Failure Story: Microsoft's Digital Villages

For this week's assignment we were asked to research and define a failure story in the realm of tcch initiatives in Africa. I found a project that Microsoft attempted back in 1997 when Bill Gates visited the township of Soweto in South Africa.  This township was ridden with Apartheid and extreme poverty.  He promised to provide the first free-access "digital village" to the community that would be housed in the Chiawelo Community Center providing all individuals in the town access to "the information age". The initiative was orchestrated by Microsoft and sponsored by local computer companies and a US development organization.

Here is a press release about the project.

Unfortunately, as outlined in the article South Africa: Why Have All the Rural Tech Projects Failed? from 2013, the project failed for a couple of reasons:

  1. No arrangement for maintenance and operation of the project: the sponsors stopped funding the activities and the digital village did not function after this point
  2. Lack of resources: no reliable electricity and network
  3. failure to include the local community in planning: lack sufficiently skilled teachers

Even though this project was a failure, Microsoft did have some success stories in other areas in South Africa as outlined in this journal article.  Perhaps they learned from the above experience and had a better implementation than the one deployed in Soweto.

Here was Microsoft's initial proposal for the project:

Microsoft in the community
Digital Villages aims and objectives

The objectives of the programme are as follows:

·          To make technology accessible to communities of SA.

·          To build a future resource pool of technologically trained students for future recruitment.

·          To assist in demystifying technology in communities, especially among the learners and teachers.

·          To provide personal computer skills.

·          To enable traditionally disadvantaged communities to generate formal sector employment.

·          To connect disadvantaged communities to the global communication network.

·          To enable people to market skills and products.

·          To support local businesses actively as service providers.

·          To develop measurable and attainable goals for the company and benefiting communities.

·          To liaise and corporate with other sections of Microsoft to ensure participation and to support business goals.

Strategy

·          To use our existing digital villages in terms of the development stage and imperative needs of many communities in South Africa, and in line with the present and future needs of the various business units within Microsoft and our partners.

·          These replicable models are a vital aspect of the project as any new innovations can be tried and tested in them.

·          To exploit the opportunities that are present in terms of the developmental stage and imperative needs of many communities in South Africa, and in line with the present and future needs of the various business units within Microsoft and the business partners.

 

Community involvement and the establishment of committees

Once a suitable centre has been identified, the community will be approached and will be engaged in the necessary negotiations and briefings regarding the project.

A committee comprising the partners and the community will be established.  The community members will be trained and prepared for the take-over once they are ready and the business partners have completed their term as per agreement.

An agreement will be drafted to spell out the roles and responsibilities of the business partners and the community members.  This should be done to safeguard the relationship in case problems and misunderstandings may develop.

Future funding of the Digital Village will be discussed and properly planned.

 

Hardware

Microsoft will approach its business partners to donate hardware.  Joint venture programmes will be encouraged to ensure that there is hardware available for the project.

Joint venture initiatives are also encouraged for other contributions that will see to the success of the project, eg. administrative costs, training and the future planning for the centre.

 

Requirements

The proposed centre has to have:

·          An automated telephone line (preferably an ISDN line for the Internet).

·          Electricity.

·          Secured premises.

·          An Internet Service Provider.

 

Project sustainability

The established committee will be trained and assisted to prepare for the self sufficiency of the centre.  The students will be encouraged to form Computer Clubs and make a contribution towards the usage of the centre.  Adults will be expected to contribute a minimal amount of money to be registered as members of the centre.

The committee will be assisted to open a banking account where these contributions will be deposited.

A Trust Fund will be established to allow the committee to raise funds on behalf of the centre.

The viability of a particular centre will be evaluated on an agreed and regular basis, and will be subject to the continued interest of all parties.

 

Benefits to companies

·          To prepare and train a future workforce by offering technology education facilities to learners.

·          Through publicity, for the companies to be perceived as responsible citizens.

·          To establish relationship with National and Provincial governments regarding projects and their implementation.

·          To establish relationship with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and communities.

 

Press and publicity

·          To ensure sufficient publicity is arranged for project launches and ensure that partners are fully involved and acknowledged.

·          Arrange publicity during project milestones.

·          Announce any special activities and achievements on projects.

·          Inform communities and stakeholders of the closing down of projects at the end of project.

·          Compile annual reports and list all partners and names of the digital villages they supported including success stories.

