Here Comes Trouble: The Human Network
Cisco’s recently launched “Welcome to the Human Network” tagline taps the same emotional hook as AT&T’s 1981 campaign, “Reach Out and Touch Someone.” Yet while Internet-enabled communication may offer better prospects for delivering the promised emotional connection than a phone call, closing the gap between communication and “touching someone” requires a break from business as usual.
For the vast majority of the 6.6 billion people on Earth, proximity continues to dominate daily life. Communication tools remain insufficiently distributed to alter the accidental realities of war and wealth tied to place of birth. The question of how to make communication available to everyone deserves more attention as the human network marches toward the 7 billion-mark, a threshold it’s forecast to reach by the end of 2012.
The lack of access to communication may seem moot relative to the lack of access to power, basic shelter, clean water and sufficient food. But Muhammad Yunus won a Nobel Prize in 2006 for demonstrating via Grameen Bank that access to communication yields access to basic needs, not the other way around.
There also exists a feedback mechanism between the motivation for deployment and the cost and utility of communication tools. The emergence of mobile phones more the doubled the number of people with access to communication. That 70 percent of the world population remains disconnected represents an indictment of the long-standing failure to improve the affordability and utility of communication.
The network effect makes getting everyone connected important for the already connected. An infocom ecosystem expanding the reach of the infotech industry to communication holds more promise in this regard than relying on the usual stewards of communication. A three-tier value chain of devices, connectivity, and a means to address the devices need not even include telephone companies.
The communication device represents the primary expense in this model. The cost of connectivity gets spread across all the uses of Internet access, and the addressing functionality seems unlikely to consume more than a few pennies of resources per user. There exist a number of free self-help, open-source platforms for addressing functionality in OpenSER, Asterisk and FreeRadius.
This architecture and a budget of $100 billion (about the size of the global pet food market) could go a long way to connecting everyone in the human network. SignalSys offers a $25 starter SIP phone; global scale and the four years until 2012 should be enough to make $5 SIP phone feasible. Meraki already provides a means to blanket areas with Wi-Fi connectivity for less than $5 per user.
Backhaul represents the only non-fixed cost of the entire endeavor, but the $30 billion that would be left over after buying SIP phones and setting up local Internet access for 7 billion people exceeds the revenue of the entire Internet backbone industry in 2007. There exist unknown logistic and maintenance issues, but cost and technical feasibility do not look like insurmountable obstacles.
The challenge of distribution is one of breadth. There also exists plenty of room for improvement in the depth of communication functionality. An infocom ecosystem can create a broad range of multimedia-capable devices at the high end of the market at the same time it delivers a lowest common denominator device necessary to get everyone connected. The emerging infocom industry can welcome everyone to the human network.
Its true that almost 70% of the people in this world have not made a phone call and are waiting for Companies to build infrastructure (Networks and Handsets) that can enable them to communicate and that too at low price. I know that it is difficult and requires a lot of innovation and thinking for all the companies involved in value chain to serve these people lying in the bottom of the pyramid but if Companies can have their business model based on some strategy that addresses the basic requirements of this group of people then only it can become Human Network where everyone is connected.As mentioned Cisco is planning to tap this market by using Internet as its main technology (Packet Based Data) but I feel other companies can also come up with some technologies (such as Circuit Switched Data) on which most of the telephone networks work across the globe then it will be better.
This is, of course, a portion of the direction of what Jobs is talking about when he uses the word “convergence”. There are large chunks of people who – for one or another ideological or philosophical reason – resent that perception. I doubt if Jobs cares. I certainly don’t.
The fact remains that the device[s] which will enable qualitative increase in education, understanding and access to communications are defined by price. To me, that means cell phones – not PDA’s. Not OLPC.
I agree with Eideard, cellphones are the most accessible devices at the moment, offering acceptable battery life and messaging capability -written communication!- even in the most basic models. For progress after that, I am afraid that the problems that technology will solve are those that pose the biggest obstacles for initial adoption. As asian countries adopt new tech more and more there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately Africa is very much behind and for the moment I can see less hope there. The OLPC I have to say makes me more optimistic. http://electronrun.wordpress.com/
[...] Daniel Berninger has provided a convincing argument for easy communication as a means to helping in global issues. ‘For the vast majority of the 6.6 billion people on Earth, proximity continues to dominate daily life. Communication tools remain insufficiently distributed to alter the accidental realities of war and wealth tied to place of birth [..] 70 percent of the world population remains disconnected.’ [...]