NOTES

Introduction

1.  A full recording of the panel is available at Saxenian et al. (2011). The views that I presented there correspond roughly to Part 1.

2.  “Tech-driven philanthropy” was the tagline on Google.org’s home page (http://www.google.org) on the day of the panel, and as late as Nov. 14, 2012. It appears to have since changed, but when I Googled “tech-driven philanthropy” on Dec. 20, 2014, Google.org was still (mysteriously) the top hit.

3.  International Telecommunications Union (2014); Ericsson (2014), p. 6.

4.  World Wide Web Foundation (n.d.).

5.  Page (2014).

6.  Zuckerberg (2014). Internet.org’s announcement is available at Internet.org (2013).

7.  Duncan (2012).

8.  Sachs (2008).

9.  Clinton (2010).

10.  DeNavas-Walt et al. (2009), p. 13, provide the US Census Bureau’s graph of poverty. Incidentally, it seems that something quietly devastating began in the early 1970s. Commentators in a range of fields cite that period as the turning point where America (and possibly the Western world as a whole) began to decline. Hedrick Smith (2013) blames the 1971 Powell memorandum for turning corporations into narrowly selfish, power-hungry profit seekers. Political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson (2010) blame a political system bent to the will of the wealthy. PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel (2012), 39:30, says technological advance has decelerated since the early 1970s (except in the computer industry). Economists Goldin and Katz (2009), p. 4, note that “educational advance slowed considerably for young adults beginning in the 1970s.”

11.  The evidence for middle-class income stagnation and rising inequality is well-established. See, for example, Piketty and Saez (2003) and US Department of Commerce, US Census Bureau (2011). Saez (2013) shows that the last time some of these inequality measures were this high was in 1917. The facts are also largely uncontested – even fiscal conservatives such as Boudreaux and Perry (2013) agree with the statistics, even if they disagree about their causes and implications for policy.

12.  CTIA (2011).

13.  There is a chance that the poverty rate has been flat because nontechnological forces were increasing the rate of poverty from 1970 to now while technology was actually reducing it during the same period, and the two forces canceled each other out. If so, I’d be wrong that more technology by itself doesn’t help social causes, but that would also mean that our social system tends toward greater poverty unless new technologies are invented at a breakneck pace. That is an even darker scenario, which, if true, would only further justify the overall thesis of Part 2: that we need to pay more attention to social forces rather than to technological ones.

14.  Carolina for Kibera (n.d.).

15.  Of course, it’s understandable that corporate spin highlights products even if executives praise employee talent. The problem occurs when the rest of society drinks the Kool-Aid. And it does. I once had a conversation with an influential Harvard development economist in which I mentioned the importance of growing wisdom in people. He fixed me with a quizzical look and asked, “How is that different from what you’d want for your kids?” He seemed to believe that what was good for international development ought to be fundamentally different from what was good for his family.

16.  Denshi Burokku (“electronic block” in Japanese) was an educational toy popular in Japan during the 1970s and 1980s. They were discontinued in 1986, but have since been periodically reissued.

17.  Viola and Jones (2001).

18.  Criminisi et al. (2004).

19.  Rowan (2010) tells the story behind the Kinect system; Toyama and Blake (2001) describe the technology.

20.  Microsoft has a larger research lab in China, but it is based in Beijing – which, with its gleaming skyscrapers and slum-free environs, is difficult to classify as “developing world.” In contrast, unattended cows regularly walked by our center in India, and the neighborhood saw plenty of tarpaulin tents housing migrant workers.

21.  The brilliantly chosen WEIRD acronym was introduced by Henrich et al. (2010), who argue that most psychology studies are conducted on rich-world undergrads, an unrepresentative slice of the global human population.

22.  Plato (1956), pp. 64–65, refers to the self-animated “statues of Daidolos,” which “must be fastened up, if you want to keep them; or else they are off and away.”

Chapter 1: No Laptop Left Behind

Conflicting Results in Educational Technology

1.  Pal et al. (2006). Joyojeet Pal visited eighteen schools in four states of India, with help from the Azim Premji Foundation. Pal (2005) maintains photographs and a slide presentation about his visits.

2.  Pawar et al. (2007). MultiPoint was one of the first projects at Microsoft Research India that went through the full cycle of our approach to research: immersion in a specific environment; iterated prototyping and exploratory field trials; confirmatory evaluation; and ultimately, technology transfer and productization.

3.  United Nations (2005).

4.  Negroponte frequently repeats this mantra in public appearances. It also appears on the “Mission” page of the One Laptop Per Child (n.d.) website.

5.  Surana et al. (2008) measured power surges as high as 1,000 volts in the rural Indian power grid; most consumer electronics are not rated above 240 volts.

