Bill Gates cracks wise on Google’s plan to bring Internet access to remote parts of Africa via balloons:
[…] Gates was asked whether he thought bringing internet to parts of the world would help solve problems. “When you’re dying of malaria, I suppose you’ll look up and see that balloon, and I’m not sure how it’ll help you.”Gates’ nonprofit organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has worked extensively to try to rid developing nations of malaria. “When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there’s no website that relieves that,” […]
Whatever you want to say about Gates, and certainly in the realm of education in the US he’s living in a rock-and-roll fantasy, he’s made a serious effort to understand the real problems in Africa. Google, not so much.
lol
Because fuck building infrastructure; It’s not like that’s ever going to help Africa, right?
Hal
Gates is pissed because he tried to give the malaria suffering children zunes And they were like “haven’t we suffered enough.”
Jack the Second
With the balloon based internet in place, the number of people who think they have malaria after reading WebMD and actually in fact have malaria will go up like 10000%.
Ronnie P
There’s something Friedmanesque about this. The World is flat. Even in the poorest Africa, they use the web to market their grains to customers. They understand the future in ways that partisan Washington DC does not.
fka AWS
BJ readers might like reading “To Save Everything, Click Here:The Folly of Technological Solutionism” by Evgeny Morozov. It doesn’t specifically address malaria in Africa, but many of the causes for such ideas, along the way taking swipes at the likes of Clay Shirky, Jeff Jarvis, Larry Lessig and others.
Dano
When you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, eh Google?
negative 1
To be a little fair to Google, starvation in Africa is often just as closely tied to political reasons as it is to localized weather. There is some infrastructure in Africa. The internet helps oppressed political groups (frequently those who are starving), displaced families trying to keep in touch (refugee camps) and doctors (those who are out in the field helping malaria victims but don’t have nifty things like 4G). There is a middle class in Africa, too, and tools that can help them pull off ‘Arab Spring’ style uprisings against corrupt regimes, like a sadly large number in Africa, are a good thing.
David Fud
@Ronnie P: This. Mobile communications are not useless or without value (does it even need to be said?) to someone in Africa because they are in Africa. Even if they have malaria.
Africa has one of the fastest economic growth rates in the world, and has a significant and growing middle class. If there is something to the balloon idea (which I have no idea), it could be argued that it effectively leapfrogs the infrastructure capital requirements of the US. So, really, is the scorn necessary? Google never said they were going to take their monopoly billions and rid Africa of malaria while destroying the US education system. Don’t see Microsoft’s plan for Africa except to hook them on Windows and Office.
Belafon
It’s not like these are mutually exclusive. And we kind of have parallels here. The poor having access to the internet gives them access to information and options they otherwise wouldn’t have. And sometimes just knowing the answer to “what is this boil on my skin?” (I don’t know what the symptoms of malaria are, just making something up) is important.
RepubAnon
Africa has short-term problems and long-term problems. It should be possible to work on both immediate problems such as disease prevention as well as long-term problems such as education and infrastructure issues. Is Bill Gates saying that Internet access would not be useful for spreading information about possible cures / preventative measures to reduce diarrhea and malaria (and other diseases) in the area?
negative 1
@Jack the Second: I disagree. WebMD will wipe out malaria, because it will tell everyone that they have cancer.
Punchy
Maybe poachers will turn their aim from rhinos to these Googloons, stealing the copper but saving a species.
Apsalar
Well, then, hell, why build schools, or teach former soldiers how to farm instead of steal, or improve roads, or any other sort of communication system? As long as kids have malaria, that’s really the only thing. Bill Gates has convinced me.
mistermix
@Apsalar: All those things you mentioned are a far cry from a temporary, unproven, flimsy set of balloons financed by Google to enable technology 99% of the population does not have.
Betty Cracker
Oh great — now I have that goddamned song stuck in my head. Thanks, MM!
Gin & Tonic
@mistermix: Look up the penetration of mobiles in Africa before you spout off. They may not have computers, but they have phones, and a handheld phone is by far the predominant means of Internet access in Africa.
David Fud
Given how much scorn BJers typically heap on “serious” people and proposals, it is somewhat amusing to find see this comment. Perceptions of seriousness go along with respect for our Galtian betters, it seems.
Botsplainer
I don’t know why, but I always thought that German chick was hot.
Face
This may have other uses. Maybe this internet link will assist paleontologists in the field, park rangers in game parks, weather forecasters in remote regions, tracking despots and their ilk, etc. To think that nobody can use this technology because malaria hasn’t yet been eliminated is a bit of short sightedness.
Sayne
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQYQTFudrqc
Hast du etwas Zeit fuer mich…
Damnit… that’ll be an ear worm all day…
Nerull
@mistermix: yeah, it’s not like there are other organizations working to bring that technology to those areas.
Oh, wait. There are.
Patricia Kayden
@Apsalar: Thank you. I was trying to figure out what Google’s plans had to do with the fact that some Africans have malaria. I wish people would be more nuanced when they think about Africa. It’s really not all doom and gloom. Just like the whole USA is not ghetto or trailer parks, not all African countries are mired in starvation, malaria and wars.