 

Evaluation and measurement of success

Annual evaluation will be conducted and recommendations made for further improvement of the centers.

Relevant stakeholders will be identified and participation invited where applicable.

The project will be considered successful in communities where evidence of commitment, achievement, organisation and structure are present.

The support of the community will be assessed through the number of paid up memberships, number of regular attendants and the trainees per courses offered at the centre.

 

F For Fake by Orson Welles

F for Fake, a documentary by Orson Welles was an interesting analysis on authenticity. He investigates and addresses individuals directly involved with forgery in one way or another -- Elmyr de Hory, a unstoppable art forager,  his "hoax biographer" Clifford Irving, Orsen Welles' partner Oja Kodar and Orsen Welles himself. The interesting part is that at the very beginning of the film and even in the name of the film, Welles is admitting that the documentary is addressing the concept of 'what is fake'?. That in turn (like Andrew Lazarow did on the board on the first day of class by writing "Everything on this board is a lie", "I love ITP" --- does that mean that the second sentence is a lie? Or is the first? Or are they both?), makes you think what in this documentary is actually true? Because the topic, right out of the gate, is about fakery, what can be truthful here, really?

Welles interviews Elmyr on his process of creating forged art of many great painter's work.  They are so accurate that even the experts couldn't determine they were fake.  Elmyr would sell these paintings to the galleries and the galleries would put an exuberant price on this precious artifacts of art which would sell.  It's interesting that the curators would somehow decide what the price of these paintings would be-- one could be worth tens of thousands of dollars or more--- and then in a split second, Elmyr could claim it as his and the painting would immediately be worthless, right in that moment. It interesting that we can affix worth on something one moment, and then remove it the next.

In class we talked about the definitions of an illusion (fake) versus a con (real fake).  A con makes you believe that something false is true; and an illusion makes you believe something impossible, even though you know it's false.

With those definitions in mind, I believe that Elmyr would have been more on the con- side of the spectrum.  He created false paintings that he sold off, and convinced others, were real.

on the other hand...

I feel that Orsen Welles and the way he told his stories in the documentary were more of an illusion partly because there seemed to be an air of humor in the way he told his false tales, and also he did have FALSE flash across the screen many times throughout the documentary. I feel that his fables were easier for people to forgive, because he gave himself up in the end stating his story with Oja was incorrect.  If he didn't mention that the tale was false at the end of the documentary, it might be harder choice where to place him on the spectrum of con/illusion.

Overall, if was an interesting social experiment on furthering the thoughts and concepts around illusions and cons.

Class 1 - History of Fairy Tales

Thoughts on the assigned readings: I have never read to history of fairy tales and it's so intriguing how complex their history's are.

What are fairy tales used for? I thought the New Yorker article summed it up quite nicely: "[Fairy tales]... with their exacting distribution of rewards and punishments, they also increasingly tapped into the human urge to derive morals from stories. For centuries they held a moral anecdote, and based on the time and location, absorbed the tales of the culture and land to be passed on for generations.

A quote that I found really interesting, and it really stuck with me, in Bruno Bethlehem's book, The Uses of Enchantment, "Like great art, fairy tale' deepest meaning will be different for each person, and different for the same person at different moments in life. A child will extract different meaning from the same fairy tale, depending on his interests and needs of the moment."

I feel like this is very powerful and this, in my eyes, is what makes fairy tales powerful. This is the reason why fairy tales live on throughout our lives, why we carry them with us, and pass them on.  They have such wisdom that we once didn't see.

As mentioned later in the chapter, fairy tales are often very simple, where all the unnecessary detail is left out, yet their didactic meaning is so impactful that there can be many layers to learning.

When looking at the note above, it's interesting because I feel that Tarot reading and astrological chart have the same affect on adults. I wonder if in this class we will be comparing fairy tales to astrology as this is something I'm very interested in diving deeper into.

 

Another note that I found interesting in the book written by Jack Zipes called Why Fairy Tales Stick, he talks about how the women's role in story telling changes over the centuries. In the Middle Ages, fairy tales, once respected and cherished, were "gradually associated with untruths or silly women's tales" and "believers began 'feminizing' the tradition of wonder and fairy tales and thereby dismissing it as not relevant to the 'real world'..." Not until the seventeenth century were there much mention of women writers, but at this time in France there women that were changing the preseption of the female role in storytelling.