6.  The projects mentioned in this paragraph are a subset of the education-related projects that researchers in my group at Microsoft Research India conducted. The projects varied in their outcomes, but every single one of them saw something of the Law of Amplification to be described in Chapter 2, namely, that the pedagogical capacity of the school and teachers were critical to the technology having an impact. The following references match the order of their mention in this paragraph: Sahni et al. (2008); Paruthi and Thies (2011); Panjwani et al. (2010); Hutchful et al. (2010); Linnell et al. (2011); Kumar (2008).

7.  Cuban (1986) provides a thorough deconstruction of the history of electronic technologies in America. The quotation by Edison appears in Weir (1922).

8.  Darrow (1932), p. 79.

9.  Oppenheimer (2003), p. 5.

10.  Santiago et al. (2010); Cristia et al. (2012). The studies found no increase in either mathematical or verbal academic achievement, but they did find that cognitive skills as measured by Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a test of spatial-visual ability, did increase significantly. The study demonstrates Chapter 2’s Law of Amplification exactly: Children have a natural curiosity and desire to grow their cognitive skills through play, and computers can amplify that. However, the directed motivation required for educational achievement requires strong pedagogy before technology can help.

11.  De Melo et al. (2014), in Spanish. An English overview of the results with commentary appears in Murphy (2014b).

12.  Linden (2008); Barrera-Osorio and Linden (2009). Linden’s studies are among the first to apply large-scale randomized controlled trials to measure the impact of computers in developing-world schools.

13.  Behar (2010). Behar continues to be an outspoken critic of “silver bullets in education”; see Behar (2012).

14.  The examples and quotations in this section are taken from Warschauer et al. (2004).

15.  To be fair to Warschauer, I should mention that in private communication, he indicated some discomfort with my characterization of his work. If I understand him correctly, it’s not that I am misrepresenting any particular point he makes, but that my overall presentation fails to emphasize that computers can have positive impacts in well-run schools. I have tried to present a balanced perspective in this chapter, and I am not quoting Warschauer out of context. Any residual misrepresentations of his view are my fault. As to the underlying thesis that technology amplifies institutional capacity – a point described in greater depth in Chapter 2 and that concisely explains both technology’s potential and its failures – Warschauer and I seem to agree.

16.  Bauerlein (2009), p. 139.

17.  Oppenheimer (2003). The Flickering Mind continues to be among the best critiques ever written about computing technology in education.

18.  Hu (2007).

19.  Duncan (2012).

20.  Prensky (2011), p. 9. I don’t deny the possibility that video games can be used for productive educational purposes, and educational video games are worth exploring further. But the evidence for their value is scant. And on top of that, it’s not clear that even if the short-term learning were effective, we’d want to raise a generation of people who can only learn if material is presented as a video game. Part of the point of a deep education is to learn how to learn – even when the material is not engaging – or, alternatively, to learn how to make otherwise dull material interesting for yourself. You can’t learn these skills if every learning opportunity is entertaining.

21.  Wood (2013).

22.  Sanders (2013).

23.  Mitra and Dangwal (2010).

24.  Warschauer (2003) and Arora (2010) base their skepticism of the Hole-in-the-Wall program on personal visits. Meanwhile, the only studies that show positive impact of Hole-in-the-Wall installations are methodologically questionable ones conducted by Mitra and his colleagues.

25.  Mitra and Arora (2010).

26.  Fairlie and Robinson’s (2013) study is among the few randomized controlled trials of the educational effect of a personal laptop for students, and the results are definitive. Two of the organizations that funded the study – Computers for Classrooms and ZeroDivide Foundation – are nonprofits whose mission is to increase home computers for families without them, so they had undoubtedly hoped for a different outcome. Their willingness to fund such research and have the results published is admirable, and it gives additional credibility to the results.

27.  Duncan (2012).

28.  Ibid.

29.  The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) (2010b) summary of what makes schools successful is striking in its lack of mention of computers or other technology. The results for China are actually results just for the city of Shanghai. As of 2012, PISA tests have not yet been administered to China as a whole country.

30.  OECD (2010b), p. 106.

31.  Some of the paragraphs in this chapter are either verbatim excerpts or adapted sections of Toyama (2011).

32.  CBS News (2007). Negroponte, however, conducted no serious study of educational gains. His excitement was based on such things as the fact that families used the laptop as a source of light in the evenings, and that their first English word was supposedly “Google.”

33.  Warschauer (2006), pp. 62–83.

34.  Sinclair (1934 [1994]), p. 109.

Chapter 2: The Law of Amplification

A Simple but Powerful Theory of Technology’s Social Impact

1.  Rangaswamy (2009).

2.  Heilbroner’s (1967) article is among the most cited in the technology and society literature, probably because it is one of the few in which a respected scholar sides unabashedly with technological determinism. Heilbroner (1994) later softened his stance, but only slightly. Today, few scholars admit to pure technological determinism, but as the examples later in this chapter show, there are plenty of influential nonacademics who subscribe to its views. MacKenzie and Wajcman (1985) refer to technological determinism as the “single most influential theory of the relationship between technology and society.”

