limits of leapfrogging

[Prof David West]

Late eighties - lowly grad student taking a development course as part
of his anthropology course.  Term paper concerned the feasibility of
starting a 12volt appliance manufacturing business in Africa with the
initial market being the RV crowd in the U.S.  Within a relatively short
time the domestic market would pick up as locals earned manufacturing
wages.  Local power to locally purchased appliances would come from
using the relatively crude solar cell technology of that date.  The
total cost would have been about .4% of what was then being invested in
establishing hydro power generation and high voltage distribution
network.  Fast forward thirty years and the the Green trend that was
nascent then is in full flower and more and more effort is being put
into 12v as people seek to leave the grid.  And a solar cell panel on
each rooftop is far less amenable to a terrorist threat than the single
tower that can bring down the entire distribution network.

I suspect that there are a lot more opportunities for leapfrogging than
the establishment would have us believe.



On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:55:16 -0700, "Owen Densmore"
<owen at backspaces.net> said:

> The economist has a thought provoking article on the limits of  
> leapfrogging:
> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10650775
> .. and attached for convenience.
>
> The idea is that, although in a few cases new technologies can be  
> deployed in developing countries .. and sometimes better than the  
> developed countries, new technologies often depend on older ones, thus  
> cannot easily be deployed by leapfrogging the older ones.
>
>      -- Owen
>
> MOBILE phones are frequently held up as a good example of technology's  
> ability to transform the fortunes of people in the developing world.  
> In places with bad roads, few trains and parlous land lines, mobile  
> phones substitute for travel, allow price data to be distributed more  
> quickly and easily, enable traders to reach wider markets and  
> generally make it easier to do business. The mobile phone is also a  
> wonderful example of a ?leapfrog? technology: it has enabled  
> developing countries to skip the fixed-line technology of the 20th  
> century and move straight to the mobile technology of the 21st. Surely  
> other technologies can do the same?
>
> Alas, the mobile phone turns out to be rather unusual. Its very nature  
> makes it an especially good leapfrogger: it works using radio, so  
> there is no need to rely on physical infrastructure such as roads and  
> phone wires; base-stations can be powered using their own generators  
> in places where there is no electrical grid; and you do not have to be  
> literate to use a phone, which is handy if your country's education  
> system is in a mess. There are some other examples of leapfrog  
> technologies that can promote development?moving straight to local,  
> small-scale electricity generation based on solar panels or biomass,  
> for example, rather than building a centralised power-transmission grid
> ?but there may not be very many.
>
> Indeed, as a recent report from the World Bank points out (see  
> article), it is the presence of a solid foundation of intermediate  
> technology that determines whether the latest technologies become  
> widely diffused. It is all too easy to forget that in the developed  
> world, the 21st century's gizmos are underpinned by infrastructure  
> that often dates back to the 20th or even the 19th. Computers and  
> broadband links are not much use without a reliable electrical supply,  
> for example, and the latest medical gear is not terribly helpful in a  
> country that lacks basic sanitation and health-care facilities. A  
> project to provide every hospital in Ethiopia with an internet  
> connection was abandoned a couple of years ago when it became apparent  
> that the lack of internet access was the least of the hospitals'  
> worries. And despite the clever technical design of the $100 laptop,  
> which is intended to bring computing within the reach of the world's  
> poorest children, sceptics wonder whether the money might be better  
> spent on schoolrooms, teacher training and books.
>
> The World Bank's researchers looked at 28 examples of new technologies  
> that achieved a market penetration of at least 5% in the developed  
> world, and found that 23 of them went on to manage a penetration of  
> over 50%. Once early adopters latch onto something new and useful, in  
> other words, the rest of the population can quickly follow. The  
> researchers then considered 67 new technologies that had achieved a 5%  
> penetration in the developing world, and found that only six of them  
> went on to reach 50%. That suggests that although new technologies are  
> often adopted by a small minority of people in poor countries, they  
> then fail to achieve widespread diffusion, so their benefits do not  
> become more generally available.
>
> Lavatories before laptops
> The World Bank concludes that a country's capacity to absorb and  
> benefit from new technology depends on the availability of more basic  
> forms of infrastructure. This has clear implications for development  
> policy. Building a fibre-optic backbone or putting plasma screens into  
> schools may be much more glamorous than building electrical grids,  
> sewerage systems, water pipelines, roads, railways and schools. It  
> would be great if you could always jump straight to the high-tech  
> solution, as you can with mobile phones. But with technology, as with  
> education, health care and economic development, such short-cuts are  
> rare. Most of the time, to go high-tech, you need to have gone medium-
> tech first.
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Phil Henshaw-2]

David,
Oh, sure, from an investment point of view there are enormous
opportunities for 'leapfrogging'.  It is actually evident in the vast
phenomenon of globalization.  A lot of the global integration of trade
and markets is just that.  I expect there's probably also a good supply
of 'glowing examples' of successful integration with societies whose
indigenous knowledge and social structures are still able to thrive with
it.    

The question is about the indigenous societies for which leapfrogging is
just an alien culture invading and disrupting their way of life, rather
than supporting their development as they would choose.  Think about the
vast and growing poverty that has been the result in so many places.
That wide array of broken societies appears to include all the world's
uncontrolled population growth.  It's this huge number of societies
largely destroyed by the wealth invasion that are the problem, not our
ability to make money from it.

What could 'we' do?  I think for so many of the disasters erupting from
our unthinking interference in nature, learning and speaking the truth
is the first thing needed.   Then the model I heard talked about this
week at the AAAS sustainability science sessions was an all stakeholders
directed research model, involving professionals, organizations, locals,
funding and organizers, maybe using a systematic holistic learning
process like my 4Dsustainability learning process.  The trick, whatever
process, seems to be to have the key 'hubs' in place, particularly the
committed and directly involved funding organization and a few 'boundary
spanning' individuals.  If you only have one of the latter the whole
project is in jeopardy of failure if they turn up missing one day.


Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040                      
tel: [phone]                
e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
explorations: www.synapse9.com  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 8:40 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] limits of leapfrogging
>
>
>
> Late eighties - lowly grad student taking a development
> course as part of his anthropology course.  Term paper
> concerned the feasibility of starting a 12volt appliance
> manufacturing business in Africa with the initial market
> being the RV crowd in the U.S.  Within a relatively short
> time the domestic market would pick up as locals earned
> manufacturing wages.  Local power to locally purchased
> appliances would come from using the relatively crude solar
> cell technology of that date.  The total cost would have been
> about .4% of what was then being invested in establishing
> hydro power generation and high voltage distribution network.
>  Fast forward thirty years and the the Green trend that was
> nascent then is in full flower and more and more effort is
> being put into 12v as people seek to leave the grid.  And a
> solar cell panel on each rooftop is far less amenable to a
> terrorist threat than the single tower that can bring down
> the entire distribution network.
>
> I suspect that there are a lot more opportunities for
> leapfrogging than the establishment would have us believe.
>
>
>
> On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:55:16 -0700, "Owen Densmore"
> <owen at backspaces.net> said:
> > The economist has a thought provoking article on the limits of
> > leapfrogging:
> > http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10650775
> > .. and attached for convenience.
> >
> > The idea is that, although in a few cases new technologies can be
> > deployed in developing countries .. and sometimes better than the  
> > developed countries, new technologies often depend on older
> ones, thus  
> > cannot easily be deployed by leapfrogging the older ones.
> >
> >      -- Owen
> >
> > MOBILE phones are frequently held up as a good example of
> technology's
> > ability to transform the fortunes of people in the
> developing world.  
> > In places with bad roads, few trains and parlous land
> lines, mobile  
> > phones substitute for travel, allow price data to be
> distributed more  
> > quickly and easily, enable traders to reach wider markets and  
> > generally make it easier to do business. The mobile phone
> is also a  
> > wonderful example of a ?leapfrog? technology: it has enabled  
> > developing countries to skip the fixed-line technology of the 20th  
> > century and move straight to the mobile technology of the
> 21st. Surely  
> > other technologies can do the same?
> >
> > Alas, the mobile phone turns out to be rather unusual. Its
> very nature
> > makes it an especially good leapfrogger: it works using radio, so  
> > there is no need to rely on physical infrastructure such as
> roads and  
> > phone wires; base-stations can be powered using their own
> generators  
> > in places where there is no electrical grid; and you do not
> have to be  
> > literate to use a phone, which is handy if your country's
> education  
> > system is in a mess. There are some other examples of leapfrog  
> > technologies that can promote development?moving straight
> to local,  
> > small-scale electricity generation based on solar panels or
> biomass,  
> > for example, rather than building a centralised
> power-transmission grid
> > ?but there may not be very many.
> >
> > Indeed, as a recent report from the World Bank points out (see
> > article), it is the presence of a solid foundation of intermediate  
> > technology that determines whether the latest technologies become  
> > widely diffused. It is all too easy to forget that in the
> developed  
> > world, the 21st century's gizmos are underpinned by infrastructure  
> > that often dates back to the 20th or even the 19th. Computers and  
> > broadband links are not much use without a reliable
> electrical supply,  
> > for example, and the latest medical gear is not terribly
> helpful in a  
> > country that lacks basic sanitation and health-care facilities. A  
> > project to provide every hospital in Ethiopia with an internet  
> > connection was abandoned a couple of years ago when it
> became apparent  
> > that the lack of internet access was the least of the hospitals'  
> > worries. And despite the clever technical design of the
> $100 laptop,  
> > which is intended to bring computing within the reach of
> the world's  
> > poorest children, sceptics wonder whether the money might
> be better  
> > spent on schoolrooms, teacher training and books.
> >
> > The World Bank's researchers looked at 28 examples of new
> technologies
> > that achieved a market penetration of at least 5% in the developed  
> > world, and found that 23 of them went on to manage a
> penetration of  
> > over 50%. Once early adopters latch onto something new and
> useful, in  
> > other words, the rest of the population can quickly follow. The  
> > researchers then considered 67 new technologies that had
> achieved a 5%  
> > penetration in the developing world, and found that only
> six of them  
> > went on to reach 50%. That suggests that although new
> technologies are  
> > often adopted by a small minority of people in poor
> countries, they  
> > then fail to achieve widespread diffusion, so their
> benefits do not  
> > become more generally available.
> >
> > Lavatories before laptops
> > The World Bank concludes that a country's capacity to absorb and
> > benefit from new technology depends on the availability of
> more basic  
> > forms of infrastructure. This has clear implications for
> development  
> > policy. Building a fibre-optic backbone or putting plasma
> screens into  
> > schools may be much more glamorous than building electrical grids,  
> > sewerage systems, water pipelines, roads, railways and schools. It  
> > would be great if you could always jump straight to the high-tech  
> > solution, as you can with mobile phones. But with
> technology, as with  
> > education, health care and economic development, such
> short-cuts are  
> > rare. Most of the time, to go high-tech, you need to have
> gone medium-
> > tech first.
> >
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>

[Prof David West]

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:33:00 -0500, "phil henshaw" <sy at synapse9.com>
said:
> David,
> Oh, sure, from an investment point of view there are enormous
> opportunities for 'leapfrogging'.  It is actually evident in the vast
> phenomenon of globalization.  A lot of the global integration of trade
> and markets is just that.  I expect there's probably also a good supply
> of 'glowing examples' of successful integration with societies whose
> indigenous knowledge and social structures are still able to thrive with
> it.

