#assign3

Tackling Poverty: Designing for Recipients or Customers

Through funding from the World Bank, the Malawi Urban Water Supply Project was implemented by the Ministry of Water Development. One of its main initiatives was to expand water source, transmission and storage throughout Balantyre and Lilongwe in Malawi. To combat issues of poor availability of clean water, the Ministry of Water Development planned to purchase top of the range water holding systems and introduce them in these towns (Kawalewale, 2000).

This practice is clearly based on the assumption that we can donate our way out of poverty as suggested in the book ‘Out of Poverty’ (Polak, 2008a). The World Bank is an organisation that provides financial support for projects in developing countries in a bid to reduce poverty worldwide (The World Bank Group, 2011a). In this case, the World Bank was to provide a grant to subsidise the cost of a high quality product for these poorer communities.

This initiative was in the end deemed an impractical solution to Malawis water transmission problems. The cost of implementing these large-scale systems for a farmer earning less than a dollar a day was simply unachievable. The high quality of the products was considered unnecessary for the problems that most poverty stricken famers were facing (Kawalewale, 2000).

Subsiding the price of these top of the range products would also mean that local small-scale entrepreneurs would lose financially. This kind of charitable handout is what results in societies dependent on external charitable organisations. If the World Bank funding were to go to local designers and entrepreneurs, the community would be taking a step towards becoming more self-sufficient.

In a contrasting case, International Development Enterprises is a social enterprise currently assisting rural farmers to increase their income by understanding and responding to local problems in a variety of countries. IDE treats these smallholder famers as customers rather than recipients, giving them the ability to decide what problems are most important to address and if IDE solutions have any value for them (iDE, 2012).

One of IDE’s large-scale projects PRiSM creates opportunities for small farmers to increase their income, whilst still profiting small business owners in the region. Rather than subsidising expensive farming equipment, PRiSM aims to create networks between farmers, local businesses and services in order to promote self-sustainable regions. This method has been extremely successful in regions such a Bangladesh, where farmers experience a variety of problems ranging from lack of agricultural inputs to poor water resource management (The World Bank Group, 2011b).

The difference between these two initiatives provides evidence supporting my hypothesis that it is more successful to treat consumers of the developing world as customers, rather than recipients. The first case study was deemed unsuccessful, as it did not take into account the specific needs of individual farmers in the region. It is not appropriate to create an opportunity to buy high quality, large-scale products at a reduced cost if the target market can still not afford them or do not require such sophisticated models. Disconnection with the target market resulted in an inappropriate solution for Malawi’s basic farming problems. The PRiSM case study summarises the importance of interaction between small communities and charitable organisations. By trying to develop self-sufficiency, they are able to supply only what farmers need and can afford whilst boosting sales of local product, improving local economy. The evaluations provide clear examples of how engaging with consumers as customers can be more effective than treating them as recipients.

   References

iDE. (2012). iDE’s Mission. Retrieved from http://www.ideorg.org/OurStory/Mission.aspx

Kawalewale, H. (2000, June 30). Malawi-Urban Water Supply Project Report. Retrieved from http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2000/07/08/000094946_00051805410727/Rendered/PDF/multi0page.pdf

Polak, P. (2008a). Out of poverty. (p. 34). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Kohler Publishers Inc

The World Bank Group. (2011a, April 02). About us. Retrieved from http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTABOUTUS/0,,pagePK:50004410~piPK:36602~theSitePK:29708,00.html

 Before we start we should define the word „data“. In this essay data are considered as mere basic observations, which are real facts, not assumed or hypothesized. The visualization of data is the graphical display of abstract information for two purposes: sense-making and communication. 

To figure out in what way and where nature could aid us designing visualizations we should first have a look at where nature represents data. 

