Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a visiting professor in the department of political science. In addition, Dr. Milani is a research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution.

Prior to coming to Stanford, Milani was a professor of history and political science and chair of the department at Notre Dame de Namur University and a research fellow at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Milani was an assistant professor in the faculty of law and political science at Tehran University and a member of the board of directors of Tehran University's Center for International Studies from 1979 to 1987. He was a research fellow at the Iranian Center for Social Research from 1977 to 1978 and an assistant professor at the National University of Iran from 1975 to 1977.

Milani received his BA in political science and economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970 and his PhD in political science from the University of Hawaii in 1974

While information technologies have transformed our way of life in rich countries, in developing regions there remain many barriers to adopting new technologies, including high costs, unreliable power and network infrastructures, and lack of real or perceived benefits.  Consequently, technology ownership and usage in resource-poor environments is often limited to a small number of near-and-dear devices, which may include a television, video player, or mobile phone.  Devices that are unfamiliar are unlikely to be used.

In this talk, I will describe three projects that seek to adapt or apply familiar technologies to advance new goals in socio-economic development:

1. A new platform for citizen journalism that enables tribal communities to record and share audio newscasts over a mobile phone,
   
2. A new platform for interactive educational content using ordinary TVs and DVD players, and
   
3. A new system for monitoring and improving healthcare delivery by using off-the-shelf biometric technologies. 
   

While all projects are in their early stages, they have each been deployed in India; I will relate our experiences gained and highlight recurring themes at the intersection of technology and development.

Bill Thies is a researcher at Microsoft Research India, where he is a member of the Technologies for Emerging Markets Group.  His research focuses on creating appropriate information and communication technologies to promote socio-economic development, as well as the description and automation of biology protocols on platforms such as microfluidic chips.  Bill was trained as a computer scientist and received all of his degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, completing his Ph.D. in 2009.  His graduate research focused on programming languages and compilers for parallel computing.

Abstract
In the same world where there are 1.4 billion Internet users, a very different 1.4 billion people live below the World Bank's poverty line. As if in sudden recognition of this gap, the past decade has seen incredible interest in applying information and communication technologies for global development, an endeavor often abbreviated "ICT4D." How do you design user interfaces for an illiterate migrant worker? Can you keep five rural schoolchildren from fighting over one PC? What value is technology to a farmer earning $1 a day?

Interventionist ICT4D projects seek to answer these kinds of questions, but the excitement has also generated a lot of hype about the power of technology to solve the deep problems of poverty. In this talk, I will present 10 myths of ICT4D which continue to persist, despite increasing evidence to the contrary. My hope is to temper the brash claims of technology with realism about its true potential.

Summary of the Seminar
Kentaro identified a number of myths that surround the field of ICT4D and argued that these can confuse our thinking about the proper role for technology in addressing development problems.

Myth 1: Technology x will save the world: The history of writing on technology shows that each new advance tends to be greeted with unbridled enthusiasm about its potential impact. Where once people were convinced television could solve all social and political problems, today we are putting that burden onto mobile phones.

Myth 2: Poor people have no alternatives:  We can often assume that technology is the only way that poor people will be access certain goods. In reality, there are usually non-technological routes to information and services that are free and therefore preferable.

Myth 3: ‘Needs' are more pressing than desires: A high proportion of the income of the very poor goes on what Western observers might view as ‘luxury' items: (music, photos, festivals & weddings) rather than ‘basics' such as healthcare.

Myth 4: ‘Needs' translate into business models: Building a business model around the needs of poor communities is possible, but there are significant barriers. Poor populations are harder to reach, and they may not want to pay for the services you provide, even if their value seems obvious to you.

Myth 5: If you build it, they will come: Spending is not always rational. An eye hospital in India offers extremely high quality cataract operations for free and covers all related costs. 10% of those offered the service will still refuse to have the operation.

Myth 6: ICT undoes the problem of the rich getting richer: In contexts where literacy and social capital are unevenly distributed, technology tends to amplify inequalities rather than reduce them. An email account cannot make you more connected unless you have some existing social network to build on.

Myth 7: Hardware and software are one-time costs: Kentaro estimates that the average One Laptop per Child will in fact cost $250 per child per year to cover breakage, connectivity, power, maintenance and training.

