[A12n-forum] Re: iPhone & the "both-and" dimension of ICT

["Don Osborn" <dzo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks, Friedel. The potential for open source development of mobile
technology is definitely interesting (actually I'm just putting a mention of
this issue in something I'm writing). 

I think it would be interesting to develop this for a number of languages.
If you are working with some extended Latin character sets, this experience
could be useful for a lot of other languages, esp. in west and central
Africa.

If the price of the end product is manageable then this is all the more
interesting. 

Per your mention that "only the cheaper phones are (sometimes) localized,"
this is a shame and follows a bad-old formula, IMO: in some countries the
only books published in African languages are rough and poorly edited and
printed; content is essential, but the form(at) also needs to be appealing.
The notion that African language materials - or technology - is somehow a
lower priority in terms of quality is really a defeating approach IMO (it is
not always such - I saw some really nice kids' books in Bambara a few years
ago, and in the past there have been some high quality publications out of
France in parallel texts - African language and French, in the Classiques
africains series). In the case of the phones, the assumption seems to be
that no one who does have a little more to spend on a cellphone would want
local language options?

In cellphones apparently the "look" is really important to a lot of people
(an article on Motorola's surprising recent struggle in the market makes a
big thing of this "cellphone envy" angle
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/technology/03phone.html ). On the one hand
one might not have a lot of people clamoring for a localized expensive
phone, but on the other hand that doesn't mean that some people wouldn't use
it. To the extent that this "cellphone envy" dynamic holds true in South
Africa, the limiting of localized phones to the cheaper phones puts
localization out of the desirable category, even for those who can't afford
them (what is the message in that? If you're rich & trendy you wouldn't
think about African language options?) Eventually someone may lament a less
than hoped for demand for localized phones (? no idea how they are selling),
when in fact it has as much or more to do with image and marketing as
anything else.

Anyway I think my angle links up with your suggestion that the "elite are
also allowed to have localised phones." Maybe Moko can lead the way...

Don




> -----Original Message-----
> From: a12n-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:a12n-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of F Wolff
> Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 8:01 AM
> To: a12n-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [A12n-forum] Re: iPhone & the "both-and" dimension of ICT
> 
> On Sa, 2007-01-20 at 21:06 +0530, Don Osborn wrote:
> > The US newsweekly magazine Time (22 Jan. 2007) has an article on the
> new
> > Apple "iPhone" handheld device ("The Apple of Your Ear"). It is very
> > enthusiastic about the iPhone, but one passage reminded me of the
> idea that
> > ICT is optimally has a "both-and" and positive-sum aspect. Note
> number 2 in
> > the below quote:
> >
> 
> <snip>
> 
> For the purposes of this list it might be worthwhile to note that the
> iPhone will apparently be an entirely closed device with no possibility
> for communities to extend (for example to add extra fonts or input
> methods). So it will only exhibit the "positive sum" over the sum of
> things that Apple and licenced third parties feel like offering. It is
> left as an exercise to the readers as to what this means for African
> languages.
> 
> The iPhone therefore suffers the same problem that closed, proprietary
> software poses. (Well, that is exactly what this is.)
> 
> Therefore I find the OpenMoko project far more interesting:
> http://www.openmoko.com/
> 
> An announcement was recently made on their mailing list announcing the
> roadmap for the Neo1973 phone:
> http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2007-January/001586.html
> 
> This phone will be an entirely open platform for people to innovate on,
> and here, hopefully we will see the positive sum effect that were
> mentioned. It will be built with Free Software based on a GNU/Linux
> system.
> 
> This excites me as a possibility for many African language communities
> (even minorities) to make the first cell phones available in their
> languages. In the correspondence I had with the developer it seems that
> standard (desktop) font libraries will be used with things like GTK+,
> so
> I don't foresee any problems to display any languages that can already
> be displayed in GTK+ programs.
> 
> I am not yet sure how text input will work in detail, apart from the
> fact that it will also be driven by a touch screen instead of a keypad.
> Time and cost allowing, I intend to make this phone work with the South
> African languages with extended Latin characters (Afrikaans, Tswana,
> Northern Sotho and Venda), and hopefully the work should be easy to
> port
> to other languages.
> 
> Of course, we should realise that this device (and Apple's offering) is
> an _extremely_ expensive device for most people (USA$350 plus shipping)
> and in a way, still a toy for the elite. It is definitely not aimed to
> be a phone for the masses of Africa. But hopefully we'll see a cheaper
> model with a similar architecture that can benefit from the work by
> communities on the Neo1973, just as the One laptop per child project
> now
> benefits from the work by people who could afford expensive personal
> computers.  Even so, in South Africa it seems that only the cheaper
> phones are (sometimes) localised. This could then also be a "first" in
> that it will be a smart phone that can hopefully be fully localised
> (translated, input, display, etc.)  I guess the elite are also allowed
> to have localised phones!
> 
> 
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