The Coke Bottle Beam Antenna
by Lee H. Goldberg
Despite the staggering complexity and ingenuity of the technologies I cover, I occasionally find it hard to get excited about "the next big thing". Call me jaded, but our current obsession to create technologies that provide us with streaming video at every possible instant of our waking lives seems to be an awfully bad waste of precious brainpower.
On the other hand, it's easy to get me excited when you show me something that's truly useful, something that solves a real problem, like feeding people who are hungry, or teaching kids to read, learn and create. I had one of those great moments of excitement the other day when my friend Lynn, who helps build communications systems in developing countries, wrote me the other day to tell me of a Wi-Fi system being developed in Mali that uses plastic soda bottles and motorbike valve stems as the basis for low-cost directional antennas.
Costing around $1 apiece to make, the home made antennas replace commercial products costing around $40. They are a serendipitous byproduct of the GeekCorps' Mali project whose goal, in the words of the program's mission statement is " To bring technology solutions to community radio stations in Mali, to increase the quality of information they have at their disposal, and to encourage sharing of information and programs between the radio stations." Through low-cost Wi-Fi networks, community radio projects, and satellite uplinks, the GeekCorps is weaving a mesh of communication that brings news, information and education to the average Malian, and has the potential to give them access to the global economy.
Of course simply stringing a series of soda bottle-powered Wi-Fi nodes is not the whole answer. Other ingenious minds are tackling the challenges of providing power to the network and the computers attached to it in a country where electricity is 20x more expensive and reliable service is more the exception than the rule. Even getting heat out of their computer equipment in the hot, gritty African climate represents enough of an engineering challenge that they're currently running a design contest for a low-cost dust-proof heat sink design.
Many of these ingenious low-tech solutions rely on a small seed of Western high tech. Much like the soda bottle antennas need a Wi-Fi chip to power them, the solar-powered vaccine coolers, LED lighting systems, solar water pumps, and public Internet kiosks that are changing lives are blends of locally-grown and imported technologies. While it does not fit traditional business school models, this technology mix might be the basis of a huge opportunity. Countries in industrialized nations could supply "seed elements" such as microchips and photovoltaic cells that could be used to create vibrant local economies that would, in turn, become less dependent on aid, and perhaps even become active players in the global economy.
The potential that relatively simple technologies have to educate, undermine oppressive regimes, and ease human suffering is immense. And the ingenuity of the folks implementing these technologies across the world is the equal of any team developing the next Terabit router chip. But in the end, the real impact of a soda bottle antenna may be ever so much more profound.
So please, forgive me if I seem a bit distracted when we're discussing the latest technology for delivering the Monster Truck Wrestling Channel to consumer's cell phones.
Comments? Questions? News of more appropriate technology? Write me at: lgoldberg@green-electronics.com
|