Vanuatu welcomed over 140 attendees from Vanuatu and throughout the Asia-Pacific region this week to the annual PacINET technology conference. It was organised by the Pacific Islands Chapter of the Internet Society (PICISOC) and by the Vanuatu IT Users Society (VITUS).

At Wednesday’s opening ceremony, Prime Minister Edward Nipake Natapei highlighted Vanuatu’s leadership role in driving technological development in the country.

“The effects,” he said, “have been revolutionary. As a result of our telecommunications policies, economic activity has increased, adding an additional 1% to GDP growth at a time when the world economy was shrinking. Studies show that social bonds are strengthened, too, making families safer and stronger in a time of increased mobility and migration.”

The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Next Generation Internet: Security and Governance’. Among the highlights were deployment through the Pacific region of a new Internet protocol that will allow Internet-based businesses and organisations to continue to grow, a day-long investigation of the One Laptop Per Child project and another all-day workshop aimed at school principals – key stakeholders in ICT for development in Vanuatu.

Backing all these efforts is something people in Vanuatu understand better than most in the world – a thriving Pacific ICT community willing to share knowledge, experience and insight to make life better, not just for IT geeks, but for everyone.

Without the efforts of a devoted band of volunteers, the success of information and communications technologies (ICT) as tools for development would be severely limited. While the developed world has benefited significantly from entrepreneurialism and business development to drive technological advancement, the soul of the Pacific lies in the sense of community service that we all share.

Our resources are limited, we rely (some say too much) on donor aid for most improvements in our day-to-day lives, and though market players such as TVL have a tremendously influential role to play, their success is largely contingent on the willingness and capacity of the community to take advantage of their products and services.

Indeed, one the defining characteristics of these commercial operations is their close ties to the local community. Every day we saw TVL staffers contributing time and attention to ensuring the conference ran smoothly. Many attendees commended the quality and performance of the WiMax broadband link donated by TVL, one of the largest deployed to date in Vanuatu. The consensus is that it was every bit as good as they’d seen in conferences in Australia or New Zealand.

But all the Internet bandwidth in the world won’t help us if we don’t make the most of what we have. It was for this reason that conference organisers decided to concentrate on the next generation of Internet technologies. All week long, IT professionals focused on the deployment of a new kind of addressing system for the Internet.

Called IPv6, this protocol will allow the Internet to continue to grow in the years to come. Just as every mobile phone needs its own number, every computer connected to the Internet requires a unique address in order for others to be able to talk to it. The first allocation of about 4 billion numbers is about to run out, and unless action is taken, this will severely limit the growth of the Internet in the Asia-Pacific region.

Once we’ve assured that everyone can get an address, the next task is to help people find a way to make use of those addresses. That’s why PacINET 2010 organisers helped arrange a meeting between Michael Hutak, Oceania director of the One Laptop Per Child project and the Prime Minister. PM Natapei showed his continuing commitment to the development of a comprehensive ICT policy, promising his support for a year long trial of up to 2000 of these robust, low-cost and low-power devices in Vanuatu’s outer islands.

Following the meeting, Hutak was quick to point out that one cannot simply parachute laptops into a community and expect everything to work swimmingly. “Follow up,” said Hutak, “is crucial.”

He was preaching to the choir. Led by volunteer George Tasso with significant support from the Department of Education, VITUS members organised a full-day event for school principals aimed at informing them of the perils and profits involved in ICT deployment in schools.

Tasso and others have been working for over a year now with local IT volunteers, pairing them up with schools in Port Vila and organising high-level support and assistance from more experienced VITUS members. The result is that young volunteers not only get the opportunity to learn from more experienced colleagues, but schools benefit from no-cost, on-site technical support.

This week’s workshop featured the announcement of a partnership between Edwards Computer Foundation and Vanuatu schools in which IT graduates will be paired with a mentor from within the VITUS community and given the opportunity to spend time in a post-graduation work-study programme in community schools.

The Internet helps make old things new again. It provides a new and powerful way to ensure that the bonds of family and society continue to tie everyone in Vanuatu together. At this year’s PacINET conference, we saw yet again how strong communities make society healthier and more able to develop itself.

“Being rich is having money. Being wealthy is having time.”

Vanuatu is rich in time, if little else. Everywhere you look, you’ll see people loitering, chatting, sitting together, wiling away the hours.

Doug Patterson’s Kranke Kona cartoon contrasts the Vanuatu way with the outside world’s hurry-up approach to life brilliantly: Two amiable men, sitting under the coconut tree, see an expat scurrying by, briefcase in hand, mobile phone pressed to his ear. They ask him why he’s in such a rush. He replies that if he works without respite every day, some day he’ll be able to slow down and enjoy life.

