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Zack Lynch is author of The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World (St. Martin's Press, July 2009).
He is the founder and executive director of the Neurotechnology Industry Organization (NIO) and co-founder of NeuroInsights. He serves on the advisory boards of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, the Center for Neuroeconomic Studies, Science Progress, and SocialText, a social software company. Please send newsworthy items or feedback - to Zack Lynch.
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March 25, 2004

Knowledge as Development Tool

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Posted by Zack Lynch

Suggesting that IBM’s real business opportunity was in empowering the 3B people around the world who don't have internet connectivity was Mohammad Muhsin. He provided some great example of how people were creatively tackling the problem of how individuals can log onto the internet without connectivity?

In one area of Pakistan, people write out their questions on paper which are sent to a nearby community that has access who then on a given day each week the answers are broadcasts via radio.

Another intelligent example was occurring in India where people need to have access to the soil erosion information about their land. In this case, the information about their soil is extremely private information and could easily be used against a farmer in negotiations. To overcome this problem in this village of 6.5 million people (yes, he said village) a public/private partnership was developed to provide information on soil erosion to individuals. But because almost all of these villagers are illiterate, they couldn't even type in their personal information to access the information. The answer: biometric thumbprints scanners are now being used to access private information for illiterates.

Summing it up, he declared, "knowledge empowers the human spirit."

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