Computer Science 546, Political Science 337S
Instructors: Joshua Cohen, Larry Diamond, and Terry Winograd
1 unit. Credit-no credit. Thursday 4:30-6:00pm, 160-124.
| The Peter Wallenberg Learning Theater (Room 124) at Wallenberg Hall (Bldg 160).
This one-unit seminar will explore how various forms of information technology are being used to defend human rights, improve governance, deepen democracy, empower the poor, promote economic development, protect the environment, enhance public health, and pursue a variety of other social goods. It will also examine technical, legal, political, and social obstacles to the wider and more effective use of these technologies, and how these obstacles can be overcome. The seminar, open to all Stanford undergraduate and graduate students, will feature a mix of presentations and discussions. We will hear from projects that are seeking to use information technologies and their applications--including mobile phones, text messaging (SMS), the Internet, blogging, GPS, and other forms of digital technology--to empower citizens, and we will engage the social and organizational entrepreneurs who are developing and deploying these technologies. We will hear and discuss presentations of academic research (both from within Stanford and outside) seeking to evaluate the impact of these technologies. We will engage experts on the Internet and society in broader discussions of the issues surrounding the development and regulation of this burgeoning arena of communication and social action. And we will facilitate discussion and collaboration among Stanford students from diverse disciplines who wish to study or aid development of these technologies. Students in the seminar will also be encouraged to present their ongoing research, and to use the seminar to develop new research and design projects (individual and collaborative). Students wishing to do significant research and reading in the context of the seminar may, in consultation with one of the instructors, sign up for independent study.
November 12: Jenny Aker [Assistant Professor, Economics Department and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy]Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa
Mobile phones are transforming lives in low-income countries faster than ever imagined. The effect is particularly
dramatic in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, where mobile phones have often represented the first modern infrastructure of
any kind. The iconic image of cell phones in Africa is the market woman, surrounding by her goods while making calls to potential clients
in the capital city. Equally common are the slogans of mobile phone companies promising a better life for those who use it.Yet do these images and slogans reflect the reality of what cell phones can do? Cell phones are being adopted by the rural
and urban poor at a surprising rate, far exceeding cell phone companies' projections. An emerging body of research suggests that
mobile phones are improving households' access to information and reducing costs, thereby making markets more efficient and
increasing incomes. These impacts have occurred without NGOs or donor investments -
but as a positive externality from the IT sector.Governments, donors and NGOs have noticed the potential of information technology in achieving development goals in a variety of
sectors, including agriculture, education, health, financial services and governance. Mobile phones can greatly facilitate the effectiveness
of development programs, but are needed in partnership with the private sector. And while cell phone coverage reaches over 60% of the
population in most African countries, other constraints to cell phone adoption - namely pricing and handset cost - should be addressed.Jenny Aker has worked extensively in Central, North and West Africa for the past ten years for
NGOs, international organizations and universities. Her research uses field work and field experiments to better
understand field-driven development problems, primarily by teaming up with NGOs and program implementers in
an effort to link research with policy and implementation.Jenny is currently involved in three main areas of research. The first assesses the impact of information technology
(mobile phones) on development outcomes, namely farmers’ and traders’ welfare, market performance, labor outcomes, literacy
rates and early warning systems. Based upon her previous work in Niger, she is collaborating with Catholic Relief Services in Niger on
Project ABC (Alphabétisation de Base par Cellulaire), which uses cell phones as a learning tool to allow literacy participants to read and write
in their local languages via SMS. The project takes a rigorous impact evaluation approach, assessing the impact of cell phones on literacy rates
and farmers’ marketing behavior. Her second area of research involves assessing the impact of climate change on farmer-herder conflicts in the
Sahel, with a particular focus on Mali. Her third area of research evaluates the impact of specific development interventions -- including food aid distributions, local purchases, and cash vouchers – on producers’ welfare and market performance in the Sahel.
Peter Meier will be presenting the preliminary results of his dissertation research that draws on a nested analysis approach. The results are from the first half of his dissertation research--namely a large-N study to determine whether technology access is a statistically significant predictor of protest frequency in countries under repressive rule.
Patrick Meier is a PhD Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University and a Doctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI). Patrick's dissertation research seeks to determine whether local access to new media and digital technologies changes the balance of power between repressive regimes and civil resistance movements. He also co-authored an applied econometric study related to his research for Harvard University's Berkman Center for the Study of Internet and Society. Patrick has consulted on projects directly related to his dissertation research. Most recently, he was the civil society and new media advisor for the Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program (CDP) to foster conditions in Cuba that will lead to a peaceful transition to stable democratic rule. Patrick is on the Boards of Ushahidi, DigiActive and Digital Democracy, and a graduate of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Patrick has presented his research worldwide and is regularly interviewed by specialized and popular press.