The answer is everywhere. Every single creature, object and thing in nature represents data in some kind. We just need to know how to read the information behind. When we consider information as a story it becomes much easier to understand. Let‘s have a look at trees. Trees are often several decades old and have a long story to tell. How can we read the story? We see its size, the amount of branches, scarfs … This is enough evidence that we can tell, that this tree is ages old, our perception knows already how to read these signs. But we can get even more information of its story — the annual rings in the trunk display not only the exact age of the tree, but they also tell us about the different seasons and their conditions. 

This phenomena appear in many different areas in nature. Soil layers, for example, show topographical, geographical and geological information and the layers in glaciers are frozen evidence of the annual climate and amount of carbon dioxide, for the last thousands of years. This data is rater more accessible for scientists, but just because they know how to read them. The layer technique is a well working technique in visualizations. But the main question is, how can we use this reading skills to support our visualizations? The answer is, that we have to adopt nature in our visualizations as metaphors. Metaphors are a great tool to help understand abstract or unfamiliar content. Metaphors refer to something that we know from the physical world, and we can use them creatively to explain complex or uncommon concepts and processes … Since humans love to recognize things, our brain tries its best to make sense of whatever we’re looking at. This enables us to use metaphors in an abstract way.

The visualization Mountains Out of Molehills by David McCandless shows a timeline of global media scare stories.

He uses a landscape with hills and mountains as metaphor for visualizing the data. It‘s a well working concept especially the interactive version is interesting and fun to use. The benefits of the landscape-mode on the one hand is the fast overview and on the other hand the ability to compare sizes precisely. 

Also the video Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames utilizes a metaphor to visualize the extreme impact of the powers of ten. The out zooming tracking shot makes possible to realize the tremendous effect of powers of ten. The metaphors of distance and size, through mathematics and geography allow us to compare the shown images, so we get a feeling for the speed and scale and their relation of the whole map we experience in the entire video.

What is Transhumanism? What is Uploading? As we are advancing today we will have technology that we have only seen in movies so far within the next 20 years. The problem with these technologies is that as they advance we need to understand how they will affect us and even predict future problems. So what is Transhumanism?[1] Transhuman Example

(1) The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.

(2) The study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies.

Transhumanism is a movement that essentially seeks to integrate technology with the human body to allow for an enhanced human as we can see from the transhuman example. Transhumanism will become reality within the first several decades of this century[2]. People remain sceptical about the rate of advancement but as we have seen in the past predictions are not always correct as we are given an example from Wilbur Wright “The secrets of flight will not be mastered within our lifetime - not within a thousand years”[3]. Although this can work both ways, the implications of this future technology have to be thought of even if they do not exist yet or might never and as we see that is the second part of the transhuman example.                 Uploading, it sounds familiar as we upload files to the internet all the time but what would uploading mean in a transhuman world? Uploading (sometimes called “downloading”, “mind uploading” or “brain reconstruction”) is the process of transferring an intellect from a biological brain to a computer[4]. This advancement could be one of the more complicated as it would require mapping out of all the brain including neural pathways etc. Once that has been achieved we will be able to upload our brain into a computer. We can see a couple of examples of how it would benefit us from the transhuman example, it would eliminate aging, physical problems. At the same time this technology could prove disastrous as it has some shortcomings, will uploading yourself change what is truly you? Or what if your information is copied who is the real you? There are no answers to these questions yet but as we move forward into this century we will start seeing more questions like these asked and hopefully there will be answers.

                Transhumanism seeks to offer these new technologies but also looks at these technologies from a human view and seek to solve possible problems they might cause for us in the future. We now know what Transhumanism is, but what we do not know are the consequences from these future technologies. Uploading ourselves into computers may not be as easy as we think not only because of scientific reasons but from a human point of view. What would it mean? Transhumanism seeks to answer that but will the answers come before the technology?

[1] http://humanityplus.org/philosophy/transhumanist-faq/#answer_19

[2] http://humanityplus.org/philosophy/transhumanist-faq/#answer_51

[3] Ibid.