Next up in Internet evolution – servicing the illiterate among us.

To say that the Internet is a huge success would probably be one of the most understated claims of this millennium. The curiosity that existed back in the early 90's quickly fulfilled the promise that many of us saw – even if the timing of this phenomenon was missed by many who exuberantly invested in the “Dot Bomb” implosion of the late 1990s. While looking back from this perspective we can see that a number of mistakes were certainly made with one of the worst mistakes being the underestimating the length of time this “revolution” was going to take.

If we return to the early days of the net we find it was a system of almost all text. In keeping with the saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words” graphics quickly found their way into the mainstream. This actually happened simultaneously as video become entrenched – even though this was something found mostly on the seamier side of the net.

However, the reality is that the Internet has become an exclusive tool for literate (predominately English literates) for all intensive purposes. This is about to change as podcasts and more importantly videocasts start to become the norm.

The potential for education, not to mention sales, is staggering. Let's take a look at some numbers.

According to the information found here we can see some rather sobering statistics.

UNESCO estimates for 1990 clearly indicated that the number of illiterates will reach 948.1 million.

If we are willing to accept this number and compare it to the commonly held population estimates of six billion people inhabiting this planet we can figure that worldwide one on six people are functionally illiterate.

Why is this important?

In developing countries, functional literacy is treated as part of a literacy continuum, not as a separate phenomenon. Usually, the stage of post-literacy and continuing education is expected to lead to basic/functional education depending on the extent to which conditions are favourable. The problem of basic/functional illiteracy in developing countries is thus both widespread and severe. Also, there is a close connection between poverty and illiteracy. People who are illiterate also happen to be very poor. It is demonstrated conclusively that the countries with the lowest levels of literacy are also the poorest economically. Women and children are especially vulnerable to the vicious circle of poverty and illiteracy.

Let's break this down a little farther.

The disparity in literacy rates between women and men, rather than declining, is gradually growing. In 1970, the female share of global illiteracy was 61.0%, in 1985 it was 62.8%, and according to estimates for 1990 it is moving close to 63.5%. In some countries illiteracy among women is double that of men. Similarly, both in percentage terms and in absolute numbers of illiterates, there are sharp disparities among regions, among nations within regions, and among urban, rural and remote areas within nations.

This would lead me to suspect that in many places the parent in charge in child rearing cannot even teach their children to read. This will certainly contribute to passing this on disability on to the next generation - continuing the cycle of poverty.

We also need to remember that we are talking about literacy as defined by the ability to read and construct simple sentences in a native tongue (not necessarily in English or any of the more common languages used on the net) or computer literacy which is a entirely different skillset.

One of the most common arguments opposing the deployment of ICT in Developing Nations is that radio is a substantially less expensive technology and it is already easily understood. Certainly, this is true and radio can be used to disseminate information very effectively but it is only a one way medium and is not capable of allowing two way communication in any real way. I believe this makes radio a very poor choice to be employed as a teaching mechanism. Of course, if we are talking about educating illiterates using text is not going to be an effective method to interact.

The next logical conclusion is that we need to be able to manufacture a device very inexpensively that would allow for the ability to receive and store audio as well as record and deliver audio messages so that we now have two way education taking place. Incredibly, these devices already exist but as far as I know are not being applied to the job. Take a look at this little mass produced gem. With some ingenuity these battery powered units could become a portable library capable of holding several hours of recorded audio lessons along with the ability for someone to record questions for follow up, or alternately, answers to tests. In areas where Internet connectivity is not available it would be possible to utilize kiosks to dispense prerecorded lessons, which the student could then return their questions or test results to the kiosk for uploading to the professor. This adds value to the kiosk business model while providing a means for mass education very inexpensively.

Consideration also need to be made for the fact that studies have clearly shown that people learn faster from video than from simple audio recordings. This link details how to play videos on a Palm handheld. I can see the possibility of distributing video lessons on just such a device. We could also expect the ability to record audio onto these devices so that two way conversations could also be made possible. In fact, if the standard caught on the price of these handhelds would drop to a level that might make this an acceptable business model.

From my perspective this use of technology might allow us to reach from the least educated (and most vulnerable) to just about every level of person who wants to improve their lives. The potential is that we could now in a very short timeframe (relatively speaking) educate a huge number of people, effectively providing them with the means to escape poverty.

There is one more technology that is quietly sneaking up on us that I believe will dramatically change the world – automatic language translation. If we take this technology and couple it with effect speech to text/text to speech technologies we now have a means to minimize the impact illiteracy has on the world's poorest segment of our population. Google in concert with Systran is working on this as is other companies like Language Weaver as detailed in this article.

This is truly the way to create lasting betterment, education coupled with infrastructure will provide people everywhere with the tools they need to pull themselves up from the levels of poverty. This is a business model that will work and much of the necessary infrastructure is already on place to make this concept become a realization. We only need to implement it.