastapur, some 100 kms away from here, in Andhra Pradesh's Medak district.

Permissions for low-cost community radio has long been on the cards. But while dozens of FM (frequency modulation) radio stations are currently being set up by the private sector, the rules for setting up non-profit stations are yet to be framed. Even educational institutions, and varsities, have been waiting patiently before they can reach out via the airwaves.

Earlier this year, dozens of private FM stations, being built by media groups and other major organisations, were given permission after they bid huge sums extending in tens of millions for slots on the airwaves.

Non-profit and development organisations have been lobbying for over the past five years, to get affordable permissions to broadcast information that could help the "information poor" get an understanding of issues critical to their lives.

"Can we use radio to transmit information, knowledge and skills to allow people to improve their quality of life?" asked Prof Moegiadi, backing this view.

Recently, neighbouring countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka edged past India by allowing non-profit community radios to be set up.

Nepal's Radio Sagarmatha, run by a body of environmental journalists, has attracted attention globally for its unique style of operation -- and promoting a news-based and green message -- in a sub-continent where radio has so far been tightly government-controlled.

"In Sri Lanka, we are using a community radio station in Kotmale to find information on the Internet, which readers ask for via phone or post. This helps villagers to get access to the information superhighway too," University of Colombo journalism lecturer Michael J.R.David told this correspondent.

David (39) is project leader of the Kotmale community radio station, which took off in May 1999 but is already being studied worldwide as an innovative experiment in development communication.

"Prime Minister Vajpayee recently lamented existing digital divides. But what about using radio technology for relevant, local communication in a country where over 80% have access to it?" asked Ashish Sen of the Bangalore-based Voices. This communication NGO that has been highlighting the potential of non-profit community-run radio since the mid-nineties.

"We are straddled with a situation where FM radio might just become the monopoly of private broadcasters who cold-shoulder development issues," Sen told this correspondent. India's state-owned All India Radio had set up a string of local radio stations some years back. But without carrying these plans through effectively, the stations were mostly not locally-relevant and community-run.

By contrast, community stations can play a very different role. "We've had people coming runing to the station saying their cow had gone astray, and other listners help to locate them. In another case, the child appealed to his mother to return to the husband she abandoned, and it worked," says David from Sri Lanka.

Repeated collapses of central governments in India, and feetdragging by officials, has meant that community radio is still to become a reality in this country.

Incidentally, Bazlur Rahman of the Bangladesh Coastal NGOs Network for Radio and Communication, told this correspondent that Dhaka is expected to license non-profit radio for community groups in 2001.

In the mid-nineties, an Indian supreme court judgement which laid down that "airwaves are public property" and suggested that a government monopoly could not be treated as public property.

Said Dr. T.H. Chowdary, advisor to Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu on technology matters, commented: "On FM, the bandwidth permits a very large number of low-powered radio transmitters. There could be upto 5000 FM stations, or as many tehsils (district sub-divisions) as there are in India." (ENDS)

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ANNOUNCEMENTS/REQUESTS

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BREAKTHROUGH IN PASTEL TRAINING

It is not business as usual for the accounting and payroll software developer Pastel Software now that it has joined forces with IT company, CampusWise to embark on a totally new and innovative method for training their dealers.

By introducing InterWise, a voice interactive internet-based distance education tool, Pastel has crossed the line from traditional training to offering a truly global solution for their dealers world-wide by exploiting the power of the Internet, positioning them strategically in line with their vision as a company without borders.

CampusWise director , George Verster comments: " InterWise offers a complete, cost-effective, best of breed , distance learning and training solution for corporates, government organizations and educational institutions. It brings together a new-world philosophy and the technical capabilities of the Internet by introducing voice interactiveness.

Investing in internal and external training is vital for an organization to grow and encourage development but the costs involved in running an effective training schedule are large, especially if losses in productivity and the cost of travel and accommodation are considered.

"Technology allows us to bypass traditional restrictions. We can now provide instructor-led, interactive training to our value-added resellers wherever they are – in the comfort of their own homes or in their offices, at their convenience. Set venues , set dates and times and travel are issues of the past," says Stephen Corrigan, managing director of Pastel Software SA, a company in the JSE-listed Softline Limited group.

