Everyday, technology evolves. Technology companies become participants in endless innovation race tracks. Will all innovation works? not necessarily, but it’s part of the risk. Will it be relevant? not necessarily because innovation doesn’t have to be relevant in current situation. Will it add values to our life? not necessarily, because values in life can be influenced and created based on commercial interests.
In developing country like Indonesia, unfortunately -admitted_or_not- WANTS will be most reason for technology adaptations. Cool, future trends, pioneer will be the main keywords used by big RnD spenders companies and (unfortunately) encourage consumptive behavior in emerging markets. It’s not a matter of right or wrong, because people are trained (by sales persons) to be able to justify their consumptive behavior. Decision makers will be in the intersection of politic, economy, and social interest. Most decisions in developing countries will take the sequence of economy, politic, then social interests.
Meaningful technology will be built based on social interest that will create a multiplication effect on economy interest. 1 Million PC program, might work for a country that use English as their main language. Will it be meaningful in Indonesia? it wont. Will it ever be meaningful technology in Indonesia? Yes, as long as there is a political will to apply a public policy that support this interest.
Indonesia, the 4th largest population country with more than 30% mobile connectivity penetration suppose to have no issue on technology. Unfortunately technology is perceived as meaningless to most of the people because it doesn’t add value on any aspects on their life.
Education will always be the main reason for this, but there is no continuous effort done by Indonesia’s intellectual technologists to make a meaningful technology to low educated people. For example, rather than thinking locally, most of them are referring to long distance learning methodology in developed countries that will require extra bandwidth as well as hardware that can support them. Some of them are one step ahead thinking about how to deliver knowledge to mobile devices, but most of them always try to adopt PC based mediated learning to mobile which will lead them to the same problem; high spec device.
Will our target really require the same education experience as we did? Will a fishermen need generic education? the answer will be no. Can we create a simple SMS based service that supplied fishermen an information on which spot will have the most fish colony or which market will give the best price for their catch? The answer is YES.
This kind of implementation that categorized as a meaningful technology. It doesn’t have to be sophisticated, because sophisticated technology tends to require sophisticated support elements. Meaningful Technology need to be very practical, tailored based on users’ daily life, can add a overcome their pain, most of all can give them a direct impact in other aspects so it can support a long term goal.
If you are an IT students that search for a topic for your research; by comparing or implementing IT experts theory or creating commercial application will only prove you as a smart students. But contributing an action to build an application that really works to specific target will prove that you are not just smart, but also have a potential to be more than just a technologist.
Let’s start small, let’s start simple, most of all; let’s start NOW