I sympathise more with the two brothers under the tree than I do with the expat. But the real humour lies in the juxtaposition. As enamoured as we all are with having the time to do things well, time is, nonetheless, a finite resource. And while it’s easy to say that time is money, we need to ensure that we don’t focus too much on its price and not enough on its value.

Over the next few years, computers are going to integrate themselves into the lives of ordinary ni-Vanuatu. Already it’s getting harder to find work without having computer skills.

A number of recent developments have moved us closer to having computers in the home than ever before. Cost reductions in broadband Internet combined with the availability of more robust, low-power computers are finally putting everyday Internet within reach of at least 30% of population of Vanuatu. And things are only going to get better from here.

TVL’s recent Internet cost reductions are a pre-emptive response to the government’s announcement not so long ago that the telecommunications licensing regime is being reviewed. The government’s intention is to simplify the process and to encourage competition in all areas of telecommunications, but especially where Internet services are concerned.

The idea is simple enough. Rather than running periodic beauty contests – which is how the liberalisation of the mobile phone market was handled – they’ll simply set some basic criteria, and any company who passes the bar will be issued a license. They will be subject, of course, to ongoing scrutiny by the Telecoms Regulator.

As they did with mobile services, Telecom has seen the light and is committed to compete in the marketplace, rather than in the courtroom. They have pride of place, and this gives them the opportunity to set the tone for the new market. They’ve done it decisively, chopping prices right across the board and broadening their base significantly through their wireless WiMax service.

Expect prices to drop even further when Digicel and other newcomers try to carve out a niche for themselves.

You can now get broadband service at prices that are more affordable than ever before. The basic monthly fee is still steep by local standards, but could easily be supported if it were shared between a few families by attaching a wireless access point to the Telecom device, for example.

In order for Internet to be useful, though, people need computers of their own. More to the point, they need computers that aren’t too expensive to own. This means that not only does the purchase price need to come down, but power consumption and reliability need to improve as well.

Happily, such devices exist. Local families can avail themselves of a number of options. First off, standard computer systems across the board are becoming less expensive, and advances in laptop technology are making themselves felt in desktop computers, too. One can buy a decent quality energy-efficient desktop system these days for significantly less than 100,000 vatu.

Still too rich for you? Consider the latest offering from computer maker Asus. Called the Eee PC, this desktop retails for between 60-80,000 vatu. It requires very little power to operate.

Their laptop version will soon be available locally. It can run a full day on a single charge. The screen and keyboard are tiny, but that makes it perfect for children. It’s also a fair bit stronger and less likely to break down than ordinary laptops, because it doesn’t have any moving parts.

I’ve written several times before about the One Laptop Per Child project. It’s spreading throughout the Pacific now, through the cooperation of the SPC and national governments and NGOs. The first few dozen units have already arrived in Vanuatu, and are being evaluated by Wan Smolbag Theatre.

The Ministry of Education is also embarking on a pilot project to test these robust, low-power laptops in two schools. Further investment and development will be contingent on how they perform in the field.

One of the interesting side-effects of the revolution in mobile telephone services is how they’ve been integrated into that uniquely Vanuatu fashion of idling away the time. I see youth everywhere sitting alone or in small groups, plugging away at their mobile’s keypad.

Some may see this as wastrel behaviour, ‘SPR[*] nomo’ as people like to say. I disagree. Playing games on a mobile phone engages the mind and the imagination in new and interesting ways. And given the increasing sophistication of these devices, there’s actually a lot of learning to be had. More and more these days, the distinction between laptop computer and mobile phone is vanishing. Apple’s iPhone, for example, is a full-fledged computing device that happens to fit into a shirt pocket.

I look forward to the day when youth throughout the nation have the opportunity to while away the hours sitting together under the nambanga, heads clustered around a computer screen.

This isn’t unambiguously good. As we integrate these new influences into our lives, we’ll also be confronted with a lot of material that’s foreign – and sometimes quite offensive – to our conception of how the world should be.

Civil society and government will have a necessary and important role to play in helping to ensure that our children’s time is ‘wasted’ as constructively as possible. It’s encouraging to see them already taking the lead.

But we don’t have to send our kids to school to learn how to use a computer. All we need to do is to give them access to one, and time enough to explore.

I’m of an age to remember when the pupils were the only ones who really knew how the computer systems worked. It was a time when ‘hacking’ was a positive term, and those happy few who had access to their systems became the people who have driven this whole technological revolution.

In my experience – and I have applied this method countless times – all you need to do is identify the bright, curious ones and give them time in front of the keyboard. The rest takes care of itself. A cultural effect sets in, in which bragging rights go to the most innovative, and the whole process takes on its own momentum. Every single one of my apprentices (only one of whom had any tertiary education) has gainful employment in IT.

