BANGALORE: Technology for the non-elite and the rural sector. This will be the topic of dicsussion for the five-day conference called Doors East 2003 on the theme of 'Mobility, Geography, Accessibility'. Organized by the Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS) said that the conference will attempt to bring together on the same platform designers, representatives of the technology industry, research analysts and members of the academia.

"The conference will bring together people from various disciplines to discuss the importance and ways of implementing design in technology. We are hoping to bring about interaction and therefore partnerships between design houses, design schools and technology firms to bring about more of information design and thereby better technology," said Aditya Dev Sood, CEO of CKS.

Doors East, which is a design and research network linking South Asia and Europe, is the Indian edition of the Doors in Amsterdam. Doors is a corporate entity as well as a foundation involved in the study and implementation of design in the ICT space. The conferences here are a reflection of the Doors of Perception conferences held in Amsterdam and the last conference held by them in India was in Ahmedabad in 2000.

Speaking on the relevance of such a conference in the Indian sphere, Sood said, "In our country, technology has not impacted society in a powerful way. In spite of being a powerhouse in software services their impact in daily lives is minimal or non-existent. ICT for development, as pursued by CKS and as presented at the conference, offers a framework to work on technologies that will not be adapted from somewhere else but are designed for the original users."

He added that creating technology for the man on the street had nothing to do with technology per se but rather with user and design research. "The highest reach of technology, the apex of the pyramid, the point at which technology touches culture - that is the point that has to be evolved and developed. The conference is one step in developing it," said Sood.

Doors East 2003 has several sponsors including Nokia, HP, Philips and institutional partners such as NIFT, NID and Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology.