[Reader-list] Microsoft attempts to rope in social scientists in India

[SPACE]

what do you make of this....



Microsoft attempts to rope in social scientists in India 
 
Company tries to understand situation in rural areas before creating
technologies for them

TODD BISHOP          
Posted online: Friday, January 14, 2005 at 0028 hours IST
 
SEATTLE, JANUARY 13: Microsoft Corp's research unit is turning to
social scientists in a new effort to understand the long-term
possibilities for computer technology in developing countries.

A new Microsoft Research lab, that was inaugurated on Wednesday in
Bangalore, plans to employ anthropologists, ethnographers, political
scientists and others to observe and document the lives of people in
India's rural villages. Kentaro Toyama, a 35-year-old Microsoft
computer-science researcher who will lead the lab's emerging markets
group, has already begun trekking to distant outposts in India to
begin the work.
 
A primary aim of the new group is to help Microsoft understand the
situation in rural villages before the company tries to create
appropriate technologies for them — rather than first creating the
technologies and then trying to find areas where they might apply.

"If we want to approach that market, we have to rethink how we do
computing — and what computing is," said Microsoft researcher P.
Anandan, a native of Chennai, who has returned to the country from
Redmond, to lead the company's Bangalore lab. "We don't know the final
answers yet."

Although social scientists aren't unprecedented at Microsoft Research,
computer scientists are far more common. The company's 700-person
research unit employs a sociologist in its Redmond lab, and it has
begun hiring social scientists at its facility in Cambridge, England.
But the focus in those situations is on areas such as online social
networks and general communities of computer users.

The work to be done by the India lab's emerging-markets group is also
expected to help the company better understand similar situations in
other developing nations around the world. In some ways, Microsoft is
revisiting its original corporate motto — "a computer on every desk
and in every home" — with the recognition that, in a global sense, the
company isn't anywhere close to realizing that goal. "In fact, I would
think we have to start somewhere else — like maybe a PC in every
village," Microsoft's Toyama said.

The new lab, Microsoft Research's sixth facility, was inaugurated on
Wednesday. Microsoft is still working to finalize a lease for the lab
in the city.

The event was attended by dignitaries including Science and Technology
minister Kapil Sibal, who signed a "memorandum of understanding"
between the government and Microsoft Research India to partner in
science and technology research projects. —NYT