Courses are all well and good. They serve a definite purpose. Teacher training serves an important role, too. But what we need most of all is that which we’re richest in: Time.

Let’s invest Vanuatu’s most abundant resource into its most valuable asset, and give all of our children time to explore their world inside their very own computer screen.

This week, Ian Thomson, project coordinator for the SPC’s Pacific RICS project, came to town with some eye-catching gifts in hand.

Pacific RICS, which stands for Rural Internet Connectivity System, is the result of the Pacific Islands Forum’s Digital Strategy, itself part of the Pacific Plan. The AusAID-funded project offers Pacific Island nations access to dedicated satellite communication services using simple, easy to install and inexpensive equipment. This project is designed to dovetail with the Oceania One Laptop Per Child initiative, which aims to ensure that all children in the region get their own low-cost, durable laptop.

During a public presentation on Tuesday, attended by Ministers Edward Nipake Natapei and Joe Natuman, Santo MP Sela Molisa and many others, Thomson outlined how combining affordable Internet access and invaluable learning tools like the OLPC’s XO laptop could revolutionise life in rural areas of Vanuatu.

A sample satellite system was set up in a single afternoon at Club Vanuatu, and Minister Natapei demonstrated how easy it was to use it to connect to the Internet.

Expressing his excitement about the projects, Thomson said, ‘I feel like Father Christmas! I get to give out laptops to children – who could say no to a job like that? Not only will it help them learn, but it will also help all community members to engage with Internet technology and get connected to the global network.’

Championed by Jimmy Rodgers, the Director General of the SPC, the Pacific RICS project takes advantage of the fortuitous (for us, at least) abandonment of a satellite by Boeing a few years ago.

Boeing hatched a plan to offer Internet services to business travellers on lucrative trans-Pacific routes. In order to do so, they had to design a system that could reach them anywhere in the Pacific. The only reasonable way to do that was to use satellite technology. There weren’t any commercial systems covering this vast ‘Blue Continent’, so Boeing decided to build and launch their own. They designed the system so that it could use a satellite dish about half the size of competing offerings.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite small enough. They discovered that the additional drag added significantly to the amount of fuel required for the trip. The final nail in the coffin, though, was a survey that discovered that trans-Pacific business travellers didn’t really want the service. They were used to taking advantage of their enforced offline time to get some much-needed kip in order to remain productive on arrival.

When Boeing shelved the project, they found themselves in possession of an already-commissioned satellite with no viable customers. The coverage area, or footprint, of the satellite was squarely in the Pacific, one of the least populated – and least-visited – areas in the world. The US Armed Forces bought up ten of the twelve available transponders on the satellite, but two went asking.

When an astute satellite bandwidth provider based in Nouméa spotted this, he shopped an idea to Dr. Rodgers and his colleagues at the SPC. Why not buy out the remaining transponders, and use them to set up a non-profit satellite Internet system geared entirely toward community development and education? Rodgers, a long-time champion of communications technology, presented the idea to the Forum leadership, who enthusiastically agreed. AusAID consequently paid about two million dollars in order to lease the bandwidth outright for a two-year period.

This system offers a number of advantages over competing satellite Internet solutions. Installation costs about half as much as the next-best offering in Vanuatu right now, mostly because it uses a much smaller dish. We have Boeing’s engineers to thank for that windfall. The need to fit a dish on a plane gave us this much cheaper form factor.

Usage costs a lot less too. The project bought out all the space on the two remaining transponders at special rates, so Pacific nations have many, many megabits of space available to share amongst themselves, and there’s no limit to how much they use.

Not all local satellite providers offer unlimited use on their services. Metered bandwith offerings seem cheaper at first, because the base rates are lower. But the more you use the service, the more you pay. That effectively encourages people to not to share their service, for fear that others will hog the bandwidth. Conversely, even relatively expensive flat-rate services encourage people to make the best possible use of their service, because the more they share it, the less it costs per user.

Pacific RICS is managed by Pacific Islanders for Pacific Islanders. This is an important advantage. In 2005, when the Intelsat 804 satellite failed, technicians throughout the Pacific frantically contended with larger customers in Asia and Australia for space on other satellites. Vanuatu alone was bumped at least three times by a provider that considered the needs of a tiny customer secondary to larger business clients elsewhere in the world. The fact that this left our entire nation incommunicado for days was of no import to them.

