“Unaffordable technology”

For my graduate capstone I am researching the role and appropriation of interaction design in rural areas of developing countries. As I research a lot of information and communication technology (ICT) projects or UNESCO-sponsored initiatives, I come across a lot of implications for what to do in the future. Most of these projects are failures but even the successes often cite this one implication: “The technology utilized should be affordable.” What the hell does that mean? Why would anyone consciously develop a technology that is unaffordable–especially in the cases of poverty-stricken rural areas. This doesn’t make any sense. To think that these ICT projects might fail because the creators did not consider cost, or that the major insights are to simply make the technology affordable in the future, is ridiculous. Why isn’t that common knowledge? Apple wouldn’t make an iPod that costs $2,000 aimed at college students so why would a developer implement a technology that costs thousands a year in maintenance in a village that has an average income of a few hundred dollars a year? I mean, Sony wouldn’t sell a Playstation 3 for…..okay, wait, that might not be the best example

So what I really wonder here is what is at the core of this ‘design implication’? In this setting I think what is really at play is that developers do not design the system/artifact in a way that makes the user capable of maintaining or improving upon it in the future. If the system relies on outside support it is doomed to fail because researchers and developer can only linger so long to ensure a project’s success. I read all too frequently that projects might be a raving success while the developers are still around, only to find that years later it becomes a dismal failure. The failure is actually amplified by the fact that when users become accustomed to a system/artifact, they change their activities to center around it. As a result, when it leaves, they are left in a worse condition than before. So my thoughts on this idea of “unaffordable technology” are that designs in these settings must be participatory and adaptive. Developers and support cannot be around forever so it is important that the designs can not only be learned by the users but mastered in such a way that the user then becomes the designer (see Acting with Technology by Nardi and Kaptelinin for more on this). This way, Users can take ownership and innovate for their own uses. From a participatory standpoint, designs can most likely become adaptive. In this sense, the design is possibly modular or it is malleable so that it can be modified and reappropriated in the future. If implementations have adaptive capacity then their usage will be more sustainable.