Sigh.
aimai
@David Fud: Yes. “Building infrastructure” sounds great until you realize just how fantastically expensive it is to build and maintain certain infrastructure in a tropical and sub tropical environment with frequent flooding and quick plant growth. Roads alone are hard to build and maintain and, historically, have been built for the benefit of colonial and extractive purposes and thus run out from the center to ports and seldom from side to side inside a given country. In other words: wifi and balloon or other non landline infrastructure may be quite useful for people living in rural areas that are infrastructure poor.
mistermix
By the way, here’s a MIT Tech Review article discussing why this won’t work:
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516186/african-entrepreneurs-deflate-googles-internet-balloon-idea/
mrmcd
@Dano: Well, when you’re in the business of manufacturing hammers, you start to think who might be in need of a free hammer or two, not suddenly declare you’re a molecular biologist.
Not to say that the Gates foundation people aren’t competent or dedicated to what they do, but it seems a bit cheap to criticize google for deciding to go with what they already know and work on communications infrastructure projects.
Mino
@David Fud: I’m with you on this one. Wireless will allow them to leapfrog expensive, soon-to-be-outdated infrastructure, the way the scalability of solar is allowing them to bypass expensive transmission lines in rural electrification. There is a growing population of internet users everywhere. Just check FB. They are very busy looking for new ideas to provide a carbon market for first nation polluters, too.
NotMax
Are the balloons green?
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Any advances in technology related to the dissemination of information will help.
The Moar You Know
I’ve actually been to Africa, and not on some safari vacation, either. Most of Africa, contrary to Western expectations, is not refugee camps and starving kids. There is some of that. Not very much. You know what there’s a shitload of in Africa? Cell phones. Not the old school ones, either. Modern smartphones (all Android, never saw an iPhone there that didn’t belong to an American). It’s how they get their news, make sales, keep in touch with their families, etc.
What Africa needs is infrastructure, and Google is providing some of that. What they could really use – and what Google has no competency in, so they’re not the go-to folks for these – is potable running water, sewage treatment facilities, and decent electrical infrastructure.
Gates is doing good work there, but he doesn’t have the big picture. Given his history, that shouldn’t shock anyone.
Marcelo
I echo what a lot of the other commenters have said – I’m especially sympathetic to the way internet access could help spur political change. Gates himself has said (in his AMA) that the worst problem in the world that money can’t solve is bad governments in places like Africa.
I can understand why he might feel raw about it, but why is this a zero sum game? Can’t there be room for both internet access AND malaria prevention? Shouldn’t he be all “That’s great for them, I wish them success, Africa needs all of those things.”
Also considering Africa’s terrible HIV problem and how so much of it is based on superstition and misinformation, I’d say a little internet access would be a good thing there too.
RaflW
So, do we have to wait until malaria is ended before bringing infrastructure to Africa, Bill? ‘Cause if that’s the case, then you’re a worse colonialist asshole than I thought.
Distributed solar and wind power, cell phones and other “non-grid” infrastructure is making a non-trivial difference to the development prospects of many remote corners of the world. Maybe the google idea is stupid, I dunno. But the underlying desire to bring internet to unserved parts of the world is no different in urgency than bringing telephones to US farm country last century.
Did city people think farmers were quaint bumpkins with their party lines? Maybe. But when a farm kid was sick and needed a housecall, that party line worked just fine. It also worked to let the county extension agent call, etc.
RaflW
Dupe post removed. But Bill Gates is still a class A wanker for advancing the false notion that fighting malaria obviates the need for rural African internet.
Kay
Gates is the one I find least objectionable because “he” is at least transparent. His name is on it. He personally appears. He obviously cares about reputation and legacy. In that sense there is a “check” on him even if he is enormously powerful yet unelected.
I was looking at Atlanta public schools the other day. They of course had the huge “system failure” in test-based accountability. Now you would think they would double down on “reform”right? Fragment the school system further, pay for security measures on testing (the new growth area) etc.
They did something interesting. They built a big, new urban high school. It’s a traditional public school- taxpayer funded. The student body will be really diverse economically because it pulls from Buckhead (wealthy) and poorer urban areas.
They’re billing it as “rising from the ashes” (my words, not theirs, but that’s the idea) of the testing scandal, betting big on a public school.
The thing is, that’s a 180 from the school reform recipe for success.
kindness
I trust Google more than I trust Microsoft.
Just sayin’.
Rorgg
I don’t see the need to snark at it. Yes, Malaria is a bigger immediate concern, but this kind of infrastructure helps the long-term outlook, too. I mean, why don’t we make fun of the ASPCA here when people are getting killed daily? PRIORITIES, PEOPLE!
SatanicPanic
Malaria or lack of internet, which is worse? I might go with lack of internet.
Gin & Tonic
@mistermix: And here’s a semi-competing view
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21571889-technology-companies-have-their-eye-africa-ibm-leading-way-next-frontier
80% of households in Africa have a mobile phone (admittedly, some have zero and some have a larger number, but still.) And it’s curious how Gates doesn’t mention that Microsoft is engaged in a similar trial project (just not with balloons) in Kenya.
The Red Pen
…and if there was, it wouldn’t work properly in Internet Explorer.
Also:
1. Google’s balloon thing was an experiment — it’s a stop-gap for deploying 3G rapidly in an area devoid of infrastructure.
2. There are other places it might help besides Africa.
3. Why should people wait until all of their 3rd-world problems are solved before dealing with 1st-world problems? It’s not like getting Internet service prevents you from also reducing malaria cases.