Of course, Internet access is pointless in rural areas unless we have the means to access it. I’ve written many times before about the One Laptop Per Child project and its XO computer. I tested a late prototype of the device for over a month here in Vanuatu, and found it to be the first computer that adequately met the requirements for use in Vanuatu’s villages. It costs about 80% less than most laptops, it can survive being dropped in a puddle, four of them can run on the same amount of power required to light an average-sized fluorescent tube and it’s got a screen that you can use even in direct sunlight.

Most importantly, it’s designed top to bottom to be used by children for collaborative learning. Children can ‘share’ their activities using the built-in, zero-configuration wireless network. This means, for example, that children could sit down, each with at home with their own laptop, and use the music software to play virtual instruments together, simultaneously recording all the tracks onto a single computer.

That kind of capability was completely out of reach until this laptop came along.

Wan Smolbag Theatre took delivery of 25 XO laptops on Monday. They’ll be using them in their childhood literacy project, aimed at children in the Blacksand area whose parents can’t afford their school fees. The Ministry of Education is well-advanced in their plan to conduct a trial of the laptop in one or two Vanuatu schools. There’s no word yet on the timeline.

It bears noting that this is the first time in its history that the OLPC project has dealt directly with a civil society organisation. Vanuatu’s leadership in this regard could set an important precedent.

Leadership is what each one of these projects is about. Collaboration at every level, from the Pacific Forum on down, has derived unprecedented benefits to people throughout the Pacific. It is heartening to see that Vanuatu has been at the forefront of all these endeavours. It’s even more heartening to know that our leaders are not resting on their laurels. We’ve got momentum now; let’s continue to invest it.

I like good engineering, good design and efficient performance. In short, I like things that do their job well, whatever that job may be. I like it so much that I hate to settle for less than the best. Not the biggest, necessarily, nor the most expensive. Just the best.

This focus on tools made me lose sight of a couple of important things: First, while doing things perfectly is a commendable ideal, it happens exactly 0% of the time in the real world. Second, Vanuatu is more, er, ‘real world’ than many other places on Earth.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit of a leftie when it comes to computing. I like to see as much power in the hands of the people as possible. While it’s nice – and often necessary – to rely on services provided by others, I’ve always believed that DIY is the most empowering way to go. So, when the news began to percolate out that Vanuatu would have truly national mobile phone services, I was interested mostly in how that might help the spread of computers into the islands.

What I didn’t consider is that the mobile might actually become the computer.

The road to Damascus has been a long-ish one for me. Looking back, I have to chuckle that it didn’t become obvious to me sooner that using mobile telephones as a data entry and display terminal was a viable approach to extending many useful services to the islands.

Email, news, commodity prices and market reports, shipping schedules, financial transactions, even census data and business license applications and health data… all of these can be managed by using a mobile phone to access a central data service. As long as only small amounts of data are sent at a time, everything works just fine.

For the time being, at least, mobile phones are among the very few devices that can run in places with little or no power generation. The amount of power generation required to run most computers adds enough to their cost that they will remain out of reach of the majority of the population. So far, the One Laptop Per Child Project’s XO laptop is the only device that might be capable of running in the islands without significant infrastructure upgrades. But even then, it requires at least nominal access to the Internet to work to its full potential.

The lowest-cost alternative for Internet access today is VSAT, a small satellite dish technology. But local operators charge around a million vatu a pop for these, and that’s not including ongoing Internet charges. For VSAT to be feasible, a good deal of cooperation would be required, because the cost would have to be shared by a number of parties. Based on current pricing models, the amount of bandwidth available to any given individual would be meagre indeed.

Mobile telephony has often been described as a leap-frogging technology, in that it allows developing areas to jump past the prior technological stages that developed nations have transitioned through. There’s no need to install expensive copper wiring and a power grid. Just throw up a few towers, run your equipment using solar and/or wind power, and as they say, Bob’s your uncle.

India, Uganda and many other developing countries have made large investments in leveraging this approach to ensure that even the most underprivileged in their societies have access to basic information services. I’ve not been alone in noting that mobile phone credit actually serves as currency for small transactions in many parts of the world. It’s safer, it’s harder to steal or to lose, and it doesn’t lose its value.

Building mobile-based software applications is not terribly difficult. In principle, it’s like constructing a text-only website. Someone sends you a text message; you process the data and send a message back with the results. This kind of transactional computation is probably easier to design and implement than just about any other. The phone number and a pass-code are enough to verify the identity of parties on both ends of the transaction, so security is actually easier to enforce than on the web.

In order to make this all work, we need to be sure that there will be a degree of consistency and cooperation between all parties involved. Market forces should be sufficient to encourage much of the early development. As long as businesses are given room to work in, they will likely come up with more mobile-based services than we might have thought possible.