Myth 8: Automated is always cheaper and better: Where labor is cheap and populations are illiterate, automated systems are not necessarily preferable. Greater accuracy may be another reason to favor voice and human mediated systems.

Myth 9: Information is the real bottle-neck:  Those in the ICT4D world are prone to overestimate the significance of information gaps. Even if you connect a farmer to an agricultural expert via a PC, there are a host of other barriers to be overcome before he can actually increase his yields, including: literacy, poor transport links, and a lack of volume buyers for seeds, pesticides etc.

Kentaro contends that when technology makes a difference in development, it is always as much to do with the input of committed and competent individuals and organizations. Despite this, the focus when reporting ICT4D projects quickly slips into extolling the virtues of the technology itself, not the human component. This says much about the seductive quality of technology. Myths about its potential persist because we have a strong desire to see the triumph of clever ideas and ingenuity, and to believe that one time catalytic investments can have such an impact. The reality is always more complex.

Kentaro Toyama is a visiting scholar at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley.

Until 2009, he was assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India, which he co-founded in 2005. At MSR India, he started the Technology for Emerging Markets research group, which conducts interdisciplinary research to understand how the world's poorer communities interact with electronic technology and to invent new ways for technology to support their socio-economic development. He co-founded the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) to provide a global platform for rigorous academic research in this field.

Prior to his time in India, Kentaro did computer vision and multimedia research at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, USA and Cambridge, UK, and taught mathematics at Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana. Kentaro graduated from Yale with a PhD in Computer Science and from Harvard with a bachelors degree in Physics.

The Stanford China Program in cooperation with the Center for East Asian Studies will host a special series of seminars to mark 60 Years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Over the course of the winter and spring terms, we will have six leading scholars, each examining one of the six decades of the PRC's history. Our premise is that history matters. The speaker on each decade will characterize their decade, note shifts within that time, identify the pivotal events, and discuss how the decade shaped what happened afterwards.

Barry Naughton is an authority on the Chinese economy, with an emphasis on issues relating to industry, trade, finance, and China's transition to a market economy. Recent research focuses on regional economic growth in the People's Republic of China and the relationship between foreign trade and investment and regional growth. He is also completing a general textbook on the Chinese economy. Recently completed projects have focused on Chinese trade and technology, in particular, the relationship between the development of the electronics industry in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the growth of trade and investment among those economies. His book, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978-1993, which was published in 1995, is a comprehensive study of China's development from a planned to a market economy that traces the distinctive strategy of transition followed by China, as well as China's superior growth performance. It received the Ohira Memorial Prize in 1996. Naughton is the author of numerous articles on the Chinese economy and is editor or co-editor of three other books: Reforming Asian Socialism: The Growth of Market Institutions, Urban Spaces in Contemporary China, and The China Circle: Economics and Technology in the PRC, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Naughton joined IR/PS in 1988 and was named to the Sokwanlok Chair in Chinese International Affairs in 1998.

Abstract
NRC projects in Africa and learning's in the research practices in low-income communities.

Jussi Impiö is Research Leader of Nokia Research Africa (NORA) in Nairobi. NORA conducts socio-cultural research in Sub-Saharan Africa and together with non-governmental organizations and local universities creates communication solutions to assist in socio-economical development in Africa.

Jussi joined Nokia in 2003 as Senior Research Scientist and has conducted research in the areas of mobile video, civic activism and citizen journalism. Prior to Nokia he has worked as Concept Manager at Clothing+ Corp. and as Researcher at the University of Lapland.

Jussi has co-authored 4 academic publications and holds 10 patents.

Summary of Seminar
Mobile technology is already playing a major role in economic development in Africa.  What might be the impact if that technology was specifically designed for these users? This is the mission of Nokia Research Africa (NoRA); to develop services and devices that meet the specific needs of low income communities in sub Saharan Africa.

There are three stages to the group's work. First, field research is conducted in African communities. Second, the team works on concept design and prototyping. And finally field trials are held and further adjustments made. The team has a strong record of getting products out as a result of its research.