The 12volt example was not intended to make any argument for investment.
 It was intended to show an alternative way of thinking about foreign
aid - one that used a bit of imagination to "leapfrog" a technology that
was being imposed - at great cost in terms of money, cultural identity,
etc. etc. - simply because aid folk were thinking about our own
industrialization history - "of course they need hydropower, nuclear
generators, and power distribution grids, look what those things did for
us."  (Aside:  of course development is not really about helping "them;"
it is all about helping our corporations get rid of obsolete tech.)

   
>
> The question is about the indigenous societies for which leapfrogging is
> just an alien culture invading and disrupting their way of life, rather
> than supporting their development as they would choose.  Think about the
> vast and growing poverty that has been the result in so many places.
> That wide array of broken societies appears to include all the world's
> uncontrolled population growth.  It's this huge number of societies
> largely destroyed by the wealth invasion that are the problem, not our
> ability to make money from it.

The paper was developed in an anthro class - so respect for indigenous
culture was paramount - and in fact provided arguments for why the 12v
solution was "better" than the efforts then underway.

Cultural change, specifically that induced by the introduction/adoption
of technology was my focus as a grad student.  Except for some rather
general patterns (e.g. a technology that provides a surplus, like
agriculture, always leads to the establishment of organized religion
followed closely by some form of "statist" government; or, introduction
of affordable personal transportation like cars or snowmobiles leads to
an increase in sexual promiscuity and breakdown of nuclear families) the
unpredictability of results from a change is extremely high.

>
> What could 'we' do?  I think for so many of the disasters erupting from
> our unthinking interference in nature, learning and speaking the truth
> is the first thing needed.   Then the model I heard talked about this
> week at the AAAS sustainability science sessions was an all stakeholders
> directed research model, involving professionals, organizations, locals,
> funding and organizers, maybe using a systematic holistic learning
> process like my 4Dsustainability learning process.  The trick, whatever
> process, seems to be to have the key 'hubs' in place, particularly the
> committed and directly involved funding organization and a few 'boundary
> spanning' individuals.  If you only have one of the latter the whole
> project is in jeopardy of failure if they turn up missing one day.
>

Personally, I think cutlure and culture change is the prototypical
complex system and anyone that thinks they can comprehend the system
sufficient to "plan" and change is whistling in the dark.