Possible pitfalls include services being available only through a particular carrier, or only for a particular kind of device. Much less likely – but still a possibility – is the issue of access to the information systems themselves. The right to repackage and re-sell services will need to be carefully protected, in order that smaller operators can develop their own niche markets, thus enlarging the common pot.

Mobile telephony-based information services help us to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps. But we need more than this to get off the ground. Mobile phones can do a lot, but they can’t do everything. Online learning, for example, pretty much requires computers and the Internet. Leveraging this basic level of communications into something better will still require that we figure out how to run robust, energy-efficient computers in rural settings.

Right now, we have a few people of vision leading the charge towards a national communications roll-out. But it must be admitted that a formal, truly national ICT strategy exists only in a fragmentary way. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Public Utilities has published a telecommunications policy. The e-government initiative is still moving forward, and the Ministry of Education has established an ICT committee as part of their new Sector-Wide Approach.

Business, however, has neither been consulted to any great degree, nor has it shown much desire to work collectively. The Vanuatu IT Users Society works hard at fostering discussion in these areas, but it does so with little if any material assistance from outside.

This must change. We don’t need a worker’s paradise-style central committee to manage everyone’s lives, but we do at least need a little more formal cooperation, and in a few key locations, a mandate to require that Vanuatu’s ICT priorities are being addressed.

Microsoft’s behaviour in this context has bred more than a healthy amount of distrust. Take away the shiny Gates Foundation work – it’s really nothing to do with Microsoft, anyway – and what you see is a consistent, concerted effort to protect the MS hegemony, with little or no regard to actual benefit to the user.

Now, let’s be clear about one thing. I’m no fan of Microsoft. I was once, but I haven’t been since about 1998, when the integration of ActiveX into network-enabled apps made possible such travesties as Outlook’s use of Word as an email editor. Their utter disregard for the longer-term costs to consumers was willful and determined. It came amid an outcry among geeks, who rightly pointed out that the depth of insecurity was positively sinful. When the ILOVEYOU worm came and went and still there was no attempt by Microsoft to mitigate their vulnerabilities, I made the decision never again to support their software in any mission-critical role. To this day, I treat Windows workstations as disposable, and use Linux as a bulwark against attack. (The truly security-conscious will no doubt relish the irony of that statement.)

Microsoft Windows is, in my considered, professional opinion, one of the single greatest liabilities facing businesses today. Hyperbole? Not a bit of it. It may be that your Windows PC has never been infected (neither has mine), it may be that in hypothetical cases, Linux and Apple machines are just as vulnerable as the average PC. But measured in terms of actual, right-now liability, there is no more significant vector for attack on our information systems than the typical Windows workstation. Seriously: The single most effective step you can take to reduce malware is to stop using Windows.

Microsoft – not stupid users, not lazy admins, not naive developers, nor any other red herring that’s been trotted out in the past – Microsoft has already cost businesses more in terms of time lost, resources wasted, information stolen than any other software maker. It’s an obvious, inarguable metric, and it amazes me that it’s not mentioned more often.

So how should I feel when Microsoft announces that they’ve seen the light and that they plan to support the XO laptop? Honestly, I don’t like it. I’m not going to practice Fox-style balance in this assessment, because frankly I don’t think MS has earned that right. In order to merit the benefit of the doubt, they would need to demonstrate that:

• Their software will run reliably in locations where technical support is days away. They have trouble operating in places that have instant help-desk support.
• Their software will not be subject to trivial exploit. Even in a flashed, read-only environment like that of the XO, I find it hard to believe that they will be immune to drive-by malware.
• They will not charge money for the right to install it on the XO. Asking even a few dollars per copy is literally stealing from the very children they claim to be helping. Every dollar that a government gives to MS is a dollar less spent on its people. You see, the laptop is already there, already has a custom-designed free operating system and application suite on it. So MS needs to demonstrate why Windows XP improves on this offering, and why it’s worth any money at all.
• Their software is more suited to exploration and learning than the custom-built Sugar interface, especially with regards to localisation and literacy. I would be especially interested in seeing how the collaborative application-sharing capabilities of the laptop would be expressed using the old-fashioned desktop metaphor.

I could go on, but really it all comes down to this: Microsoft once again finds itself caught by surprise by an idea that should be obvious to anyone: There are 4 billion people in the world not using Windows. With characteristically loutish clumsiness, they will elbow their way into the dialogue, and to my continuing sorrow, I and others will find ourselves once again explaining to people who should know better why using Windows in the islands might not work as well as the MS rep suggests.

And I will be the bad guy. I will be the one who lacks balance, pragmatism, understanding. I will be the one blinded by ideology and partisanship. Again.