Cloud computing is not just for computing anymore: you can now find as much mindshare as you can afford out in the cloud too -- a new range of projects is making the application of human brainpower as purchasable and fungible as additional server rackspace. What are some of the issues arising as armies of thinkers are recruited by the thousands and millions? A fascinating (and non-scare-mongering) view is offered of a future in which nearly any mental act can be bought and sold.
see Ubiquitous Human Computing by Jonathan Zittrain
See TED Talk The Web as random acts of kindness
FrontlineSMS:Medic: Democratizing Health for the Developing World on Their Terms Not Ours
FrontlineSMS:Medic is a Palo Alto based tech nonprofit startup. It began in early 2009 with several Stanford undergraduates and graduate students at the helm. The concept behind the group's software suite is simple: free intuitive mobile phone and computer applications built upon free and open source packages, such as OpenMRS and FrontlineSMS, to allow clinics and hospitals in the developing world to use mobile phones for healthcare services in resource poor settings. Their work has already broken rapidly out of their first pilot site in Malawi and now 2.2 million patients are being covered by their software in Uganda, Tanzania, Cameroon, Kenya, Burundi, Guatemala, Honduras, India and Bangladesh. Their service partners include Partners in Health, Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, and Village Health Works.
This summer, Managing Director, Lucky Gunasekara, and Tom Wiltzius, a Stanford C.S. Senior and Developer for Medic, traveled to rural Malawi. Their experience in Malawi reaffirmed their conviction that mobile phones could make significant impact on healthcare, but that making taking Medic to scale would require a serious redesign of their system. This project has been dubbed Fetch and during their talk, Tom and Lucky will discuss the experiences that led them to this conclusion and their plans to make a healthcare software package that fits the realities of working in the developing world.
Lucky Gunasekara is currently a student in Stanford University's School of Medicine studying applications of information technology in global health. He graduated from Cornell University in 2006, with Distinction in All Subjects, holding a B.A. in Neurobiology and Behavior, and a minor in East Asian Studies. From 2006 to 2008, he lived in Japan, studying public health and foreign aid as a Fulbright Scholar and working in corporate Japan. He currently serves as the Managing Director of FrontlineSMS:Medic, which he co-founded with partners, Josh Nesbit, Isaac Holeman, and Nadim Mahmud in 2009.
Tom Wiltzius is a undergraduate in Stanford's Computer Science program studying systems. Tom's interest in ICT for development began with work in wireless mesh networking as a means of rapidly and cheaply deploying data infrastructure in unwired areas. Projects with the Urbana-Champaign Wireless Network, South Africa's Meraka Institute, and the Stanford Information Networks Group all contributed to an understanding of mesh networking centered around applications for the developing world. Tom is currently working on a cost-sensitive, intuitive data collection tool designed for community healthcare workers in semi-connected rural environments as his senior thesis in conjunction with the FrontlineSMS:Medic project.
Read more on their work in a report released in 2009 by the UN Foundation: http://www.unfoundation.org/global-issues/technology/mhealth-report.html
In the context of authoritarian states the internet has always been viewed as an unambiguous force for good, allowing citizens of such states to mobilise around particular political and social issues, and gain access to previously banned materials. However, many authoritarian governments are now actively exploiting cyberspace for their own purposes; some of them appear to be succeeding in subverting the internet's democratising potential. Have we overestimated the internet's ability to bring democratic change and underestimated? Drawing on numerous recent examples from Russia, China, and Iran, the talk will illustrate the darker side the use of social media in these countries.
Evgeny Morozov is a Yahoo fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and a contributing editor at Foreign Policy:Evgeny Morozov,Texting Toward Utopia: Does the Internet Spread Democracy? Boston Review March/April 2009;
Evgeny Morozov, The Internet: A Room of Our Own? Dissent Summer 2009See TED Talk How the Internet Strengthens Dictatorships
Giving Farmers a Voice
Improving the productivity of small farmers is essential for economic development in most poor countries. Providing access to timely and relevant information could improve the opportunities available to farmers. However, there are significant challenges related to literacy, infrastructure, access to technology and social, cultural, institutional and linguistic gaps between producers and consumers of knowledge. The increased adoption of mobile phones is rapidly reducing the physical barriers of access. Providing voice-based services via low-cost handsets could empower farmers to become producers as well as consumers of knowledge. In this talk, I discuss several applications my students and I are developing to explore this potential. Avaaj Otalo (Gujarati for "voice stoop") is the voice-based equivalent of an online discussion board. Farmers and agricultural experts call a toll-free line to ask questions, provide answers, and listen to each others questions, answers and experiences. We conducted a six-month trial deployment of Avaaj Otalo with fifty farmers in Gujarat, India. Farmers found it useful to learn both from experts and other farmers, sharing advice on many topics - including the best time to sow fodder, recipes for organic pesticides, and homemade devices to scare away wild pigs at night. Digital ICS allows coffee cooperatives to monitor quality and organic certification requirements, and to be more responsive to farmers' needs. Field inspectors use mobile phones to document growing conditions and record farmers questions and comments through a combination of text, audio and images. In a six-month trial deployment, the system significantly reduced operational costs, saving the cooperative approximately $10,000 a year. The cooperative also obtained richer feedback from its members, which can be used for targeting extension, improving decision-making and reaching out to consumers. In both of these systems, voice provides not only an accessible interface to information, but a medium for aggregating and representing knowledge itself. We found this approach more suitable for engaging communities more comfortable with oral forms of communication, for whom text and structured data represent significant barriers to expression. Most importantly, we have found that rural communities have a deep desire to be "heard", and simply need the tools required to define and achieve "development" on their own terms.