davew

>
> Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 680 Ft. Washington Ave
> NY NY 10040                      
> tel: [phone]                
> e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
> explorations: www.synapse9.com  
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
> > [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Prof David West
> > Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 8:40 PM
> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] limits of leapfrogging
> >
> >
> >
> > Late eighties - lowly grad student taking a development
> > course as part of his anthropology course.  Term paper
> > concerned the feasibility of starting a 12volt appliance
> > manufacturing business in Africa with the initial market
> > being the RV crowd in the U.S.  Within a relatively short
> > time the domestic market would pick up as locals earned
> > manufacturing wages.  Local power to locally purchased
> > appliances would come from using the relatively crude solar
> > cell technology of that date.  The total cost would have been
> > about .4% of what was then being invested in establishing
> > hydro power generation and high voltage distribution network.
> >  Fast forward thirty years and the the Green trend that was
> > nascent then is in full flower and more and more effort is
> > being put into 12v as people seek to leave the grid.  And a
> > solar cell panel on each rooftop is far less amenable to a
> > terrorist threat than the single tower that can bring down
> > the entire distribution network.
> >
> > I suspect that there are a lot more opportunities for
> > leapfrogging than the establishment would have us believe.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:55:16 -0700, "Owen Densmore"
> > <owen at backspaces.net> said:
> > > The economist has a thought provoking article on the limits of
> > > leapfrogging:
> > > http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10650775
> > > .. and attached for convenience.
> > >
> > > The idea is that, although in a few cases new technologies can be
> > > deployed in developing countries .. and sometimes better than the  
> > > developed countries, new technologies often depend on older
> > ones, thus  
> > > cannot easily be deployed by leapfrogging the older ones.
> > >
> > >      -- Owen
> > >
> > > MOBILE phones are frequently held up as a good example of
> > technology's
> > > ability to transform the fortunes of people in the
> > developing world.  
> > > In places with bad roads, few trains and parlous land
> > lines, mobile  
> > > phones substitute for travel, allow price data to be
> > distributed more  
> > > quickly and easily, enable traders to reach wider markets and  
> > > generally make it easier to do business. The mobile phone
> > is also a  
> > > wonderful example of a ?leapfrog? technology: it has enabled  
> > > developing countries to skip the fixed-line technology of the 20th  
> > > century and move straight to the mobile technology of the
> > 21st. Surely  
> > > other technologies can do the same?
> > >
> > > Alas, the mobile phone turns out to be rather unusual. Its
> > very nature
> > > makes it an especially good leapfrogger: it works using radio, so  
> > > there is no need to rely on physical infrastructure such as
> > roads and  
> > > phone wires; base-stations can be powered using their own
> > generators  
> > > in places where there is no electrical grid; and you do not
> > have to be  
> > > literate to use a phone, which is handy if your country's
> > education  
> > > system is in a mess. There are some other examples of leapfrog  
> > > technologies that can promote development?moving straight
> > to local,  
> > > small-scale electricity generation based on solar panels or
> > biomass,  
> > > for example, rather than building a centralised
> > power-transmission grid
> > > ?but there may not be very many.
> > >
> > > Indeed, as a recent report from the World Bank points out (see
> > > article), it is the presence of a solid foundation of intermediate  
> > > technology that determines whether the latest technologies become  
> > > widely diffused. It is all too easy to forget that in the
> > developed  
> > > world, the 21st century's gizmos are underpinned by infrastructure  
> > > that often dates back to the 20th or even the 19th. Computers and  
> > > broadband links are not much use without a reliable
> > electrical supply,  
> > > for example, and the latest medical gear is not terribly
> > helpful in a  
> > > country that lacks basic sanitation and health-care facilities. A  
> > > project to provide every hospital in Ethiopia with an internet  
> > > connection was abandoned a couple of years ago when it
> > became apparent  
> > > that the lack of internet access was the least of the hospitals'  
> > > worries. And despite the clever technical design of the
> > $100 laptop,  
> > > which is intended to bring computing within the reach of
> > the world's  
> > > poorest children, sceptics wonder whether the money might
> > be better  
> > > spent on schoolrooms, teacher training and books.
> > >
> > > The World Bank's researchers looked at 28 examples of new
> > technologies
> > > that achieved a market penetration of at least 5% in the developed  
> > > world, and found that 23 of them went on to manage a
> > penetration of  
> > > over 50%. Once early adopters latch onto something new and
> > useful, in  
> > > other words, the rest of the population can quickly follow. The  
> > > researchers then considered 67 new technologies that had
> > achieved a 5%  
> > > penetration in the developing world, and found that only
> > six of them  
> > > went on to reach 50%. That suggests that although new
> > technologies are  
> > > often adopted by a small minority of people in poor
> > countries, they  
> > > then fail to achieve widespread diffusion, so their
> > benefits do not  
> > > become more generally available.
> > >
> > > Lavatories before laptops
> > > The World Bank concludes that a country's capacity to absorb and
> > > benefit from new technology depends on the availability of
> > more basic  
> > > forms of infrastructure. This has clear implications for
> > development  
> > > policy. Building a fibre-optic backbone or putting plasma
> > screens into  
> > > schools may be much more glamorous than building electrical grids,  
> > > sewerage systems, water pipelines, roads, railways and schools. It  
> > > would be great if you could always jump straight to the high-tech  
> > > solution, as you can with mobile phones. But with
> > technology, as with  
> > > education, health care and economic development, such
> > short-cuts are  
> > > rare. Most of the time, to go high-tech, you need to have
> > gone medium-
> > > tech first.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ============================================================
> > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
> >
> >
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org