3.  Feenberg (1999), p. 78.

4.  Star Trek: First Contact (1996).

5.  Schmidt and Cohen (2013), p. 257. Their book takes pains to concede the dark side of technology, but the concessions are raised only to disarm the reader into accepting their larger thesis: More technology is better. Toyama (2013a) reviews the book in more detail.

6.  Shirky (2010).

7.  These quotations are from Economist (2008) and Diamandis and Kotler (2012), p. 6.

8.  In a survey by the US Department of Agriculture, Coleman-Jensen et al. (2013) show that in 2012, 7 million households in America had “very low food security,” with, for example, 97 percent of those households reporting that “the food they bought just did not last and they did not have money to get more.” Those households included 4.8 million children.

9.  Food and Agriculture Organization (2013).

10.  Morozov (2011), p. 88. Morozov provides a much-needed overview of the dark side of the Internet in repressive politics around the world.

11.  Ibid., p. 146. The original quotation appears in Dahl (2010).

12.  Ellul (1965 [1973]), p. 87.

13.  Postman (1985 [2005]) makes a strong case that as a result of television, modern society has begun to judge everything by its entertainment value. His analysis is astute, and it applies even more in the Internet age. Postman tends toward a kind of technological determinism, however, and blames the technology itself for societal trends. I would argue that an inclination for entertainment exists within us, and that technology’s role is to amplify it. The question is whether we as a society could amplify other aspects of ourselves without turning into YouTube-obsessed vegetables.

14.  Jasanoff (2002).

15.  Malmodin et al. (2010).

16.  Delforge (2014) estimates data-center electricity use in 2013 at 91 billion kilowatt-hours – about 2.25 percent of total US electricity usage, which hovers around 4,000 billion kilowatt-hours (US Energy Information Administration 2014b). This closely tracks with Koomey (2011), who puts the figure at 2 percent in 2011.

17.  Skeptics have derided utopians as starry-eyed, and in response, utopians have learned to tone down their rhetoric – but not entirely convincingly. Sometimes, the attempts are clumsy, as when Schmidt and Cohen (2013), p. 257, write, “The case for optimism lies not in sci-fi gadgets or holograms, but in the check that technology and connectivity bring against the abuses, suffering and destruction in our world.” Translation: The case for optimism isn’t in technology, but it’s in technology. Others are more careful. I scoured two of Shirky’s (2010, 2011) books and found no instances in which he credits social benefit to any technology outright. Yet it’s undeniable that he’s gaga for technology. The conceit behind his book Cognitive Surplus is that, thanks to the participatory nature of the Internet, couch potatoes worldwide will stop wasting billions of hours watching TV – that’s the surplus of the title – and instead put some of that time to good use.

18.  Linda Stone (2008) popularized the notion that we maintain “continuous partial attention” with our many digital technologies. She did not necessarily mean it in the derogatory way I suggest here.

19.  Jensen (1998 [2005]), p. 252.

20.  Carr (2011), p. 224.

21.  Ellul (1964), p. xxxi.

22.  Kranzberg (1986).

23.  Latour (1991). In the academic field called “science and technology studies,” there’s a cottage industry stating and restating various versions of contextualism. These kinds of theories are occasionally profound, but often they’re just unedifying. Among the field’s most popular ideas is one promoted – and sometimes self-criticized – by influential French sociologist Bruno Latour. He helped develop a concept called Actor-Network Theory, in which people and technologies are nodes that affect one another in a fluid web of interconnected relationships. Latour (1991) describes it like this: “If we display a socio-technical network – defining trajectories by actants’ association and substitution, defining actants by all the trajectories in which they enter, by following translations and, finally, by varying the observer’s point of view – we have no need to look for any additional causes. The explanation emerges once the description is saturated.” Even for describing something as simple as a hotel key chain, though, the networks quickly become a tangled Gordian Knot, and Latour insists that the only way to understand the whole is by carefully tracing every last strand. So, on the one hand, you have a richer description. On the other hand, that’s all you have. Concise explanation or understanding is not forthcoming.

24.  Veeraraghavan et al. (2009).

25.  In a paper we titled “Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way,” Smyth et al. (2010) found that many low-literate young urban adults in India are facile users of Bluetooth file exchange on their phones despite the English interfaces and complex steps required. They were driven by a strong desire to trade music and movie files. Poor user interfaces were not an obstacle to usage.

26.  The phrase “social determinism” as used in this book always refers to the idea that technology’s impact is determined by human forces. It should not be confused with another definition of social determinism, in which individual human behavior is believed to be caused entirely by social and cultural forces, and not by physical or biological ones.

