The following was a final essay written by Michael Manoochehri and Carol Chen for Tapan Parikh's 2008 "Developing Rural Computing Applications" course at the UC iSchool.

One application of Information Technology that we would like to explore further is the potential for communities to tell their own stories about the what they see as the most important needs that they have. A common thread of the lecturers featured in the Designing Rural Computing Applications course is the idea that communities know best what they need, and that researchers should spend a great deal of time learning, acknowledging, and helping members of rural communities achieve their goals.

Many of our guest lecturers advised students to not only spend a great deal of time assessing the most pressing needs of people on the ground, but to also to commit a great deal of time to determine these needs. Lee Thorn, for example, advised us to leave “80% of all the solutions in the hands of the people.” Yet there seems to be a communication gap between technology advocates and rural citizens in the developing world. The course has also produced quite a lot of debate about how technology can best serve rural communities.

ICTD should not just be focused on providing gizmos to rural communities. Information technology should also be thought of as a tool to allow rural communities to tell their own stories and provide insight into their own needs. What are the most pressing problems in a particular community? Is it education? Lack of roads? Lack of health care?

Challenges:

One potential problem to this type of system are the political repercussions of dissenting media. In Turkey, for example, there are strict regulations on what types of government criticisms can be reported. This type of censorship could prevent such a system from being freely used by rural communities.

Another problem that prevents the dissemination of information is illiteracy, especially in rural areas. For example, literacy rates of women in parts of rural India are around 40%.

Possible Designs of a Community Narrative system

A system might be as simple as a wiki that travelers can update with testimonies that they hear about on their travels. For example, WikiTravel has a great deal of information about every country on earth. Yet, it lacks very much information about the economic conditions and needs of rural citizens of those countries.

Another idea might be a multiple input “narrative aggregation system,” that allows people to share stories about what they feel are their most pressing needs in any way they can - mail, txt, phone, or computer. PostSecret has been very successful in terms of garnering interest and readership. Anybody can easily, anonymously, post their stories in such a venue, potentially routing around the censorship issue. People like to hear stories, so stories of problems that could potentially be solved, aggregated through a PostSecret-like or any other medium, could find a voice through the press. Perhaps members of the press can get involved in gathering this data.
Finally, a simple blank journal can be used to record the thoughts of the community, and the book can be scanned, translated, and posted for the world to read.