RaflW
Oh, also, I am reading The Poisonwood Bible right now, by Barbara Kingsolver. The novel takes place in Congo in the time of struggle to shake off the Belgians and the US ‘security’ apparatus (’59-’65). Fascinating and compelling look at how white people f*cked up a whole lot over there.
CaseyL
Gates is famous for being dismissive of initiatives he’s not part of.
I’ve been trying to find information on how effective the Gates Foundation’s work has been, and can’t. The Foundation is hugely funded, and has a lot of projects going, but does anyone know how much impact any of them have had on actually reducing/treating malaria?
Gin & Tonic
This wouldn’t have anything to do with competitive issues, would it, Bill?
From Forbes, here http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2013/04/25/heres-how-microsoft-plans-on-expanding-its-device-and-os-business/
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
IIRC, cell phones are widely used in many parts of Africa because it’s cheaper to build multiple cell towers than it is to lay cable or lines. Nokia came up with an inexpensive charger so people can charge their phones as they ride:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20006677-54.html
Soonergrunt
All Google’s balloons will solve, in as much as they’ll actually solve anything, is a data access issue for the few people who have high end cell phones or computers and the consistent electrical generation/transmission capacity to power those devices.
If you want to cause or exacerbate a digital divide between the haves and the have-nots, you keep doing that shit.
If you want to solve the very real systemic problems on that continent, you help those people deal with the their national, tribal, and regional priorities for things like roads, water treatment and delivery, and power generation/transmission. And you do every reasonable thing you can do to empower women to create their own economic independence.
Yes, the delivery of data services will definitely be important to growing economies. But the economies need to get a handle on reducing the mortality rate due to starvation and disease as a somewhat higher priority. Getting Google to open in six seconds instead of 14 seconds is almost the definition of “white people’s problems.”
That’s not to say that this idea of balloon-based internet delivery wouldn’t have it’s uses–disaster relief springs immediately to mind–but it won’t be a panacea for the continent of Africa.
mai naem
I was going to post this yesterday but this thread is way more appropriate. There was a fire at the Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi, Kenya yesterday -http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/kenya-airport-fire-two-international-flights-land-as-airport-seeks-to-resume-normal-service-8751627.html
It kind of reminds me of the libertarian/small government idiots in the US. There were no smoke detectors or a sprinkler system at the airport. There were no working public fire engines in all of Nairobi. The ones that showed up were private firm fire engines. Yeah, this isn’t JFK Intl or O’Hare but it does handle 6 million travelers annually. It also handles fresh flower exports among other exports from Kenya to the EU. Kenya is the largest fresh flower producer for the EU.
Soonergrunt
@RaflW: And those people had septic tanks and wells and irrigation in their fields some time before the party line was installed.
mistermix
@Gin & Tonic: The link I gave explains exactly why those balloons are not a solution. Countries already have the level of Internet access that the balloons can provide, 3G mobile. 3G mobile is pretty much a match to the technology that Africans can afford, which is called a “feature phone” – a phone that has some limited Internet capabilities (e.g., reading email, limited web connectivity).
“Loon”, the name of Google’s project, which they are currently piloting in a 3rd world hellhole of Christchurch, NZ, is described by them on their blog as a “moon shot”. That’s an apt description because it requires a bunch of weather balloons to be put aloft and relay a 3G signal. Weather balloons are not “infrastructure” as some people are describing loon in this thread. They will fall out of the sky and new balloons will have to be launched regularly for the project to work.
http://google-africa.blogspot.com/2013/06/introducing-project-loon-balloon.html
Google, for all the good things it does, is in this case falling into the “click here to save the world” mentality where the coolness of the solution trumps the practicality, sustainability and suitability to task. So, that’s what I would call “unserious”.
Gates, for all the shit people give him, has made more of an effort to understand problems in Africa and offer practical, sustainable and suitable solutions.
Zifnab
@Soonergrunt:
I can buy a 1st or 2nd generation iPhone for under $50. I can get a desktop computer running Windows 95 pretty much for free. If its got a copy of Firefox installed, that computer will access the internet just fine. Electricity generation is definitely an issue, but I think we’re cracking into that problem as well, through cheap solar and wind powered local production.
Are Africans going to be propelled into the First World the day a Google Internet Balloon appears overhead? No. But then that’s not really the end goal is it? The end goal is to provide Africans with cheap, readily available information infrastructure. I am honestly hard pressed to come up with a reason why Google shouldn’t pursue this goal.
furlyfly
mistermix, tone deaf as always and he’s willing to use hyperbole to prove it.
Crusty Dem
@CaseyL:
I’ve visited there and I couldn’t tell you. I suspect the vaccine work will be their biggest success, everything else looks like throwing money at problems…
Very fancy new building. From what I’ve gathered talking to employees and prospective employees (and I hope I’m wrong), it sounds like it’s run a bit too much like a country club. Membership has its privileges.
Gin & Tonic
@mistermix: and offer practical, sustainable and suitable solutions.
Which, just coincidentally, of course, will help Microsoft’s revenue.
schrodinger's cat
When did Bill Gates turn into Mr Rogers?