27.  Autonomous robots – physical or virtual – could be said to act on their own, but even then, it will be people who designed and directed the robot personalities, or the processes by which they think. Those robots may end up acting in a way we didn’t wholly intend, of course. In Chapter 3, I’ll address the nature of unintended consequences.

28.  Medhi et al. (2007).

29.  Medhi et al. (2013). The description of the experiment is simplified in these paragraphs: The actual experiment involved three different interfaces, involving two nested interfaces of different depths.

30.  The studies referred to are, respectively, Findlater et al. (2009), Chew et al. (2011), and DeRenzi et al. (2012).

31.  Amplification is notably absent in the field of science and technology studies; scholars in that field tend to have a low opinion of instrumental theories of technology. In the information systems literature, one theory that comes close to amplification is absorptive capacity theory, as first articulated by Cohen and Levinthal (1990), which argues that an organization’s ability to absorb technology determines what it can do with it.

32.  I first wrote about amplification as it applies to technology and poverty in Toyama (2010).

33.  Linden (2008); Santiago et al. (2010).

34.  Some people emphasize the value of play in child-rearing, and play is certainly important. Some amount of video games and social media may serve that purpose and nurture children in some intangible ways. But digital recreation is not sufficient for anything like a true K-12 education any more than extended time at a jungle gym in and of itself produces Olympic athletes.

35.  Rao (2011).

36.  Hauslohner (2011).

37.  Cohen (2011).

38.  Tsotsis (2011).

39.  CNN (2011).

40.  Olivarez-Giles (2011).

41.  Kirkpatrick and El-Naggar (2011).

42.  Chulov (2012).

43.  Anyone interested in the real forces of revolution and suppression in the Middle East would profit by reading Madawi Al-Rasheed’s work. She strikes the right balance in acknowledging the role of social media while consistently returning to essential political and cultural forces as the underlying explanations for high-visibility events and non-events. This quotation and the descriptions in the previous paragraph were taken from Al-Rasheed (2012).

44.  Lee and Weinthal (2011).

45.  Paul Revere Heritage Project (n.d.). In highlighting the lanterns, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose “Midnight Ride” is the basis for this American legend, was applying poetic license. After all, there’s romance in ingenuity; the symbolism of lamplight breaks up the monotony of what would otherwise have just been one long ride on a horse. But while creative license leads to catchy ideas that serve poetry, it’s not a good basis for accurate analysis or sound policy.

46.  60 Minutes (2011).

47.  Morozov (2011).

48.  Clay Shirky makes these exuberant comments in an interview with TED owner and curator Chris Anderson (2009).

49.  Gladwell (2011).

50.  Taylor (2011).

51.  Yaqoob and Collins (2011).

52.  Tichenor et al. (1970).

53.  Mumford (1966), p. 9.

54.  Agre (2002). Agre appears to be the first person to have outlined a theory of amplification for technology and society. I agree with almost everything he has written on the topic, so we differ only on emphasis: First, Agre claims that the holistic effect of the Internet on politics is impossible to predict, because the underlying forces are so complex; I agree but believe that prediction is possible in more limited cases where human forces are easier to understand. Second, Agre confines himself to a discussion of the Internet in politics and governance; I believe amplification applies to all of society’s interactions with a broad range of technologies, not just the Internet, and not even just digital.

Chapter 3: Geek Myths Debunked

Dispelling Misguided Beliefs About Technology

1.  Harvey (1988), for example, discusses the advertising strategy for marketing the Walkman to children. In it, he notes, “My First Sony [Walkman] has created a new merchandise category for toy stores,” and, “The company [Sony] has a long history of pushing through products it believes in” over the doubts of distributors. Remarks like these are readily taken up as proof of a technology firm’s ability to arbitrarily alter consumer behavior, as noted in Sanderson and Uzumeri (1995): “It is not uncommon to view innovative success as the natural result of managerial leadership and effective marketing.”

2.  For a thorough treatment of the cultural studies angle to the Walkman, see Du Gay (1997). The reproduced readings at the end of Du Gay’s book show the range of approaches to the Walkman, most of which, incidentally, are not inconsistent with the Law of Amplification.

3.  In fact, there are niche firms that sell hairshirts and such (search online for “cilice”) – illustrating the rich variety of human culture – but they are hardly mainstream.

4.  Turkle (2011).

5.  See, for example, Baym (2010), pp. 51–57.

6.  Rosenfeld and Thomas (2012).

7.  Wortham (2011); Leland (2011). Przybylski et al. (2013) reveal that those with lower life satisfaction and satisfaction of social needs tend to display more FOMO-related behaviors on social media.

8.  Goldman (2009).

9.  GOP Doctors Caucus (n.d.).

10.  Reinhardt (2012).

11.  White (2007); Rumpf et al. (2011).

12.  Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2013a). For an insightful analysis of American health care, including comparisons with other countries’ systems, see Cohn (2008).

