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Breaking down barriers to the web

I stumbled upon an article from Boing Boing highlighting a very intriguing project coming out of Berkeley in recent years. Question Box is a concept currently being tested in some small villages in India. It allows a user to ask a question via an intercom system. At the other end of the intercom is an operator with an internet connection. This operator, who is fluent in both English and the native language of the user, researches the user’s query and has a conversation with the user around the results. This reminds me of a similar but more “high tech” service I recently found out about, Google Mobile . A few weeks ago, I was at a bar with some friends and we started arguing over a point of historical reference (I won’t embarrass myself or the company I keep by revealing the actual point of contention, but let’s just say we all had a different perspective in the morning light). Someone finally got out their cell phone and texted the question to Google. In a matter of seconds, Google had texted back with the answer, ending a bar dispute and allowing us to move onto the next round.

It is interesting how the use and reliance on the internet in today’s culture is becoming so pervasive that we are starting to close in on barriers to use very quickly. In the case of Question Box, the barriers are extensive and daunting: illiteracy, lack of computer access/literacy, no option for internet access, and overcoming the native language of results differing from the user’s native language. In the case of Google Mobile the barriers are: being in a mobile-only location and experiencing a momentary lack of access to the internet. Both solutions are serving different user groups but with very similar purpose. Users in both cases have a need to retrieve information from the internet without actually using the internet, gathering it instead through a third party. One is obviously more socially conscience than the other. I will let you decide which:

Allowing the third world to gain access to important data such as Paddy Farming advice or Train Schedules

or

Allowing drunken 20 some-things to end bar disputes with the wealth of useless information the internet provides.

Hint: the answer can’t be texted to you by Google.