Pastel is as excited about it’s success story in delivering live lessons online as is CampusWise itself .

"The system’s ease of use is one of its best features and was met with an enthusiastic response from the participating dealers. I have no doubt that PastelCampus is going to exceed all expectations when we expand our training to dealers world-wide, scheduled to start in April, " says Philip Meyer, Training Manager from Pastel.

Full multi-media capabilities for course material, application sharing and various evaluation tools are added functionalities of InterWise. Existing CBT (Computer-based Training) materials can be incorporated to offer a total e-learning solution combining instructor-led with self-paced training.

CampusWise is proud to be the distributor of this sophisticated training solution in South Africa and firmly believes voice interaction is going to change the face of education in the country.

Editorial contacts:

CampusWise : 012 483 8649

stephanie@campuswise.co.za

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ONLINE RESOURCES

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Taken from Education Planet Newsletter

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Science: The Wild Ones - Endangered Animals and Wildlife Conservation

http://www.thewildones.org/index.html

A Children's Education Project of Wildlife Preservation Trust International. Learn about endangered animals and the people that are working to keep these animals from extinction by joining the Wild Ones network of over 20,000 teachers, students, and conservation biologists from all over the world.. At the Wild One's web site there are articles written by teachers, students and biologists which describe the animals as well as their habits, habitats, threats to survival and preservation projects. Additional articles feature the scientists, their research and the wildlife projects. Further information can be found in the "Ask a Researcher a Question" archives or you can send a researcher a question of your own.

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Taken from Education Planet Newsletter

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Math: The Maths File Game Show

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/mathsfile/

Don't waste your time on those inane mind-numbing game shows - try this one out instead and keep those math brain cells in prime form over the summer. This Game Show consists of 12 different games covering four different math areas. The Number Sense Games cover factors, multiples, powers, primes, triangular numbers, decimals, fractions, percents, and rounding as well as ordering whole numbers, decimals, and negative numbers. The Algebra section covers functions, substitution, and equation match. The Shape, Space, and Measure games cover rotation, translation and reflection in patterns in addition to measurement. The Data Handling section covers probability, median, mean, range, frequency tables, and charts. There are also some written exercises called Print Offs that can be printed out for use off the computer.

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ARTICLES

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PFIR Statement on Internet Policies, Regulations, and Control

July 23, 2000

http://www.pfir.org/statements/policies

PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org

Executive Summary

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It is increasingly clear that the Internet, as embodied by the World Wide Web and a wide variety of other Net-based services and technologies is rapidly becoming a critical underpinning and foundation to virtually every aspect of our lives, from the very fundamental to the exceedingly mundane. It is likely that few aspects of commerce, education, communications, government, entertainment, or any other facets of our daily existence will be unaffected by this exceedingly rapid change that is sweeping the globe far more rapidly than would have been anticipated only a few years ago.

These global and interconnected developments, unprecedented in human history, suggest that decisions regarding policies, regulation, control, and related Internet activities will be of crucial concern to the *entire* world's population. Consequently, the proper representation of many varied interests regarding such activities must be respected.

It is our belief that the current mechanism for making many key decisions in this regard, as embodied in The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, "ICANN" (http://www.icann.org), is proving to be inadequate to the task at hand. We believe that this is the result primarily of structural and historical factors, not the fault of the individuals directing ICANN's activities, whom we feel have been genuinely attempting to do the best possible job that they could with highly complex, contentious, and thankless tasks.

We are convinced that the Internet's future, and the future of humanity that will be depending upon it to ever increasing degrees, would be best served by consideration being given to the establishment of a new, not-for-profit, voluntary, international organization to coordinate issues of Internet policies and related matters. This organization would be based on a balanced representation of private-sector commercial and non-commercial interests, and public-sector interests including governmental bodies and organizations, educational institutions, and other enterprises.

Although the proposed course of action is expected to be difficult, the risks of inaction are enormous and likely to increase dramatically in the coming years.