Felanius Kootea
I’m African and a computer scientist and think Google’s internet balloon idea is bullshit (3G networks similar to what they are proposing abound on the continent). There was actually a time when google.org was thinking of doing useful things like implementing telemedicine solutions in Africa that would actually help tons of people but those efforts pretty much died. Kenya leads the world in the use of mobile money. If google was planning a way to get more smartphones out, that would really get my attention. Geekcorps does phenomenal work in building IT infrastructure in Africa and teaching needed skillsets to young Africans on-the-ground (even more useful).
Shakezula
From what I understand, Internet use in some African nations is growing rapidly, only people are going straight to smartphones. This is creating a lot of opportunities for criminal activity (hackers, scams). So if Google can provide a more secure network, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.
mistermix
@Gin & Tonic: I’m sure Gates loves sticking it to Google. In this case, they deserve it.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
This seems like an amazingly stupid thing to argue over, even by Balloon Juice standards.
JD_Rhoades
I’m pleased that Gates is addressing problems like malaria and access to clean water in Africa.
I’m less so that his attitude is “if you’re not doing exactly what I’m doing, you ain’t shit.”
Africa needs a lot of things. Gates can work on some of them and Google can work on others, so why snipe? I suspect this has a lot more to do with brand competition than actual concern for what needs doing.
Gin & Tonic
@mistermix: To elaborate on my brief response, here’s my issue. The Gates Foundation is doing good and valuable work in several areas of health care. Credit to Bill and Melinda. But this is the work of a charitable foundation, which is *supposed* to be driven by altruism. Microsoft Africa is working on issues of infrastructure and access in Africa, in order to make money. Nothing wrong with this either, it’s the way the world works. But Bill is pulling a sleight-of-hand here: criticizing Google for working on issues of infrastructure and access (arguably taking a flawed approach) while there are health care issues to be solved. But Google does not (yet) have an equivalent charitable foundation. Maybe they should, maybe they will, but where is Bill’s criticism of Microsoft Africa for working on issues of infrastucture and access? Do they get a pass just because the former CEO of the company now has a charitable foundation?
JD_Rhoades
Hmmm. I did not know this:
http://slashdot.org/topic/cloud/sxsw-how-mobile-devices-are-changing-africa/
…more kids in Africa have access to the Internet than consistent electricity. Nobody owns a PC or can access a fixed-line telephone, so mobile phones are a conduit for everything from email to news to making payments via SMS. Many people on the continent also own phones equipped with flashlights and radios—“Radios are the killer app in Africa,” Shapshak said—and the percentage of the population equipped with mobile devices is primed to explode over the next few years.
Knight then explained how mobile devices are disrupting traditional markets, citing the case of an ex-pat from Ghana who, after raising money “from friends, family and fools,” started rice farms in his home country. “He communicates with 2,000 farmers in the West of Ghana using SMS, he sends out text messages to all his farmers,” he said. “He’s crowd-sourced rice production, and he’s selling that to the rest of the world.” That collective is now the second-biggest rice exporter in the country, largely thanks to the ability to leverage mobile technology.
Internet: it’s not just for funny cat pictures any more.
mistermix
@Gin & Tonic: The issue is whether what Google is doing is “work” or “wank”. My take, reading the loon description and the reaction of people who know the situation, is “wank”. It is an uber cool, unsustainable solution solving an already solved problem (3G access).
Gates’ hands may not be clean, but come on, this is the real world: if you are doing something ridiculous, you get ridiculed. My take is the ridicule is good for Google–if they are a little ashamed then they will change their ways and focus on more practical, sustainable ways to deliver broadband/4G Internet access to Africans.
Persia
@Belafon: I suspect everyone in Africa knows what the symptoms of malaria are, unfortunately. But you’re right, we shouldn’t have to choose between disease prevention/treatment and infrastructure. We should be doing both.
joes527
All the pointing and laughing at the Google experiment is eerily reminiscent of tea-folks pastime of mocking big government for studying volcanoes.
So, basic research might not solve everyone’s problems in the short term. It may even show that the approach being studied is a dead end.
Film at 11.
Gin & Tonic
@mistermix: if you are doing something ridiculous, you get ridiculed.
All roads lead back to Microsoft Bob, don’t they?
mistermix
@joes527: No it isn’t. This is engineering, not basic science. We know a radio signal can be transmitted from a weather balloon from the start. No research is needed to prove that fact. The question is whether it is practical.
Google knows at the get-go that it is probably a non-starter in Africa for the simple reason that they can’t control where the balloons are going to go and therefore some countries will be upset because their airspace will be violated. That’s why they’re testing on a remote island country, NZ. The balloons will deflate and fall out of the sky before they violate anyone else’s airspace.
? Martin
My dad spent a month in Togo last year. He said everyone had a cell phone of some sort. The folks that fish for a living (by dragging nets out into the ocean) used them regularly to find out where the fish were. Someone a mile down the beach would report good fishing and they’d all haul the nets down that way. They also sold much of their catch via the cell phone.
We treat cell phones as a luxury here, but they’re critical infrastructure for a lot of pretty poor people around the world. Like a lot of China, they just skipped over the wired infrastructure step, which is expensive as fuck to do, and just went straight to wireless.
Soonergrunt
@Zifnab: All those things you said are true, but I’ll submit to you that $50 for you is a hell of a lot less of a burden that it is for somebody in Africa where the average monthly income across the continent is something like $14.
What’s cheap to most of us is extravagant to many of them. That’s especially true for things like power generation when the production and distribution of safe food products and water is still the primary problem in large swaths of the continent.