13.  See, for example, Spiceworks (2014).

14.  Brill (2013).

15.  Hampton et al. (2011).

16.  See, for example, Crescenzi et al. (2013), Lee et al. (2010), and Olson and Olson (2000). The last provides an excellent summary and analysis for why distance doesn’t collapse even with digital technologies.

17.  Cairncross (1997), p. xvi. Presumably in a response to critics, Cairncross (2001) softens her points in a revised edition. The corresponding sentence becomes: “People will communicate more freely with human beings on other parts of the globe. As a result, while wars will still be fought, the effect may be to foster world peace” (emphasis mine, recall tactics by Schmidt and Cohen 2013). But her general thrust remains much the same – in fact, she adds a few more ways in which technology will definitely improve the world, such as in the developing world.

18.  Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson (2005).

19.  Selective exposure goes back to work by seminal psychologist Leon Festinger (1957), who posited the idea of cognitive dissonance – the discomfort people feel when presented with contradictory information. Selective exposure occurs when, in a bid to avoid cognitive dissonance, people tend to seek only information that confirms their beliefs.

20.  Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson (2005).

21.  Stecklow (2005).

22.  Mukul (2006); Raina and Timmons (2011).

23.  A phablet is bigger than a smartphone, but smaller than a tablet.

24.  That the digital divide is a symptom of other socioeconomic divides was astutely noted about telecenters by Economist (2005). The same article, however, curiously went on to suggest that mobile phones would somehow “promote bottom-up development” that presumably would help close socioeconomic divides because of their greater penetration. Its claim, in other words, is that the telecenter-based digital divide is a symptom of socioeconomic divides, but the mobile-phone-based digital divide is not.

25.  This paragraph argues that the absolute difference in outcomes between high- and low-capacity people increases with an even spread of technology. The relative difference may not change. But! If you fold in the fact that richer people access superior technologies, then the increase in inequality is superlinear: As new technologies appear, the rich get richer out of proportion to their initial relative wealth. I don’t mean to say that low-cost technologies can’t help poorer people – they certainly can. And for some people, like the political philosopher John Rawls, this would be good enough, at least in theory. In practice, though, this argument neglects the fact that political power and finite natural resources are both zero sum – the more that someone has, the less others do, so increasing absolute inequality is necessarily worse for those at the bottom. In any case, for anyone who sees inequality itself as the problem, low-cost technology is in no way the solution.

26.  Much of the text that follows about Gary King’s studies previously appeared in Toyama (2013b).

27.  King et al. (2013a).

28.  King et al. (2013b).

29.  King et al. (2013a) cite an example of apolitical collective action: In 2011, following Japan’s nuclear plant disaster, there was a rumor that iodized salt protected against radiation. Online posts that might incite hordes of shoppers to buy salt were suppressed.

30.  The quotation is from King et. al. (2013a), summarizing Dimitrov (2008).

31.  Guilford (2013).

32.  Brewis et al. (2011) suggest that there is a global trend toward stigmatizing obesity, but it overviews a range of work showing that different cultures have different weight preferences. Sobal and Stunkard (1989) review literature linking socioeconomic class to weight.

33.  Lenhart (2012); Hafner (2009). In 2011, when I gave a talk at the Maricopa Community Colleges, I asked how many people sent more than one hundred texts a day. Almost every student raised a hand while the faculty looked around in disbelief.

34.  Though, with amplification in mind, this still seems like a predictable case of amplified teenage socializing.

35.  Thanks to skeptics, it’s clear that just about every technology has outcomes not wholly intended by its creators or its users. To put a new technology out there is to cause outcomes no one entity can wholly predict. Thus, routine failures to anticipate them, monitor them, and manage them are again a kind of passive intention.

36.  Sartre (1957 [1983]), p. 15: “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

Chapter 4: Shrink-Wrapped Quick Fixes

Technology as an Exemplar of the Packaged Intervention

1.  My use of the term “packaged interventions” is very similar to what Evgeny Morozov (2013) calls “technological solutions” and what William Easterly (2014) calls “technical” or “technocratic solutions.” I didn’t want to use the word “solution,” though, since packaged interventions are not necessarily solutions. And I avoid “technology” and “technocracy” because I already use them elsewhere to mean specific things.

2.  Yunus (1999), p. 48.

3.  From Yunus’s foreword in Counts (2008), p. viii.

4.  Counts (2008), p. 4.

5.  Based on data available at MixMarket (2014).

6.  Bloomberg Businessweek (2007).

7.  In 2010, a microlending organization called SKS Microfinance repeated Compartamos’s feat in India, raising $358 million in its IPO, and setting off a national debate that crippled the microcredit industry in that country. Many accused SKS and other microfinance institutions of pushing loans too aggressively. Vijay Mahajan, an elder statesman of microfinance in India, said that some of the newer organizations “kept piling on more loans in the same geographies. . . . That led to more indebtedness, and in some cases it led to suicides” (Polgreen and Bajaj 2010). Angry politicians in the state of Andhra Pradesh passed strict laws on how microloans can be issued and instigated a grassroots backlash. Borrowers stopped repayments altogether. See also Bajaj (2011). An attempt at a levelheaded assessment of these situations is offered in Rosenberg (2007).

8.  Yunus (2011).

9.  Collins et al. (2009).

10.  David Roodman (2012) at the Center for Global Development performs an excellent deconstruction of microfinance, incorporating and analyzing recent studies without oversimplification. Many of the studies cited in this chapter are given more detailed treatment in his book, which also explains what is firmly established about microfinance and what remains unknown.

11.  Karlan and Zinman (2010).

12.  Karlan and Zinman (2011).

13.  Angelucci et al. (2013).

14.  Banerjee et al. (2010). In 2005, economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, and Cynthia Kinnan persuaded a microlending organization called Spandana to open branches in 52 locations, randomly selected from a larger pool of 104 poor, urban neighborhoods in Hyderabad. Fifteen to 18 months after the branch openings, the neighborhoods where microcredit was available didn’t appear on the whole to be wealthier than those without. Nor were there detectable changes in overall household spending, women’s say in spending decisions, health-related measures, or educational outcomes. The most they could say was that Spandana’s presence caused a 2 percent increase in the number of households that opened new businesses, a 55-cent increase in spending on durable goods per person per month, and a 23-cent decrease in perishable consumer goods – durable goods being more likely to support businesses. Their conclusion? “Microcredit therefore may not be the miracle that is sometimes claimed on its behalf, but it does allow households to borrow, invest, and create and expand businesses.”

15.  Ray and Ghahremani (2014).

16.  Vornovytsky et al. (2011).

17.  See, for example, Krugman (2010).

18.  Banerjee et al. (2010); Drexler et al. (2010); Karlan and Zinman (2011).

19.  This generalized conception of technology is not rare. Economists, for example, routinely speak of structures of human organization as a kind of technology. However, since most people think of technology as being a physical artifact, I use the phrase “packaged intervention” as its generalization.

20.  In case you believe these are rare or short-term effects, consider the different trajectories of post-Soviet countries. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and possibly Ukraine have made a lasting transition to democracy, but the rest have backslid into dictatorships, both real and virtual, despite initial elections. Even in democracies with peaceful, elected turnovers of power, long-held attitudes can impede governance. When I was in India, I found its claim to be the world’s largest democracy to be a bit of an exaggeration. What I saw was more like a feudal system with term limits. Politicians act like dukes and barons when in power, and most citizens happily oblige, bowing low to officeholders and paying baksheesh for routine government services. Everyone knows that government employees have an informal income stream, but by many it’s accepted as a privilege of power – even one to aspire to. And everyone knows that everyone knows. In 2010, when B. S. Yeddyurappa, then the chief minister of Karnataka, was taking heat for excessive government corruption, he reprimanded his own administration with a wink on the public record: “Let all of us stop making money for ourselves. All of us should now work for Karnataka” (IBNLive 2010).

21.  Seymour Lipset (1959, 1960) was among the first to argue that a range of socioeconomic properties appear to encourage democracy, an argument to which I will return in Chapter 9 in a modified form. Political scientist Robert Dahl (1971) focuses on eight institutional requirements for democracy, among which are political parties, the right to run for office, a free press, associational autonomy, the rule of law, and an efficient bureaucracy.

22.  See, for example, Achebe’s (1977) takedown of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

23.  Achebe (2011).

24.  Atlantic (2012).

25.  Porter (2013) reports that women of prime working age earn only about 80 percent of what their male peers earn.

26.  The laptop-as-vaccine statement was made by Negroponte (2008) at a TED talk about One Laptop Per Child. He repeated the same claim when he and I were on a panel at MIT (Boston Review 2010). He must have felt that the analogy resonated.

27.  From the Global Polio Eradication Annual Report (World Health Organization 2011). It’s understandable that polio eradication efforts go poorly in areas with open conflict, such as Afghanistan or Nigeria. But even where violence is less frequent, as in western Chad, the report notes, “operational issues are the main reason children are still being missed by vaccination campaigns, although social and communication problems are also important, particularly in key high-risk areas.”

28.  It is generally agreed that smallpox is easier to eradicate than polio because smallpox always results in visible symptoms. With polio, for every person who shows symptoms, hundreds of others carry and spread it without symptoms. Thus, the only sure way to eradicate polio in a given region is to vaccinate everyone in it. How feasible that is depends not on technology, but on the reach and quality of government administration and health-care institutions.

29.  Yunus (2011).

30.  Bloomberg Businessweek (2007).

31.  Yunus (1999), p. 205.

32.  Ibid., p. 140.

33.  Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (2008).