Update: What right have I to get so snitty about this, some have asked? Why does any of this matter? Because even the most trivial problem in the islands can become insurmountable. And when someone is denied access to information for any reason, the opportunity cost is immeasurable. We really are playing with people’s futures here. The bottom line is what is best for the children using these computers, and I have seen no evidence that Microsoft is giving more than lip-service to this fundamental issue.

Most people assume that as a geek, I see technology as a Good Thing, one of the miracles of the modern age. That’s not always the case.

The professional life of an ICT professional is fraught with dangers. They’re not personal dangers, of course. There are few safer things to do than plunking down in front of a computer for several hours each day. The risks a geek faces are risks of responsibility. Every choice we make has implications, some of which can be quite serious, especially in places where resources are limited.

It’s easy to get lost in the technical details. It’s easy to forget that our work is about communications first, and technology second. We can express it any way we like, but nothing we do has any meaning until we remember that our job is helping people talk to people.

That said, computers are complex – the most complex apparatus ever designed for day-to-day use. They require nearly unimaginable hours of effort to render them usable to the average person, at work or at home. (People are pretty complex, too.)

To put things in perspective: If you put a mechanic into a garage full of all the components required to build a truck, she could build one herself. It might take some time, perhaps even months, but eventually a fully constructed vehicle would emerge. Depending on the mechanic’s skills, that truck could be expected to stay on the road for quite some time.

On the other hand, if you put a computer technician into a room with all the physical components required to build a computer, chances are the technician would never manage to make anything more than a simple adding machine, no matter how long you left them there. This is because computers are not machines – not in the traditional sense, anyway.

Computers are systems. And such systems are only possible when vast numbers of people cooperate, each one contributing his or her knowledge and skill to the collective goal of having a useful information sharing device. Engineers, programmers, technicians, administrators, friends and volunteers all have to give their time. Each one takes up the bits of information contributed by others and does a little bit more with them, tweaking this bit or that until the computer is more useful than it was before.

Truly, a computer is like a sand castle, built by countless people, each tossing a few grains here, moving a few grains there. What is miraculous about it is not that the grains are so tiny, but that the castle that we’ve built with them is so immense that we can live inside it, wandering through it almost endlessly. The complexity of computers and the information they process daily is already well beyond the comprehension of most people.

What happens when we take this immensely complicated machine and inject it into day-to-day life in Vanuatu? It’s tempting to say that the complexity of computers will clash with the simplicity of village life, but that’s not true. Oh, there’s sure to be a clash, but assuming that village life is simple is a dangerous mistake.

Vanuatu culture is a dense and richly woven fabric of dependencies, influences and counterweights. It’s doubtful whether any expat, this author included, correctly gauges its complexity.

The problem that technology poses, therefore, needs to be seen differently. The picture we often have is of an ocean of information washing over the ‘simple’ ni-Vanuatu villages in much the same way the King tides wash over the islands of Tuvalu every year. But that’s neither accurate nor useful. Vanuatu society is not a fixed point, immovable and subject only to erosion, salvageable only by the construction of an immense sea wall. It would be more useful to view it as a deep, slow current rising to touch the turbulence on the surface, each one affecting the other.

Every good mariner knows that a lifetime of study is required to be able to navigate the flow when tides converge. Riding this current requires skilled hands at the helm and an experienced eye on the water.

A captain entering such waters for the first time will make every effort to ensure that the charts are up to date, that the crew is alert and awake, and will even take on a pilot in particularly tricky spots. But there’s still no guarantee that the passage will be a safe one. Ultimately, it’s impossible to fight the ocean. You simply ride along, dodging this way or that when the opportunity presents itself.

ICT professionals are the chart-makers, the pilots and the helmsmen of the information world, but they are not usually the captains of any particular endeavour. Nor should they be, necessarily. They are the ones who sweat the details in order that the captain can negotiate a safe passage through dangerous waters.

Things don’t always go well. It’s often frustrating to see painstakingly detailed charts tossed aside by someone who sees only flat water. But the response to this is not necessarily to put more detail in the chart. Sometimes the right answer is to make sure the right person gets the chart in the first place. A good captain can survive a bad chart, but a bad captain won’t be better with a good one.

A bad captain will blame the chart because it didn’t tell him how the currents were going to behave. A good captain doesn’t try to predict what the water will do; rather he uses the charts to decide what to do when the tides take him.

The tide of global information is already in flood. It’s already mixing inextricably with the deep, dense current that is Vanuatu culture. It’s teasing at the edges, amplifying some parts and drowning others, muddying some parts that were once clear and clarifying others that were long obscured.

ICT professionals in Vanuatu face a real challenge. They’re plotting a course through waters that nobody’s seen before, there are too few of them to fully crew the ship and, as with all things, good captains are few and far between.

