Saturday, January 2, 2016

Free Basics: Poser Or Panacea?

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"My Sympathies, Friend. You've No Manner Of Luck At All."

Poor Mark Zuckerberg set out to launch "Free Basics" (formerly the "Internet.org Platform") with such good intentions! I fully agree with his stance that, if handled correctly, the Web can be the solution to more problems than humankind can currently imagine. But the operative concept is "handled correctly". Despite the fact that Free Basics has been launched in 15 countries (including mine), its potential has been badly compromised by the embarrassing net neutrality debate that has broken out shortly after it was mainstreamed.

Some folks would explain this series of unfortunate events as sheer bad luck. But rather than lunging for the nearest sorcerer who claims he can drive away misfortune, Mr. Zuckerberg, being a computer programmer by profession, needs to speak to a financial expert who is skilled enough to design an appropriate nation-based business model for Free Basics (once the current attempt has been officially classified as "crashed & burned"). After all, everyone knows that simply because it's free, doesn't mean it isn't business.

Whether Free Basics manages to take flight or not is something only Time will tell; however, since all that could be said about net neutrality has been exhaustively discussed (particularly in the Indian papers), it may be time for us to start exploring how this very promising project could actually be made relevant to the average person.

Free Basics - Pakistan

Life in Pakistan is complicated. Poverty is no longer the most significant threat to the pursuit of happiness. The spectre of security breaches has begun to weigh so heavily on the minds of the authorities, that the application of relevant preventive measures has become the biggest responsibility - & expense - of the common man. Every 1-horse town shopkeeper has a biometric scanning machine sitting on his counter, every tea shop has a retired sepoy armed with a rusted rifle standing at the entrance. Every day it seems that strip searches might be made standard practice at the local grocery store any minute.

All this has yielded one astonishing result: The market for specialized & customized software has spiked. Last month, the Lahore High Court (LHC) & the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) announced that they have awarded a 1-year contract to computer firms Speridian Technologies & Techlogix to develop a smartphone app by December this year that will keep lawyers, court employees & litigants updated on the progress of various lawsuits. Until recently, the afore-mentioned classes of society normally went to court nearly every day, & when they didn't, they simply called a friend & asked him for this information. Why the need for software now? Because, among other possible explanations, it is possible that the frequent security operations could be proving disruptive in the normal functions of Pakistani courts.

The way this state-of-affairs is relevant to Free Basics is that the crux of the difficulty is actually being allowed to smoothly visit a place for information. It stands to reason that such a difficulty could be greatly alleviated if accurate, complete & up-to-date public record information was available online.

Medicine

Contrary to the impression conveyed by shows like "House" & "Grey's Anatomy", the medical profession is not an exciting detective story. People rarely come in with genuine diseases that change from one set of symptoms to another in the blink of an eye; surgeons never look upon their surgeries as intellectually stimulating hobbies or chat about their social lives over a patient's cut-open body. It's interesting to pretend these things happen, but that doesn't make such stories even remotely true.

Medicine is a science in every sense of the word. Rules & standards are the only things that matter. Not being able to explain a patient's symptoms is not cause for intellectual gymnastics, it is a black mark on a conscientious doctor's record. So, you can well imagine how much graver the situation would be if the doctor is not allowed to explain the patient's symptoms. Sadly, this scenario has been a regular happening for at least the last decade or so.

In nearly every era, there is at least one class of human suffering that is forbidden to be accurately identified by the powers-that-be of a given region. For example, 16th Century apothecary & seer Nostradamus initially made a name for himself when he worked with Dr. Louis Serre to fight the plague in Marseilles. They alleviated a lot of suffering, but before they could do that, they had to take the risk of opposing the French authorities who explained the plague as Divine Retribution against sinners.

Today, we are in a position to spare doctors the risks that people like Dr. Serre took centuries ago. If a free simply-worded online database were launched, that described clearly & honestly what is the real explanation for the strange ailments sweeping the Developing World today, doctors could continue getting points for "good behavior" & patients could get the truth about their problems.

Law

Lawyers often say that a rule book is worthless if it is unaccompanied by commentary from an experienced lawyer. Laws & rules themselves make very slim volumes, it is the commentary that produces those gigantic tomes we see on law office bookshelves. Every court (at least in Pakistan) has a law library. For a small monthly fee, lawyers & litigants can visit the library any time to get information on everything from legal strategies to case laws.

But that is only convenient for those who have to go to court regularly anyway, either because they work there or because they have cases there. What about someone who is neither a lawyer nor a litigant, but occasionally would like to follow a given case for professional purposes such as stock analysis? Would he or she want to put up with the hassle of wasting time, energy & money on trying to gather information in an alien environment where he or she is viewed as a suspect because of the lack of an obvious purpose for the visit?

It would be far easier if legal news were published regularly on the relevant court's official website & online law library membership were possible for a bill that could be sent to the candidate's residence or office & paid at the nearest bank (like is done for utilities).

Relevance Is The Essence Of A Good Business Model

There was a news item in the international media a few days ago about how IBM & Microsoft are making attempts to ride the wave of Chinese interest in spreading national awareness of the new forms of pollution. The software applications they are offering to the Chinese Government have not been designed in sunny California, because Californians have no reason to be genuinely concerned about dying of atmospheric poisoning. These programs have been written by Chinese software engineers & programmers - that is, the people who know not only their own job very well, but also stand to suffer from neglecting the environmental problem. IBM & Microsoft did the sensible thing & acknowledged that "only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches" & an attractive - & profitable - product was the result.

Free Basics is a good idea, but it is not being packaged in a practical & attractive way. Case in point: Facebook has partnered with Telenor to launch Free Basics in Pakistan. They offer free access to prepaid & postpaid Telenor subscribers to the following 17 websites:

01. Facebook
02. Telenor Mobile Portal
03. Telenor News
04. BBC News
05. BBC Urdu
06. Bing
07. Wikipedia
08. OLX
09. Accu Weather
10. Babycenter & MAMA
11. ESPN CricInfo
12. Facts for Life
13. Girl Effect
14. IlmkiDunya
15. Malaria No More
16. Mustakbil
17. UrduPoint Cooking

Now I can understand the position of honor given to Facebook & Telenor sites. But of the rest of the list, the only sites that are used regularly enough to be recognizable are Bing, Wikipedia, BBC News, BBC Urdu & ESPN CricInfo. Most Pakistanis have never even heard of most of the others & don't particularly care about the ones that they have. So, is it really the net neutrality debate that has scuppered Free Basics? Or is it the fact that most of the sites on offer just don't matter to most of the people?

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