34.  Banerjee et al. (2010).

35.  Tripathi (2006).

36.  Fears of sterilization occur regularly in the developing world, probably based on a past history of forced vasectomies in some countries (Population Research Institute 1998). Similar fears resurfaced recently in Pakistan (e.g., Khan 2013) and in Kenya (e.g., Gander 2014). As for vaccine fears in the developed world, see, for example, Mnookin (2011).

37.  It can sometimes be helpful to project what would happen with technologies of the future. Put aside your conscience, and imagine a future in which a technology called “the Avatar” becomes available. It is a special chip that can be surgically implanted into a person’s spinal cord just below the cerebellum, enabling the total hijacking of a person’s voluntary muscle system via wireless command. (The spine’s information bandwidth is probably around 16 megabits per second, only slightly more than is promised by current 3G networks.) Health-care workers could be turned into remote-control puppets who visit assigned households faithfully, execute engagement scripts flawlessly, and never give in to laziness or corruption. In other words, this is a technology that would overcome all the pesky problems of messy human behavior. Yet, as powerful a technology as the Avatar might be, even it would require a good system for delivery and implementation. Not only would the technology have to be surgically installed on a person-by-person basis, but someone would have to maintain the technology, restock broken units, monitor performance, and deal with the predictable problem of subversive hosts seeking to rid themselves of the devices. And each of these activities would require solid implementation. In short, there would have to be ongoing institutional support beyond the packaged intervention itself, and at a much higher price than the cost of hardware. Of course, this dark potential future is only satire, but the point is that even an absolute technology requires strong human implementation to work. Similar lessons naturally hold for far less powerful packaged interventions.

38.  American Sociological Association (2006).

39.  Rossi (1987).

40.  There is an implicit fourth problem that Rossi mentions but resigns himself to. It corresponds to what’s required of beneficiaries of packaged interventions. Rossi recognized that no program works without motivation and capacity among those whom it is meant to help, but he felt it was beyond intentional policy to address this deficiency, saying, “It is likely that large scale personality changes are beyond the reach of social policy institutions in a democratic society.” This is a critical point that is addressed in Part 2 – I believe he gave up too easily.

41.  Yunus (1999), p. 140.

42.  Ibid., p. 205.

43.  Wikipedia (n.d.), “FINCA International,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FINCA_International.

44.  Kiva.org (n.d.).

45.  Opportunity International (n.d.).

46.  Yunus (1999), pp. 135–137.

47.  Based on data available at MixMarket (2014). The estimate is low because it includes only organizations registered with the exchange at the time and excludes microcredit activities in the developed world.

48.  Heeks (2009).

49.  Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2014a). The figure cited includes all bilateral aid from OECD countries and multilateral aid from organizations like UNICEF.

50.  See Fraser (2012) and Plumer (2012) for critical reporting on cookstoves.

51.  The performance of charter schools is an ongoing debate, but it seems fair to say that the results are mixed. A good summary, with references to primary research, is offered by Ravitch (2011), pp. 138–143. Ravitch’s book, incidentally, offers a brilliant argument against packaged interventions in American education, based on her life’s work as an educator and education researcher.

Chapter 5: Technocratic Orthodoxy

The Pervasive Biases of Modern Do-Gooding

1.  George Packer (2014) cites an estimate of $5.25 billion in book sales for Amazon in 2013, and Milliot (2014) estimates total book sales at $15 billion. Packer also notes that in 2010, Amazon captured 90 percent of e-book sales.

2.  The reference to Orwell was pointed out by Streitfeld (2014). The quotation is from Orwell (1936).

3.  Barnes & Noble Booksellers (n.d.).

4.  Thompson (2010) offers a rich history and analysis of the book industry in the four decades since about 1970.

5.  Thompson (2010), pp. 389–392, describes this trend in detail and calls it a “winner-takes-more market.”

6.  In respective, eponymous books, Chris Anderson (2008) describes the long tail, and Robert Frank and Philip Cook (1996), the winner-take-all society.

7.  Duflo et al. (2012).

8.  In another paper with different colleagues, Duflo herself writes, “[The] recent evidence suggests that many interventions which increase school participation do not improve test scores for the average student. Students often seem not to learn anything in the additional days that they spend at school” (Banerjee et al. 2007). As the next few paragraphs explain, if you accept the generalized conclusions implied by the two papers, there is a contradiction that isn’t addressed by either one.

9.  The authors note in a footnote that tamper-proofing only meant placing “heavy tape” over the controls.

10.  Duflo et al. (2012). “Nonformal education” is what Seva Mandir calls its program, in contrast with the formal government education system for which the children are being prepared. Despite the name, the pedagogy is formal and modeled on good classroom teaching.

11.  Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (n.d.).

12.  In addition, many of the best RCTs are overseen by high-caliber researchers like Duflo – yet another unusual circumstance that doesn’t come with the packaged intervention itself.