That’s why I’m not entirely down on Google’s balloon-internet plan. I just think that with all their resources, Google could and should be working on the real broad problems, and if they MUST confine themselves to technological problems for some strange reason, then perhaps they should think more about consistent generation and transmission of electrical power.
And all of these people whining that Gates is only doing what he’s doing to get people to use MS products–which search engine will the Google balloons default to?
MikeJ
@Soonergrunt:
Google is an internet company. Why would you expect them to do something other than what they do?
More importantly, Google isn’t doing anything for Africa. Google is doing the balloon experiments for Google. Sure it would be nice if they did some charity work in Africa, but this isn’t charity work. It’s a technology experiment.
Have they fixed the SPDY/HTTPS bug they introduced yet? That’s the big thing I’d like to see Googlers concentrating on.
Gin & Tonic
@? Martin: They skipped over the wired infrastructure step largely because the PTT’s were too slow.
Mandalay
@CaseyL:
I have the same problem. Getting details on the massive $ amount of all the funding is easy, but not the details of specific achievements, except on the Foundation’s web site, which is hardly impartial. Strange.
But two major goals of the Foundation are to eradicate polio and malaria. You won’t see any impressive statistics for that in the short term, but if they pull that off it will be a massive achievement.
Gates is far from perfect, and folks here are eager to point that out, but AFAIK he is doing more than anyone alive to make the world better place.
hoodie
@MikeJ: Actually, Google and Microsoft are both huge consumers and generators of electrical power. They have massive data centers that use ungodly amounts of energy, and they are constantly developing ways to improve efficiency and utilize alternative sources like solar. They have a lot of expertise they could bring to bear in that area.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Exactly. Gates’ comment was stupid and I find it hard to believe that mistermix seems to think there is great wisdom in it.
This reminds me of an NPR story on TB in Tajikistan. The problem isn’t getting drugs to people, it’s fighting ignorance and cultural biases that feed reinfection. Access to reliable information is key and greater internet access will help tremendously.
Cheers,
Scott.
piratedan
@JD_Rhoades: talk about working with the tools that you have…. sometimes, when you allow it, people are awesome.
? Martin
@Soonergrunt: I don’t know the details of Google’s balloon plan, but wireless range expands considerably when you have line of sight. If you can double the range of each tower, you cut the number of towers needed by a factor of 4. If you can improve the range of each tower by a factor of 10, you cut the number of towers needed by a factor of 100.
Ground based towers probably have an average range of about 5 miles. Full line of sight would get you up to 20 miles. That’s a big enough improvement to cut the infrastructure cost (assuming the balloons are not much more expensive than a tower) by a factor of 10. Anytime you can cut capital costs in infrastructure by that much is revolutionary.
Now, I’m not sure the project is feasible – there’s all kinds of other problems with deploying balloons and maintaining such a network, but as a back of the napkin kind of exercise, it appears to be conceptually feasible.
They must because that’s what Google’s expertise is in. If we’re trying to solve public health problems, we have experts in that who should be working on those problems. And I’ll further credit Google with putting real money behind solar/fuel cells helping make those technologies more viable. So, albeit more indirectly, they are doing that last piece.
But many of the problems in 3rd world countries are difficult to solve because of weak governments and poor economies. Nobody wants to lay down power lines because someone will come along and steal them and sell the copper. Mosquito nets have been largely ineffective in africa because people turn them into fishing nets or sell them, because the income is more important. Technologically, none of these problems are difficult but economically and socially they are extremely hard to solve.
JustRuss
@Mandalay: Actually, polio is on the verge of being eradicated, thanks to the Gates Foundation and Rotary International. http://www.polioeradication.org/Dataandmonitoring/Poliothisweek.aspx
I’m not the Gates Foundation’s biggest fan, but their support of disease eradication has been impressive.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@Soonergrunt:
Google (like Facebook and Twitter) are essentially Eyeball Farmers. And Africa has a little over 2 billion eyeballs, ready to be “farmed” by Google..Anything Google does on the continent will be driven by that, and only that– not out of charity.
Meanwhile Bill Gates seems to have decided to try and spend almost all of his money on improving conditions the Third World, substantively.
I don’t understand the sneering. Is Hipster Cynicism really all BJ has left?
Soonergrunt
@? Martin:
Then this is what they probably should be directly working on in Africa. That will solve a lot more problems for a lot more people than putting a balloon up in the air and pushing the google search engine to people who can already get email and sms, and perhaps even google a little faster. Solving more problems for more people first will in fact grow the need for Google’s online services amongst people who can’t already get them.
MikeJ
@JustRuss:
At the very minimum, Gates doesn’t think putting a license plate on his car is government intrusion.
? Martin
@Gin & Tonic: There’s many reasons why they skipped that step, but the infrastructure costs/right of way access were a pretty big one in many places. And truth is that wireless is now exceeding wired in terms of speed (my new home router has a max effective bandwidth of 1.5Gbps, LTE is roughly as fast as most people’s wired broadband). The justifications for cutting all of those trenches and laying all that wire is vanishing quickly. The US built so much of that infrastructure pre-wireless, that the marginal cost to add to it is pretty low. But if you’re building up a brand new city in China or trying to wire up parts of Africa that have no infrastructure, why would you bother with wired?
