'Technology should be accessible to common man'

HYDERABAD, INDIA: The keynote address by former President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam at the International Worldwide Web Conference focussed on using the potential of the world wide web to connect individuals and transform the society.

Speaking on the societal GRID, Dr. Kalam said that the total land area of India is around 3.3 million square kilometers with 7000 kilometers of coastline. Out of the billion-plus population in the country 70 per cent live in six hundred thousand villages.

"Connecting a billion people gives multiple challenges. Now, I would like to discuss about the societal transformation through the establishment of Societal GRID connectivity model", he said.

Explaining the societal GRID, Dr. Kalam said "I strongly feel any technology which is not accessible to the common man will not make any impact in the societal transformation."

In his speech, Dr. Kalam proposed a model which can inter-connect the three sectors (Agriculture, Services and Manufacturing) by four grids called Societal Grid, namely, Knowledge Grid, Health Grid, e-Governance Grid and the Rural Grid.

According to Kalam, while the Knowledge Grid interconnects universities with socio-economic institutions, industries and research and development organisations, the Health Grid joins the healthcare institutions of government, corporate and super-specialty hospitals.

Similarly, the e-Governance Grid interconnects the central and state governments, district and block level offices and panchayats and the PURA Grid or Rural GRID is aimed at providing urban amenities in rural areas.

How to bring the transformation in the conventional setup for entering into the knowledge society? That is a big challenge. "We have to bring change in thinking, and doing so, we need creative leaders in all the domains - whether in the industry, academic institutions or government,” he said. Dr. Kalam also suggested a few points to the thought leaders of the www community:

First, he said, the world community will look for how a mobile device can provide integrated solutions of 3G or 4G applications in its mother tongue. Even though the service may be available in the limited way, the Internet and web 2.0 and 3.0 combination may enhance the services in native languages, he said.

As his third point, he said, the societal grid has to work in the medium of Internet 2.0 + web 2.0 and future 3.0.

All money transaction and micro payments done through mobile phones has to be highly secured, and mobile device must become personal authentication device also.

Talking on his fifth point, he said, "The less empowered you are, you need more bandwidth. 4G offers large amount of bandwidth; societal application particularly involve farmers and villagers who are less empowered, and so we need more bandwidth. This is an opportunity to link up demand for bandwidth coming from villagers and the supply coming from 3G and 4G technologists. The web medium has to transform to meet such challenges. The future of the web is going to shift from connecting the corporate to connecting the individuals in the rural societies."

Over the time, the web will offer access without any barriers of language, caste, and creed or geographical barriers, he added.