It’s not surprising that we’re ill-equipped for such a voyage. The same is true of most countries. Developed nations the world over have experienced immense turmoil as a result of the rise of information technology. But they’ve got one advantage: For better or for worse, they’ve been in turmoil long enough that they’ve come to accept it as the norm.

Few in the developed world question the cost of this rootless, fluid existence. Few here in Vanuatu would accept it, given the choice.

Those of us who work in technology – and that means all of us who work in development – need to lift our eyes from the numbers on the charts and ask ourselves: What is our destination, and what is the course? We can’t master the tide, because it has a life of its own. But we can try to be sure that, as each new surge and eddy catches us, we know which currents will pull us into the rocks and shoals and which will propel us toward our goal.

I went on to say that in my experience, I’d never seen any technological device more appropriate to the particular task of providing a useful learning environment for children in remote and/or underdeveloped areas.

This was met with a particularly vehement explosion of outrage, accompanied by accusations that I was “happy because there’s a new toy in the block, to help [me] with [my] ideologically-motivated occupation.”

I confess to an impish desire to agree with that accusation.

I am without question ideologically motivated, if ideology is defined as an inability to remain idle when there’s still work to be done, combined with a passion for finding practical ways to make that work easier. And I confess that I do like new toys. Especially toys that don’t break in a week. Toys that don’t chew up more than a month’s income. Toys that actually do good, providing immediate as well as longer-term benefit to the user. Toys that have practical value.

Toys? I guess I meant tools. But who am I to split hairs?

This isn’t the first time that I – and others in my profession – have been accused of treating development as an excuse to have some quality time with the latest playthings. The implicit assumption, of course, is that people don’t need or want what we’re offering. I’m just another Music Man, flitting from town to town selling pipe dreams that people can ill afford.

This statement gives me pause, because it layers truths together in a most insidious way, filling the gaps with an unspoken – but unmistakeable – lie: Regardless of my motivation, my passion for technology has led me into a reckless, irresponsible and possibly – Heaven forfend – ideologically motivated act of deception. I’m taking advantage of the very people I’m supposed to be helping, further impoverishing them instead of enriching their lives.

There’s only one little problem with that characterisation. It’s false.

It’s also extremely hard to defend against. The tendency to see nails everywhere is the failing of every hammer-wielding man. But knowing when and where to strike is one of the cardinal lessons of technology. One would hope that after 15 years of experience with this stuff, I might have developed some ability to choose my tools well, and to apply them properly.

And where ideology is concerned (or philosophy, for those less invectively inclined), the issue at hand is the source and the nature of belief. Against those who believe – heh – that Free Software evangelism springs sui generis from a geek’s forehead, wrapped in the robes of Saint IGNUcious, there is no defence.

You see, if the premise of someone’s argument is that their opponent’s ability to reason is fundamentally impaired, they cannot be moved from that point. Any logical, practical arguments in support of one’s stance are waved away as rationalisations – in effect, clever post hoc constructions for something that was a priori considered to be true. In order to win, the accuser has only to roll his eyes and say, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

The irony of the situation is of course that such reasoning is invalid, irrational and guilty of the very accusation it makes.

Ultimately, the entire argument boils down to this: I am a bad man. Whether bad at what I do or bad in what I think – that’s all in the eye of the beholder.

I can’t defend against that. No, sorry: I won’t defend myself against that. If someone wishes to question my competence or my integrity, let him. There’s evidence enough around for everyone to make a reasonable estimation.

But there’s one part of that attack that makes me fume. That’s the implication that people don’t get technology, even if it’s presented to them fairly and clearly. Either I’ve whispered enough sweet nothings to the poor benighted yokels that I’ve utterly beguiled them, or we’re all too stupid to be able to spot the pitfalls of our choice.

What an ugly thing to say! To my mind, the accuser stands accused: What is it about someone who comes from the village that makes them a worse judge of what’s good for them than anyone else? These are the very same people who run the largest financial institutions in the country, the people who operate the most successful NGO in the entire Pacific region, the people who efficiently and effectively manage an organisation with 16,000 members nationwide. And yet, because they were not born in Sydney, Brussels or New York, somehow they are not qualified to know what’s best for them and their people.

In every single demo I’ve conducted so far, the questions have been pertinent and informed. People’s skepticism about the ability of a product to live up to its promise is a survival trait here. They bring it into the meeting unsheathed and honed to a point. But to listen to some people, the fact that the audience allow themselves to be persuaded can only be the result of the same crude beads-for-land short-circuit that is the downfall of ‘natives’ everywhere. I reject that contention utterly.

As far as I can see, the only ones letting the stars in their eyes obscure their vision are those who are willing to deny the evidence lying in plain sight, who would rather stage their retreat from Moscow by letting issues of intelligence, ability and finally integrity fall by the wayside, until nothing is left but opposition for its own sake.

Q: What is this OLPC thing, anyway?
A: It’s a project, originally developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to create a robust, low-cost, low-power computer for children throughout the world. See laptop.org for details.

Q: A laptop? I can’t afford a laptop for myself, let alone my children.
A: The aim of the OLPC project is to bring the price down to USD 100 per laptop. Right now, the price per unit is about USD 179.

Q: Why would children in Vanuatu need laptops?
A: Laptops are both a window and a tool: a window into the world and a tool with which to think. They are a wonderful way for all children to ‘learn how to learn’ through independent interaction and exploration.

Q: Why not a desktop computer, or – even better – a recycled desktop machine?
A: Desktops are cheaper, but mobility is important, especially with regard to taking the computer home at night. Kids in the developing world need the newest technology, especially really rugged hardware and innovative software. Recent work with schools in Maine has shown the huge value of using a laptop across all of one’s studies, as well as for play. Bringing the laptop home engages the family. In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home.

Finally, regarding recycled machines: if we estimate 100 million available used desktops, and each one requires only one hour of human attention to refurbish, reload, and handle, that is forty-five thousand work years. Thus, while we definitely encourage the recycling of used computers, it is not the solution for One Laptop per Child.

Q: Why is it important for each child to have a computer? What’s wrong with community-access centers?
A: One does not think of community pencils – kids have their own. They are tools to think with, sufficiently inexpensive to be used for work and play, drawing, writing, and mathematics. A computer can be the same, but far more powerful. Furthermore, there are many reasons it is important for a child to own something – like a football, doll, or book – not the least of which being that these belongings will be well-maintained through love and care.

Q: What about connectivity? Telecommunications services are expensive here!
A: When these machines pop out of the box, they will automatically make a wireless mesh network of their own and communicate with each other through that. People are also exploring ways to connect them to the backbone of the Internet at very low cost.

Q: What can a $1000 laptop do that the $100 version can’t?
A: Not much. The plan is for the $100 Laptop to do almost everything. What it will not do is store a massive amount of data.

Q: But I can’t use this laptop in my village, because we don’t have reliable power.
A: Sure you can. The laptop comes with a method of inexpensive self-contained rechargeable power that lasts a good long time. You can plug it into the wall, but you could also charge it using solar or wind power or simply by working a hand crank. OLPC are aiming for a minimum of a 10:1 ratio between time put into reading the eBook and time human-powering. In other words, one minute of cranking gives you at least ten minutes of reading.

Q: Computers for children? They won’t last a month! They’ll be full of viruses, broken down and left in the dirt in no time flat.

A: There is some risk that the laptops will be treated roughly, but in our experience, the construction of the computer is up to the punishment that a child can give. It’s got no moving parts, so you can drop it repeatedly without breaking anything. It’s waterproof; you can literally pour water all over it while it’s open and running and nothing will happen. The software it uses is already running on millions of machines world-wide, and only a tiny percentage of those machines get infected with viruses, trojans, spyware and other nasty things.

Also, let’s give a little credit to our children. They do take care of the things they value most. Given the reaction we’ve seen from most children who use one of these machines, they will be valued very highly.

Q: Okay, so they’re stronger than normal computers, but they’ll still break down. Who is going to fix them?
A: That’s a really good question. There are several more crucial questions that need to be answered as well, such as: Who will pay for them? Who will get them? How many can we afford? How will we actually use them once we get them? How often will we have to replace and/or repair them? The list goes on….

Q: That’s a lot of unanswered questions!
A: Absolutely. That’s why, if we’re really interested in using these laptops, we need to take a careful look at exactly how we’d go about living with them. It’s early days yet, but not too soon to start thinking about all of these issues.

Q: Is there any plan to use these laptops in the Pacific?
A: An OLPC ad-hoc working group has been established in the region represented by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), Solomon Islands Ministry of Education through their EU-funded Distance Learning Centres Project (DLCP), United Nations Association of Australia NSW Branch (UNAA NSW) , Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) and the New Zealand-based NGO 2020 Communications Trust (2020). This group has been developing a regional plan linked to the Pacific Islands Forum’s Digital and Youth Strategies, with SPC taking a lead role. Other groups working on OLPC in the region are also being invited to participate.

Q: How about here in Vanuatu?
A: VITUS is currently doing the rounds to see if there’s sufficient interest to begin looking seriously at the OLPC laptop. If you or your organisation are interested in knowing more about the OLPC laptop, please contact committee@vitus.org.vu.