Soonergrunt
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
It’s a certain type of eyeballs that they’re farming, while you’re on the subject–they are farming type of eyeballs that are connected to wallets fat enough to afford internet one way or the other, the time to spend looking at that internet and not tilling soil/hunting/forraging/stocking for monsoon season, and the resources to spend money on things.
Google’s motto is, or used to be, Don’t be evil. Perhaps they should add or cynical.
cat
@mistermix:
What you call “wank” is called in the industry “R&D” Let me Wiki that for you…
patrick II
Once again Gates underestimates the power of the internet.
burnspbesq
@lol:
Well, it’s not going to help people who have died needlessly from preventable and curable diseases because resources were foolishly allocated.
Davebo
@mistermix:
Give it a rest. In 3 years 4G will be on the way out. It will be replaced with something new (5G? 10G? who knows).
We’re talking about a continent here. And though lot’s of it currently does have 3G access a hell of a lot more of it doesn’t. And people live in those areas.
Davebo
@Soonergrunt: @mistermix:
Give it a rest. In 3 years 4G will be on the way out. It will be replaced with something new (5G? 10G? who knows).
We’re talking about a continent here. And though lot’s of it currently does have 3G access a hell of a lot more of it doesn’t. And people live in those areas.
piratedan
@patrick II: yeah but it’s only a matter of time before he has a fully functional death star…..
schrodinger's cat
BTW What just happened, I kept getting an error message when I clicked on BJ
Mandalay
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
It’s tall poppy syndrome, closely related to “haters gonna hate”, and says more about the speaker than the target.
The Gates Foundation would be wasting their money if they tried to find a cure.
Gene108
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
Minor correction, Africa’s population is just over one billion.
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: Sure, because if enough rich people make fun of Google they’ll turn around and spend that money on public health instead of infrastructure.
It is technically possible to devote resources both to infrastructure *and* to public health simultaneously.
Did you know that the US Public Health Service came into existence a decade *after* the Rural Electrification Administration? I guess the REA should have waited.
aimai
@JD_Rhoades: Precisely. There are a bunch of different and potentially important issues here:
1) reliable internet connection
2) cheap internet connection and storage
3) the role of information and linkage between individuals, communities, and markets
4) hard infrastructure: roads, sewage treatment, electricity, fuel
5) malaria and other medical issues (some have to do with accessibility to treatment or prevention such as nets, others have to do with availability of medical intervention or information.
Speaking from a female perspective creating and fostering cheap information and connectivity for everyone in rural areas or areas with spotty electricity, poor storage facilities, etc… strikes me as potentially very important for isolated farming women and their families to gain access to information (schooling, markets, the behavior of their spouses and families in distant cities). Information goes hand in hand with organization. Its hugely important.
aimai
@JD_Rhoades: Precisely. There are a bunch of different and potentially important issues here:
1) reliable internet connection
2) cheap internet connection and storage
3) the role of information and linkage between individuals, communities, and markets
4) hard infrastructure: roads, sewage treatment, electricity, fuel
5) malaria and other medical issues (some have to do with accessibility to treatment or prevention such as nets, others have to do with availability of medical intervention or information.
Speaking from a female perspective creating and fostering cheap information and connectivity for everyone in rural areas or areas with spotty electricity, poor storage facilities, etc… strikes me as potentially very important for isolated farming women and their families to gain access to information (schooling, markets, the behavior of their spouses and families in distant cities). Information goes hand in hand with organization. Its hugely important.
aimai
@burnspbesq: There isn’t one set of resources here being discussed. Its not a zero sum game. Malaria isn’t the only problem people in Africa face–it isn’t even the biggest though it is a huge one. And its “solved” more or less by education and giving everyone cheap sleeping nets, unglamorous though that is. AIDS is a much bigger and more lethal threat in some countries. Starvation and lack of productivity and markets is also a big one. There are lots of problems that lots of people can work on and they need to be worked on simultaneously.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@Gene108:
I got 1.033 Billion from Wikipedia (which was lower than I had expected).
However, I was assuming that most of those folks have two eyeballs :)
Ruckus
@Gin & Tonic:
Mobile phones are the internet access points with everyone I work with under 40, right here in the USofA, as well.
Soonergrunt
@Davebo: And people are dying in those areas. And extending 3G or 4G or fucking T3 service to the people who aren’t dying there won’t change that in any appreciable numbers like extending clean water, irrigation, electrical power, or any number of other basic services will do. But hey, at least the local muckety-mucks who already have those capabilities will be able to join you in Words With Friends, so there’s that, I guess.
I am not a kook
@mistermix:
Maybe. He has also made an effort to understand problems in US public education and offer practical, sustainable and suitable solutions. Doesn’t mean he is right. I doubt you have made the effort to evaluate Gates Foundation solutions in Africa. So argument from authority is a little hollow.
For the record, my understanding is that their malaria work is good. I’m willing to be educated.
Still doesn’t change the fact that critisizing Google’s balloon idea because it doesn’t solve malaria is moronic and smells of Bill Gates’ insecurity. The balloon idea is a solution looking for a problem – it’s like a typical brilliant techie idea somebody sold to google.org as a project and the writeup went for the humanitarian buzzword bingo. “rural Africa”: check, “disaster response”: check, “floor wax”: in-development.
? Martin
@aimai: Yes.