Jussi described three projects he has been involved in recently:

• 90% of jobs in Sub Saharan Africa are microenterprises. NoRA is developing a micro entrepreneur tool kit that will be rolled out in five countries.
• 70% of Sub Saharan Africans are members of informal banking groups where money is saved collectively. NoRA is looking at ways of bringing these groups together to share expertise.
• There is a growing music informal music industry in African slum communities. NoRA is working with NGOs to help understand the dynamics of this.
• The average age on Africa is 18. NoRA's Youth Africa project seeks to understand how youth segment themselves. Over 400 interviews have been conducted so far and the project is due to be completed by the end of June.

When thinking about the introduction of technology into Africa, Jussi suggests that an analogy with biology may be helpful.  Just as when a new species is introduced to a habitat, a new technology will have all kinds of unintended consequences in its environment, not all of them desirable. Therefore it is crucial to think through any potential harms and how these might be controlled. Jussi also suggested some rules of thumb for working in the field of technology for development in the Africa:

• Think hard about what is the exact source problem you are trying to solve
• Make sure you try out ‘horror' scenarios
• Work with local organizations
• Talk to journalists - they are often the best sources of information
• Talk to governments; it is very hard to achieve anything in Africa unless you involve government from the earliest stages
• Conduct long and controlled pilots
• Educate users with the skills they will need
• Don't trust your instincts too much - we can make the mistake of thinking we ‘know' Africa, attributing to it a single culture
• Expect the worst! It is better to have thought through what could go wrong
• Be real(ideal)istic. It is important to understand the magnitude of the problems you are dealing with while keeping motivated by the belief that your work could have a major impact

In the four years since a State Council think tank, the Development Research Center, bluntly declared the failure of three decades of healthcare reform, China has placed a high political priority on designing, building and financing a modern, equitable health delivery system that serves every last one of its 1.3 billion people. As publisher of practice-building trade magazines for medical specialists in China and India, Jeffrey Parker has developed unique and valuable perspectives on what's wrong with China's healthcare system -- and how Indian practitioners are able to deliver results despite a per-capita GDP that is roughly half of China's. Through an unprecedented China-India training exchange, Mr. Parker has begun testing whether Indian models of self-financed grassroots medical startup practices can help doctors shake free of China’s Stalinist paralysis without having to wait for sweeping programmatic reforms that are always on the horizon, but seem never to come. What's more, would such grassroots empowerment models not create unprecedented opportunities for participation by international investors who up to now have been largely marginalized in China's healthcare development?

In this lunchtime colloquium, Mr. Parker reviews his experiences in China and India over the past six years and looks at several exciting recent developments in China. These include:

• An ambitious rural reimbursement scheme that already has begun to complete a nationwide healthcare safety net. The program is creating a vast pool of funds to finance rural medical services, but how will Beijing populate the countryside with sustainable grassroots practices?
• The first domestic healthcare IPO, by which Aier Ophthalmology raised some $50 million as one of 28 debut listings in the Shenzhen's new "ChiNext" Growth Enterprise Market. New wind in the sails of healthcare privatization?
• Licensing reforms that have begun delinking doctors' certification from their "work unit" hospitals under trials in Beijing and Yunnan, removing a vexing obstacle to hands-on surgical training of young practitioners. Will the breaking of senior doctors' "skills monopoly" create opportunities for private-sector training programs that will shake up China's Soviet-style residency programs?

Jeffrey Parker has lived in Greater China since 1990, first as a journalist and since 2003 as a publisher. His transition from chronicler of China's historic rise to active proponent of its economic development gives him a unique perspective on the opportunities still opening up in China -- and the challenges facing anyone keen to participate. With a twin B.A. in Asian Studies and Geography from U.C. Santa Barbara and Masters training in Journalism from Columbia University, Parker trimmed his sails for a China career from an early age. After early editorial jobs in New York and Washington, D.C., he was dispatched to Beijing by United Press International as senior correspondent in 1990. During the next 10 years with UPI and then Reuters, he covered a wide range of political, economic and social stories from postings in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Peoples Republic. In his final two years at Reuters, Parker got his first taste of media development, launching local-language multimedia news and video feeds in China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia. Since 2003, Parker has built up a family of world-class doctors' magazines serving more than 50,000 specialists in China and India from the Shanghai base of ILX Media Group, where he is editorial director, chief operating officer, a corporate director and investor. Among his objectives is to help foster a badly needed transformation of medical practice across China by inspiring grassroots doctors to deliver high-quality, cost-effective services in rural and less-developed communities left behind by government health care.