The Historical Basis

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The historical path that has led us to the current juncture is well summarized in a recent U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) Report (http://www.pfir.org/gao-icann.pdf). It details how the late Dr. Jon Postel, Director of the Computer Networks Division of the USC Information Sciences Institute (USC-ISI), nearly singlehandedly managed many of the core aspects of Internet number assignments, hostname and domain management, and related tasks reaching back decades to the early days of the Internet's ancestor the U.S. Department of Defense ARPANET.

As one of the Net's earliest pioneers, he conducted this work under Department of Defense contracts related to the Net's ongoing development and support, and given that there were few (if any) commercial pressures related to the Net over most of those years, he was pretty much left alone to handle matters as he saw fit, ultimately as the IANA -- the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. He did a remarkable job without which the development of the ARPANET and Internet would have been far less successful than they were as a result of his efforts.

Dr. Postel's untimely and unexpected death in 1998, less than two years ago, left both a professional and personal gap for many of us. It also raised the specter of many potential problems, given the rapidly changing nature of the Internet. We now see that many of these concerns were indeed well-founded. Before his death, Dr. Postel had been instrumental in the creation of ICANN, as an entity to fulfill the U.S. Federal Government mandate that Internet operational policy and control matters be fully privatized. The interim ICANN board of directors which he selected constituted itself as the formal board of the corporation after his death.

The GAO report discusses in detail the sequence of events through which various authority has been invested in the resulting ICANN non-profit corporation. While as recently as 1996 the IANA and other groups were proposing an international consortium to be based in Switzerland to deal with these issues, the existing incarnation of ICANN is headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, in the same office building tower that has long housed the USC-ISI facilities where Dr. Postel labored throughout the years.

The Current Situation and Problems

---

ICANN takes pains to describe itself as not "controlling" the Internet, but in practice the decisions and functions that it performs exert a degree of influence over existing Internet operations that may be difficult to differentiate from "control" except in a linguistic sense. However, it is certainly the case that by and large, there is no general rule of law *requiring* Internet-connected entities, from businesses to educational institutions, and from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to individual Internet users, to conform to the structure of the existing network and the currently defined policies.

While there are technical considerations making it impractical for large portions of the network to migrate quickly to different domain naming servers and other related mechanisms, it would at least be theoretically possible, essentially by system administrators and users editing a few files on their systems. This underscores the remarkable fact that ICANN's role (as documented in the GAO report) is derived from only broad statutory authorities of various U.S. Government Agencies, since the U.S. Congress has not enacted legislation addressing these specific matters.

Unfortunately, even a few years ago it was not possible to accurately foresee the degree to which the Internet would very quickly permeate so many aspects of domestic and international commerce, education, privacy, security, law enforcement, and so many other facets of our societies. Nor was it clear how rapidly large commercial interests and incredibly vast sums of money would move into the Internet, in many cases resulting in attempts to redefine the network in a purely commercial context.

The resolving of the resulting tensions, problems, and disputes present an immense challenge that the fundamentally informal and ad hoc nature of ICANN does not appear well-suited to undertake. ICANN's style of decision-making and "making up the rules as we go" that worked so admirably as the ARPANET and Internet were in their relatively slow, gradual stages of non-commercial development now seem to be contributing to the strains of Internet policy, rather than alleviating them.

Some examples of these continuing problems and the resulting troubling changes are obvious even from the most recent ICANN meeting, held in Yokohama, Japan in mid-July, 2000. Even though many observers had felt that the registration and voting plan chosen by ICANN to facilitate the election of "At Large" directors was inherently flawed, it was still alarming at this late stage to see the ICANN board backpedaling on the election schedule for some of the At Large directors.

Also troubling is the manner in which the board plans to start a new study concerning the entire concept of At Large directors and how they would be handled in the future. While it is worthwhile that ICANN has apparently recognized that some of their previous decisions in this regard may be flawed, it is of concern to see such important decisions made, altered, and subjected to major reevaluations in such short order. Such rapid changes in direction are not conducive either to the confidence or the understanding of those persons in either the public or private sectors who necessarily view this process from afar.