People need to realize that the GDP for all of Africa is roughly that of California, in 100x the physical area. There isn’t a lot of money to be made there building infrastructure from someone like MS or Google. The region has a lot of long term potential, but it’s decades off. So any assertions that there’s a profit motive here are way, way off.
But Africa presents a lot of social and technological challenges that are interesting to tackle, not terribly expensive to experiment with, and have the potential to really improve a lot of lives. And there’s a strong argument to be made that Africa’s public health problems are not going to be solved until they see some broad economic progress (not just nationally, but at the individual level). It’s not that Africans are idiots about this stuff, but public health either requires infrastructure (top down) which gets looted in one way or another, or it requires some degree of discretional income (bottom up) which they lack in so much of the continent. Communication is key to economic growth, and so improving that is not wasted effort. I think you need both efforts going – political stabilization and economic growth combined with the kinds of direct action that Gates foundation is doing. After all, it’s hard to jump start the economy when everyone has dysentery, or half your population dies before age 25.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Gates’ nonprofit organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has worked extensively to try to rid developing nations of malaria. “When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there’s no website that relieves that,”
I had no idea Bill Gates was a communist. But it’s simple for those who don’t understand; the free market would intervene by setting health insurance premiums for these Third World kids so it would remove the incentive for contracting malaria and typhus. The web would be important in this by educating these kids on their options.
It’s up to the Third World to chose to stop laying around their thatch huts, dying from commutable diseases.
ericblair
@Davebo:
There’s research blather about 5G technologies, but any effort will be way more about power and spectrum efficiency than throughput. Since data limits are getting pretty ubiquitous, if you get a cut-rate 500 MB per month plan and a 4G phone which (theoretically) could use 100 Mb/s, you could go through your entire monthly allowance in 40 seconds. What you do for the next 2.5 million seconds in the month is an exercise for the user.
3G is quite good enough for most things, and since your actual throughput has a lot to do with how many other users are on the cell, can easily be faster than a loaded LTE network.
raven
Is it just me or is this almost six hour thread running out of gas?
The prophet Nostradumbass
The only thing that surprises me about this post is that mistermix didn’t manage to work in a gratuitous swipe at Apple while he was at it.
Mandalay
@? Martin:
I am just speculating, but maybe the Gates Foundation will unintentionally introduce new problems in Africa once kids stop dying from pneumonia, malaria, dysentery, diarrhea et al. The consequences of rapid population growth may be a new project for the Foundation; it will become a victim of its own success.
schrodinger's cat
Or did Tunch eated the server from whichever dimension he currently resides?
schrodinger's cat
OT: The more stuff I read written by Rajan, the more he sounds like an intellectual love child
of MoU and Bobo. Centrist globalization fluff combined with conservative market dogma. He is getting extremely good press from the Indian media with no questions asked whether it is OK for a non-citizen to be installed in such an important policy position. They are treating him like the second coming of Jesus. His initial prediction of the credit crisis not withstanding he is thoroughly an apologist for the Banking Borg. You shall be assimilated, resistance is futile.
Roger Moore
@Soonergrunt:
Africa’s biggest problem is poverty, and a major cause of that is that remote areas aren’t effectively tied into the money economy. Extending better communications infrastructure to those areas can help them sell their marketable products to the world. One of the biggest problems with charity projects that bring in infrastructure is that the locals can’t afford to support it after the people who installed it leave. Tie those people into the world market, and they’ll actually be able to build and support their own infrastructure rather than relying on outsiders’ charity.
LanceThruster
At least they’re not cluster munitions.
Mandalay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Not quite yet, but he is displaying some promising signs: Bill Gates: Why do we care more about baldness than malaria?
If he ever asks why we care about Office 365 more than malaria we can be confident that he’s gone full blown Marxist.
Felanius Kootea
@Roger Moore: I wish Google good luck with getting more than 10 governments from the existing 54 African countries on board with floating random balloons over their airspace.
Andrey
Google has never stated that Loon is designed to solve Africa’s problems. First of all, the scope is not that broad (all the problems). Second, the scope is not that narrow (only Africa). The balloons do not hover over a country or continent. They fly in a global ring along a given latitude.
I am not a kook
I don’t even see any mention of Africa on the Google Loon pages. It’s an experiment, that is being tested in New Zealand at the moment.
I remember Africa being mentioned in the news about the project but that’s about it. Was it just a line in a powerpoint in some presentation under “possible applications”?
Why shouldn’t Google be conducting R & D into internet delivery’s last mile problem? Because Bill Gates of all people disagrees?
I am not a kook
@I am not a kook: Oh, and it’s not even a google.org project, it’s under google.com. So the claim that it’s a commercial enterprise masquerading as a philantrophic project is also false.
So, mistermix, why shouldn’t Google be conducting R & D into internet delivery’s last mile problem?
SRW1
@mai naem:
Is the onwer of the private fire engines by any chance named Crassus?
rachel
@JD_Rhoades:It reminds me of a storyI heard about the old days here. Back when South Korea was building it’s telecomunication infrastructure (mid ’80s, I think) the President made the first call ever from Seoul to Mokpo. He asked the fisherman who answered his call whether he would enjoy being able to speak to the members of his family living far away. The fisherman said that it was nice, but the thing that would really help him was that now he’d be able to talk directly with the Seoul fishmongers and get a better price for his catch.