see the CAM toolkit
- October 22: Peter Semmelhack [Buglabs]
Peter Semmelhack is the founder and CEO of Bug Labs, the company behind BUG, a programmable, open source and modular consumer electronics and web services platform. Previously, Peter was the founder and CTO of Antenna Software, a leading mobile enterprise software vendor. Following a 20 year career in software, Peter founded Bug Labs on the belief that users and communities should have the power to create and share devices in the same way they create and share digital content.
To see more about Peter and Bug Labs, see http://www.buglabs.net/
- October 29: Matt Halprin, Stephen King [Omidyar Network] Using Technology to Catalyze Large-scale Social Change
Since 2004, Omidyar Network, the philanthropic investment firm of eBay founder, Pierre Omidyar, has been investing in market-based efforts with the potential for large-scale, catalytic social impact. Technology is a significant focus of its work, as it can greatly improve the quality of life, reaching millions of people efficiently and easily. Matt Halprin, partner, and Stephen King, director, Investments, will discuss the organization's pioneering approach to philanthropy, the developing world context for technology, and innovative examples of liberation technology from the field.
Matt Halprin, Partner
Matt leads Omidyar Network's Media, Markets & Transparency initiative, supporting technologies that promote transparency, accountability, and trust across media, markets, and government. Within this initiative, his team pursues investments in Social Media, Marketplaces, and Government Transparency. In his role as Partner, Matt builds Omidyar Network’s team of talented investment professionals and works with portfolio organizations to help them succeed.Matt has more than 20 years of business experience, including six at eBay. As Vice President, Global Trust and Safety at eBay, he led a team of 90 statisticians, policy managers, and product managers. He also helped coordinate the efforts of 2,000 customer support personnel to increase revenue while minimizing fraud and other trust-reducing behavior. Prior to eBay, Matt served as a Partner and Vice President at the Boston Consulting Group, where he worked with technology clients on issues of corporate strategy and corporate development. Previously, Matt was Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Quadlux, a VC-backed developer of technology-based ovens that was later sold to GE and Hobart.
Matt is on the Boards of Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia), Sunlight Foundation, DonorsChoose.org, Goodmail Systems and Management Leadership for Tomorrow, which supports the next generation of minority leaders in the United States. He graduated with High Distinction as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School and holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.
Stephen King, Director, Investments
Stephen brings Omidyar Network exceptional experience in applying media and technology to create positive social impact. Based in London, Stephen focuses on expanding our efforts outside the U.S. in the Social Media and Government Transparency investment areas. He also makes investments across all areas within the Media, Markets & Transparency initiative.Prior to Omidyar Network, Stephen served as the Chief Executive of the BBC World Service Trust, where he led a period of sustained growth that included building programs in more than 40 countries in the developing world. Stephen helped establish the Trust’s international reputation as one of the largest and most successful organizations using media and communications to improve the lives of the world’s poor and promote better governance and transparency worldwide. Prior to the BBC, Stephen was the Executive Director of the International Council on Social Welfare, an international organization working to promote social development. Stephen has also held positions with nonprofit organizations HelpAge International, Help the Aged, and Voluntary Service Overseas.
Stephen is a board member of CARE International in the U.K. He holds an MA in Oriental and African Studies from the University of London.
- November 5: Ken Banks [ kiwanja.net ] Mobile Technology:Empowering the grassroots
Despite the promise, the majority of mobile technology solutions are only meeting the needs of a small percentage of organizations who could benefit from them. In his talk, Ken Banks will discuss how he empowers grassroots NGOs, provide the history and background to FrontlineSMS, and highlight some of the challenges in developing mobile tools which work in resource-constrained environments
Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 16 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning text messaging-based field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organizations.
Ken graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, and was awarded a Stanford University Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. In 2009 he was named a Laureate of the Tech Awards, an international awards program which honours innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. Ken's work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Institute, and he is the current recipient of a grant from the Hewlett Foundation