Similarly, the contentious issue of domain names (which seems to attract much of the attention and time, but ultimately is likely to be one of the least important issues relating to the future of the Internet) still seems to be spinning like a top. While ICANN announced that new Top Level Domain Names (TLDs) would be assigned, they left the world pretty much hanging in the wind concerning most details, which were put off until later in the year.

One detail that they did establish is among the most questionable – the assignment of a USD $50,000 *non-refundable* "application fee" payable by any entity that wishes to be the registrar for a new TLD. While ICANN's desire to deal with organizations that would be able to provide stability to domain name handling is laudable, an essentially arbitrary fee of this nature has the effect of "locking out" organizations (especially of a non-commercial nature) who might very well be ideally suited to handling a TLD, but who don't have a spare $50K laying around to irretrievably devote to an application fee that might well lead nowhere. Meanwhile, concerns over the fairness of the existing domain-name resolution dispute policies continue to bubble up on a seemingly daily basis.

Again, we wish to emphasize that we consider these and similar problems to relate to the fundamental history and structure of ICANN, not to a lack of concern or positive intentions on the part of its directors. However, we feel that it has become clear that the foundation of ICANN is inappropriate for the sort of entity that is needed to appropriately lead the Internet in a direction to benefit the totality of the world's populations into the future.

A Proposal for a Different Approach

---

We suggest that only a *completely new*, more formally structured, not-for-profit, internationally-based organization is suited to this task, with clearly and precisely-defined delegations to represent a broad range of concerns and interests. We explicitly feel that existing domestic and international organizations, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) or the United Nations, are unsuited to this purpose -- because they would inevitably bring too much historical "baggage" and existing conflicts to the table. An effective framework for dealing with these issues needs to start from first principles.

This new organization would exist solely for the purposes of helping to resolve and manage the range of complex issues relating to the global Internet, many of which are impossible to even begin to effectively approach without international cooperation and broad agreements. We believe that this organization could thus play a major role towards helping to ensure that the Internet evolves in a manner to best benefit people around the world. Freedom of choice and the encouragement of diversity are extremely important factors when dealing with these issues. The organization would neither desire nor seek the power to impose outside decisions upon any national government or other governmental bodies, whose participation would be completely voluntary and who would always maintain sovereignty over their own decisions regarding the manner in which they and their citizens would access or otherwise use the Internet.

We do not intend this document as a blueprint for the detailed structure or operations of such a newly constituted organization, but rather as a starting point for further discussions and consideration of this concept -- as a first step. With that in mind, we proceed to offer some foundational assumptions regarding such an organization.

A primary tenet would be that this proposed organization be truly and *formally* international in nature. This means that the delegations, with decision-making powers, would be chosen in a formal manner from "day one" to provide balance to the deliberations amongst the many varied domestic and international entities and interest groups around the world. A defined procedure would also exist for the bringing of new groups and interests into the formal process in an appropriate manner.

The organization should be constituted in such a way as to not only represent the needs and desires of the existing developed countries where most Internet activity is currently taking place, but also the needs of the underdeveloped and developing worlds, who are in some cases already being thrust onto the Internet, but find themselves with few if any avenues to impact its directions or orientations. Similarly, the needs of economically-disadvantaged persons and groups in any countries must have consideration and weight in the process (relating to the aptly-named "digital divide"), not just the economically-advantaged to whom the bulk of the existing attention regarding Internet policies and development have been skewed.

The desires of the commercial arena are of course of great importance to the growth, development, and use of the Internet, but they cannot continue to be of *overriding* precedence as increasingly now appears to be the case. To that end, the organization would include delegations to balance the interests of for-profit and non-profit, commercial and non-commercial groups and persons, with all facets having a relatively equal voting share towards the outcome of deliberations. Should educational and non-profit research institutions and focused public service groups have a formal say towards the Internet's future as well as billion-dollar for-profit corporations? We say yes.

A third balancing but *not* dictatorial element of the proposed organization would be public sector participation by domestic governments and their various institutions. While we realize that this is a controversial element, we feel that it is absolutely crucial. Privatization may be all the rage, but it is unrealistic in the extreme to expect successful management of the Internet, its resources, and the many competing concerns of the world's citizenries without at least some government involvement in the process. Neither the for-profit nor non-profit worlds can be expected to adequately fulfill this role on their own.

The lack of a formal role for governments and the interests of government agencies in the *global* process of Internet policymaking is already resulting in all manner of unfortunate and even dangerous aberrations. The national governments of many countries are already implementing unilateral rules, restrictions, and sometimes bizarre policies, many of which are nonsensical when taken in the international borderless context of the Internet. The result is confusion all around, for individual users, businesses, non-profit organizations, and everyone else. International disputes, such as the continuing disagreements between the European Union and the United States over consumer and Internet privacy policies, are another example of the problems that result when these issues are not dealt with adequately on a continuing, developmental basis, with input from national governments *and* the other groups we've defined above, on a *cooperative* basis all throughout the process.

Attempts to keep the Internet policymaking process free of government input have often resulted in governments swooping in later, frequently with what might be characterized as "knee-jerk" reactions, often to the detriment of the Internet and its global community. It would be far better to define the participatory role of governments in the first place, and have them as part of the team, rather than as an after-the-fact "spoiler" kept on the sidelines for most of the deliberations process. They deserve to be involved, and they should be involved.

Of course, the various participatory categories as defined above are not the only manner in which the range of involved interests could be organized. Educational institutions, for example, can fall into for-profit, non-profit, public, and private classifications, suggesting other possible ways to structure or define these categories. The important point is that whatever detailed organization is chosen, it be formally structured in a manner that guarantees balanced and appropriate participation by all involved parties.

Will the creation and operation of this proposed organization be simple or without any conflict? No and no -- without doubt, it will be an extremely difficult undertaking, without any guarantee of success. Determining the details of a fair system for representation and voting by the many diverse persons, interests, groups, and institutions who would be involved will be challenging to say the very least, and there will be many other difficult issues to resolve.

On the other hand, it is obvious that the existing process is not working, and appears to be leading us ever farther down a path of increasing conflicts, rising confusion, growing concerns, and simmering anger on the part of users and organizations -- plus ever more radical reactions. The internationally-focused, formally-balanced approach proposed herein may have a chance of helping to steer the incredible hybrid of people and machines -- the Internet -- onto a course that will benefit *all* of humanity.

The Internet is undoubtedly one of the most powerful tools that has come to pass in human history -- for good or ill. To squander it, to allow short-sighted attitudes or the self-interests of any particular groups or individuals to divert its course to the detriment of society, would earn us the condemnation of the future. How much better it would be to instead earn the future's thanks, for doing what we knew was right, when we had the opportunity to do so.

Lauren Weinstein

lauren@pfir.org or lauren@vortex.com or lauren@privacyforum.org

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TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS

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INDIAN DUO PUT TOGETHER A 'DIRT CHEAP' RADIO-STATION-IN-A-BRIEFCASE

by Frederick Noronha

HYDERABAD, July 22: They took it up as a challenge, and today these two young men have built a radio-transmitter that fits in a briefcase at a cost of barely ten thousand rupees.

Vikas Markanday and Dayal Singh of Rohtak in Haryana, both aged 21, have assembled a low-cost FM radio transmitter that they hope will spread useful information that could make a vital difference to the lives of villagers, including on agricultural practices.

Their eagerness and suprise achievement won the wows at a national conference on 'community radio' held here this week. The work met with much enthusiasm even as groups with a developmental message hope to get permissions to take to the airwaves opening up to them globally, thanks to rapid changes in technology and the freeing of the airwaves currently underway in India.

"Such a type of a radio can play a vital role in low-cost communication. Rural developmental issues can be taken up. Illiteracy (bottlenecks) can be overcome. Farmers in the field could easily be given the information inputs they need," said Markanday.

Both the young men belong to Nutra Indica Research Council, a non-profit NGO in Rohtak that seeks to put rural innovators in touch with scientists, and also create a platform for ideas to be exchanged, particularly on the rural front. Markanday is still an engineering student.

Weighing approximately 12 kgs., the entire "radio station" fits into a briefcase. This transmitter has a range of 10 to 15 kms radius, and thus can be used to beam developmental inputs to rural citizens.