Mino
@Roger Moore: It is not even charity, it is exploitation in baby steps. See China in East Africa. Financing roads led to resource extraction no-bid contracts as their new buddies paid off. Not to mention triad opportunities in militarizing wildlife poaching of ivory and rhino horn.
pseudonymous in nc
There’s a difference between building out existing infrastructure (basically, the mobile network) and coming up with arse-brained things like balloon wi-fi. The Gates Foundation is pretty much on board with things like the GSMA’s Mobile for Development work, because it’s based upon existing projects with proven on-the-ground results.
Here’s the skinny: Google wants to own African web services, and it’s starting (for once) from behind. It has been shoving money into the continent, squeezing out existing businesses with dubious practices, and any non-profit stuff has half an eye on the commercial side.
Ruckus
I know a man who went to Africa to teach people how to manufacture bicycles using as much indigenous material and labor as possible. It works wonders but it also needs communications for others to know that these products exist and how they can purchase them or learn how to do this in their area.
There is so much needed that arguing over which one thing to fund is silly. Yes curing disease is great but people also need to eat and work. And work requires communication. Anything that makes that better is, well, better. Are balloons the answer? Off the top of my head I’d say, maybe. A tethered balloon would be a pretty cheap wireless tower to put up in a remote location.
Remember Google helps provide cheap or free information, Microsoft provides not so cheap tools to use that information. Gates yacking about Google sounds like sour grapes to me.
Annamal
FYI Google is trying the balloon experiment around Canterbury in southern NZ and it apparently didn’t go so well.
It is however being hailed as a potential way of hooking up rural users (who currently have to pay a bomb for patchy satellite). It’s also potentially a way of keeping services up during disasters which is very near and dear to a lot of us since the recent spate of >6 earthquakes over the last 5 years.
More power to them if it works…
chopper
no, but when your kid gets diarrhea and you need to talk to a doctor about it you sure as shit need a communication network to do so.
Andrew
@Ruckus: Google doesn’t provide information and what they do provide certainly isn’t without cost.
Southern Beale
@Ruckus:
And speaking of curing disease, it looks like they’ve found a 100% effective malaria vaccine. When this gets developed they’ll sure as shit need communications to get everyone vaccinated.
jon
Could they both help Africa? Yes. So what’s the argument about? Oh yeah, rich people and their press. Do I care? If they want to fight over who can help more, let there by many long battles.
liberal
I don’t know about “serious,” but at least “non-fantastic”.
A decade or so ago I read something about some meeting of tech guys, trying to figure out how to help Africa. And how a lot of them were big on bringing “tech” to Africa to “help”. Meanwhile, Gates responded, “Many of these people don’t have access to potable water, and you’re thinking of bringing them internet access?” (Ie words to that effect.)
liberal
@schrodinger’s cat:
My impression is that he wrote a couple of non-bankster-fellating things about the Crash, but otherwise is yet another conservative economist.
Ruckus
@Andrew:
OK they provide access to information.
And I don’t pay them for it. That’s pretty damn cheap. Or wait for it, FREE.
Glad I get paid to be the perfect professional writer.
Oh wait…
mclaren
Google has concentrated on solving the problems which press upon superwealthy twenty-somethings with tons of cash to burn.
They’ve succeeded.
mclaren
Incidentally, here’s an intriguing breakthrough new tech for purifying water quickly and cheaply — “New Desalination Process Developed Using Carbon Nanotubes,” Science Daily, 2011. Supposed to be orders of magnitude cheaper than conventional methods. With any luck, this might solve the problem of access to potable water in third world countries…
mclaren
@Ruckus:
He who provides access to information controls information.
He who controls information determines our perception of reality.
He who determines our pereception of reality rules the world.
Beware.
Pococurante
@JD_Rhoades:
I say this with love, but it’s not often so many of the FPs opining on an issue are so myopic.
The Chinese seem to be handling the build out of hard infrastructure and doing it in a way that actually lets Africans control their future. China just wants the resources, not create new corporate welfare leeches which is the western solution: foment dependence.
There are plenty of charity institutions in Africa, have been for literally centuries, but in the end poor infrastructure and poor communication/education have historically made these efforts seem futile.
Who cares how poor the connectivity – it is pervasive access that is the golden key.
A lot of Westerners seem to forget that the internet ran just fine and accomplished its mission of war survivability using 110 baud (0.1 kbits/second) Bell 101. Sub3G still beats what most of us were using as recently as a decade ago. Balloon technology is hardly rocket science and has a history going back to the mid-19th century.
Near universal access to the internet will do far more to combat Africa’s traditional scourges than all the vaccines the world can bring to bear. Most of the advances against parasite diseases aren’t accomplished with vaccines and insecticides but basic education on proper water storage/consumption.
So screw Bill, and props to Google for checking into the cheapest possible solutions that free up more money for other initiatives.
AdrianLesher
Expanding technology is extremely useful in improving health care outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. Here are two articles talking about the use of cell phones in improving HIV treatment. There is a better article about this somewhere out there, but I can’t find it at the moment.
http://www.irinnews.org/report/90868/mozambique-technology-revolution-hits-hiv-testing-and-treatment
http://www.abtassociates.com/noteworthy/2013/using-mobile-phone-technology-to-improve-outreach-.aspx