Big Thinker Eric Brewer: Life-Changing Technology

For most of us, technology plays a dominant role in our everyday lives. But for the four billion people in third-world countries who earn less than two dollars a day, technology has barely made a dent. Dr. Eric Brewer is trying to change that.

Brewer, who cofounded search company Inktomi before selling it to Yahoo! in 2003, recently visited Yahoo! Research as part of the Big Thinkers event series. He gave a stirring talk called “Technology for Developing Regions: Real Needs, Real Impact.”

The presentation covered his recent work in bringing cost-effective technologies to some of the most indigent regions of the world. His goal in giving the talk was not just to show how technology has the power to improve the global standard of living, but also to convince computer science researchers that technology for developing regions is an important and viable research topic.

The central thesis of Brewer’s talk is that although cellular communications is the most prevalent technology in the world -- 3 billion people use cell phones -- it is not the right solution for rural areas.

Why? Because cellular communication requires the implementation of base stations that cost anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 each. “To be financially viable, you need enough users within that radius to amortize the cost of the base station,” Brewer explains. That approach works very well in urban areas with high population densities. But rural areas, by their very nature, are not highly populated.

Brewer argues that the key to rural connectivity is wireless technology because it is economically viable. Setting up a WiFi link using a router, a WiFi card, and an external antenna only costs about $800, he explains.

Of course, the problem with WiFi is that it’s designed to work in very confined spaces, not over long distances. “A WiFi hotspot typically has 300 feet of connectivity, but we needed to make it go 300 kilometers,” says Brewer.

This was a huge challenge for Brewer and his team of university researchers. After resolving a series of technical problems -- including an unpredictable power supply and hair-raising bandwidth issues -- they were able to accomplish their goal.

In fact, they currently hold the world record for connectivity using a single WiFi node: 383 kilometers. Even more impressive, the node is delivering full bandwidth of 6 megabytes per second over every inch of that distance.

The practical benefits of Brewer’s WiFi project are tremendous. A hospital system in India specializing in vision care is now able to diagnose patients via web-based video conferencing. In the past, many rural patients with preventable blindness would not bother to visit a hospital because of the travel and waiting times involved. Now these patients can get diagnosed by doctors over the Web without ever leaving their village.

Enabled by the efforts of Brewer and his team, the hospital system now covers 13 villages and can accommodate 3,600 patients per month. To date, more than 3,000 patients have gone from being functionally blind to having effective vision and the ability to generate income.

So how can Yahoo! lend a hand? Brewer says he’d love to see a research project that improves the webmail experience in developing countries. Or a data center in Africa with the ability to run its own local copies of Yahoo! content.

Brewer firmly believes that technology has the potential to lift people out of poverty and greatly improve their quality of life. All it takes is more scientists and engineers willing to focus their efforts on these important issues.