India has been promising to open up 'community radio' stations. Asian countries like the Philippines, Nepal and Sri Lanka have already shown the beneficial impact of such locally-managed, non-profit initiatives taken up by citizens themselves.

"We managed (to put the transmitter together) almost by a trial and error method," admits Dayal Singh.

Singh says components were purchased from the 'science city' of Ambala and New Delhi's Lajpatrai Market, one of the largest for electronic items in Asia. Since the only radio broadcaster in India has been the government, for many decades, there has long been virtually no market for radio transmitters in this country.

But the story of how the came to put this product together is perhaps more interesting than the unique 'station' itself.

Last November, at the Tasknet conference in New Delhi -- meant to showcase how technology can fight poverty and ignorance -- a UNESCO-gifted 'radio station in a briefcase' was being demonstrated, narrates Markanday.

Nutra Indica president Kamaljeet was surprised that the foreign product cost around Rs 200,000 and "took up a challenge" to produce an Indian equivalent for around Rs 7,000.

Costing a little more when put together, the still unnamed product offers to make a vital difference to hundreds of low-cost alternative broadcasters who hope to also benefit from India freeing of its till-recently state-monopolised airwaves.

This 'radio station in a briefcase' currently can take its input from a cassette, a microphone or even a built-in radio station. This offers broadcasting possibilities from a wide range of situations.

"Maybe it needs some basic editing facilities too. That would make it more complete," Bangalore-based professional radio broadcaster and filmmaker A.R. Pasha told IANS. Pasha was earlier with the the state-run All India Radio.

Adds Yoganarasimha of the Creative Instruments and Controls, a firm based in Rajajinagar in Bangalore: "It is a good product. I am impressed. Now we have to see how it can shift into commercial production." Yoganarasimha is partner in the electronics firm and was in electronics R&D for a decade with the public sector BHEL. (ENDS)

Contact details: Dayal Singh

Nutra Indica Research Council

675/25, Patel Nagar

Rohtak (Haryana) India

Tel 0091.1262.55329 Fax 0091.1262.40700

Email: nirc_kamaljeet@hotmail.com

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Taken from RCFoC for July 24, 2000

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The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing

Is Moore's Law But A Piker?

by Jeffrey R. Harrow

Principal Member of Technical Staff
Technology & Corporate Development,
Compaq Computer Corporation
jeff.harrow@compaq.com

Insight, analysis and commentary on the innovations and trends of contemporary computing, and on the technologies that drive them (not necessarily the views of Compaq Computer Corporation).

http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc

ISSN: 1520-8117

Moore's Law, that three-plus decades long doubling of computing power every 18 months, has been driving our incredible advances in technology and, indirectly, entire economies.

Here, Gordon Moore himself offers us a quick insight into the results of the 35-year trend he predicted,

"The first silicon transistors that I was involved in making, we sold for $150 a piece. But even when they were [in] fairly high-quantity production, they were several dollars apiece. This would have been in the late 1950s.

Now, for several dollars, you can buy a 64 million-bit memory chip that has 66 or 67 million transistors on it. So there's been a 60 million-fold reduction in the cost of a transistor."

(http://www.usnews.com/usnews/transcripts/moore.htm)

But can this go on forever? Some people are expressing concerns that as on-chip elements shrink to but a few atoms wide, our technological tour de force may run into a tiny, but impenetrable, wall. Indeed, Moore himself suggests,

"We really are running up against the problems of materials not behaving in very small pieces the way they do in bigger chunks. The physics start changing."

As one example into just how complex it is to continue to shrink things towards these physical limits, consider that the wavelength of visible light is no longer small enough to etch the patterns on our chips. Moore says,

"It's very difficult to print a pattern with features much smaller than the wavelength of the light you're using. Visible light is about a half micron. We're presently making devices with 0.18-micron features, so we can't use visible light. We have to use fairly hard, short-wavelength ultraviolet in order to do that, [yet] we're pushing up against the limits now of ordinary ultraviolet light. We're getting down to the range where we'd like to use a wavelength where none of the optical material is transparent any more. Glass has long since not been transparent enough. We use things like fused silica. And some of the crystals like calcium fluoride are going to be used. But we're getting to the point where nothing is transparent."

Getting to the point where neither glass nor other physical materials are transparent. Fascinating...

Next Steps.

Yet, we've already glimpsed some of the next technologies that may provide ways around these limits, even if extensions to today's lithography that are being explored, such as Extreme Ultra Violet, electron beam, or X-ray lithography, don't pan out:

There's DNA computing, which could lead to a test tube performing 10 trillion additions per second (http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc/20000717.html#_Toc488031947). There's molecular computing, where "self-assembly" could profoundly alter manufacturing (http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc/20000619.html#_Toc485458756). And there's quantum computing, where the rules are astoundingly different. Later in this issue, we'll even find that scientists are attempting to harness viruses to build our ever-smaller chips! But as RCFoC reader "Muck" points out from the July 10 U.S.News (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000710/moore.htm), even before these new technologies take root, the speed of advancement in industries that build UPON the technologies we already have, may leave Moore's Law's once-incredible exponential growth, in the dust!

Graphics.

For example, in 1998, a $250 graphics board could draw about 1 million polygons per second. By the end of next year, however, we may be buying same-price boards that generate 100 million polygons per second -- a 100-times increase in three years, which is far faster than Moore's Law! For another take on graphics performance, a 1994 specialized graphics computer used by the military for flight simulation cost $300,000; today, a Sony PlayStation 2 selling for a few hundred dollars leaves that in the dust. Extrapolating, the "games" of just 2-3 years from now may seem like movies.

Storage.

Or how about storage? I just ordered a commodity computer with 40 gigabytes of fast storage on a single drive. By the end of this year, a single high-end drive may store 180 gigabytes. And by 2003, we may have terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) disk drives. For the past couple of years, storage has been doubling every nine months -- twice as fast as Moore's Law, according to Seagate's Chief Technology Officer Tom Porter.

What will we do with the vast storage soon to be ours? (Remember that just that same question was also asked when we first got 5 megabyte drives, 100 megabyte drive, 1 gigabyte, drives, etc. -- yet we're always filling them up.) According to U.S. News, we could store 400 of our favorite movies on that terabyte disk in VHS quality, or we could record "every single conversation [we'll] ever have." And such a drive will, as surely as those before it, become a commodity.

Fiber.

Then there's the phenomenal increases in fiber capacity that we've been tracking (http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc/20000612.html#_Toc485030131 and http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc/20000403.html#_Toc478970060), where Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing and other advances have led to the doubling of fiber capacity every SIX months -- far faster than both Moore's Law and storage's increases. (Which is a good thing, since according to research from AT&T labs' Andrew Odlyzko and K. G. Coffman, Internet traffic continues to double each year, and seems destined to exceed voice traffic within two years - http://www.research.att.com/~amo/doc/internet.moore.abst)!

Our World Of Exponentials.

We've all felt both the pleasure and the pain of dealing with exponential growth in just one area (semiconductors), yet now it seems that a growing number of technologies we use every day are growing, not at "mere" exponential rates, but even faster!

Rick Rashid, the director of Microsoft's research division, suggests,

"Whenever you have a really large quantitative change, you begin to see a really large qualitative change in the way people think about things. We're not even going to be able to guess exactly what the applications are going to be two or three years from now, but we know it's going to change."

"Really large quantitative change" is clearly the name of the game, and it does boggle the mind. But it also opens doors to fascinating and limitless opportunities -- IF -- we think beyond the way we do things today. With exponential-plus growth, today's impossible and inconceivable will be tomorrow's products, and in no time at all. Don't blink!

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Telematics for African Development Consortium
P.O. Box 31822
Braamfontein
2017
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel: +27 +11 403-2813
Fax: +27 +11 403-2814
neilshel@icon.co.za
www.saide.org.za

* To view an archive of previous updates visit: www.saide.org.za/tad/archive.htm
* For resources on distance education and technology use in Southern Africa visit:
www.saide.org.za/worldbank/Default.htm

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