13.  For excellent tips on good classroom interaction, see Doug Lemov’s (2010) Teach Like a Champion. I have found his book to be invaluable for teaching K-12.

14.  When an RCT carried out in partnership with Organization X results in data suggesting that Program Y has an impact, what it proves is not that Y has impact on its own, but that Y has impact if carried out by an organization like X. All too often, X and Y are both necessary for impact, just as Seva Mandir’s efforts and the camera monitoring were both needed for impact. In their conclusion, Duflo et al. (2012) consider whether their results would generalize to other schools, and they optimistically suggest that it would. They write, “Our results suggest that providing incentives for attendance in nonformal schools can increase learning levels.” There is just one nod to external vailidity in the paper. They mention, “The question arises, however, as to whether incentive programs can be instituted for government teachers, who tend to be politically powerful. It may prove difficult to institute a system in which they would be monitored daily using a camera or similar device. Our findings suggest, however, that the barriers currently preventing teachers from attending school regularly (e.g., distance, other activities) are not insurmountable. Given political will, it is possible that solutions to the absence problem could be found in government schools as well.” The wording is careful not to overreach, yet in the way of technological optimists, they hide any reservations behind the word “can,” as noted by Toyama (2013a).

I exchanged emails with Duflo on June 24–25, 2014, to seek her response. In the hyper-confident tone characteristic of many economists, she wrote, “I absolutely stand by the conclusion of the paper, and I don’t really see why the fact that Seva Mandir was trying to improve (all) their schools in other ways as well makes it less externally valid than if they were not.” If Seva Mandir schools differ from other schools, obviously, it has an impact on external validity. Our differences, then, come down to whether Seva Mandir’s teaching and management are atypical. I thought they were exceptional in comparison to many rural government schools. Duflo dismisses the possibility. She says Seva Mandir’s teaching is “not so spectacular.”

My larger critique with RCTs is not with the methodology itself, but with the tendency of experimenters to generalize too confidently and to be too cavalier with external validity.

15.  Banerjee and Duflo (2011), many places, but, for example, p. 272.

16.  A Georgetown economics professor and former director of the World Bank’s Development Research Group, Martin Ravallion (2011), best summarizes some of the difficulties with RCTs. A more academic critique is offered by Nobel economist James Heckman (1997). The problem I raise in this section is a special instance of the external validity problem as well as the tendency to do experiments that are convenient to run, but not necessarily the most revealing.

17.  Most RCTs focus on evaluating the effectiveness of specific packaged interventions. I’m not aware of any RCTs to date that test the idea that a capable organization is the key to making a given packaged intervention work. Such a study could be done, in theory, but to remain within the epistemological constraints of hard-core randomistas, it would require a treatment that measurably improved organizational capability within the duration of the study. An experiment like that would not be cheap or easy to implement, especially because organizational capability takes a long time to improve and is difficult to measure. These are severe practical limitations of RCTs. The studies that get done are invariably the ones that are cheaper, shorter term, easier to find metrics for, and easier to run.

18.  Rossi (1987).

19.  If I could change one thing about RCTs conducted by economists, it would be this: The larger context in which the RCT was run should be reported in detail, and there should be explicit, thorough discussion about expected external validity. What are the relevant aspects of local culture, history, geography, climate, etc.? If there were partner organizations involved in the trial, what were their unique strengths and weaknesses when compared with similar organizations? Under what conditions should readers expect to see similar outcomes?

20.  Prahalad (2004).

21.  Ibid., p. 16.

22.  Ibid., pp. 4–16.

23.  Ibid., p. 4.

24.  Karnani (2007), p. 93, Table 1.

25.  It also turns out that low-cost sachets are not great for business after all. Since Prahalad’s book, soap, shampoo, and all manner of detergent were increasingly sold in small, low-cost packets. This set off multiple price wars between HLL and Proctor & Gamble, resulting in the odd phenomenon that the price per volume of shampoo, for example, became lower in small sachets than in large bottles. An HLL executive once confessed to me that they gained market share but lost in terms of absolute net profits; they wanted to get out of the sachet business but couldn’t see a way to do so. Indeed, a search online for “India sachet price war” returns many articles suggesting this point.

26.  Ibid.

27.  Yunus (2007).

28.  Toms (n.d.). The exact wording on the company website as of September 2014 was “One for One: With every product you purchase, Toms will help a person in need.”

29.  Toms (n.d.). The one-for-one model means they must have sold 10 million pairs to donate as many. Their shoes are priced between $40 and $100, which translates to $400 million to $1 billion in total revenue.

30.  Bansal (2012) and Butler (2014) provide good summaries of Toms Shoes criticism. Wydick et al. (2014) ran an RCT to test whether shoe donations caused households to buy fewer shoes, but with inconclusive results. Murphy (2014a) interprets the results in context of the criticism.

31.  Toms (n.d.). Toms began with manufacturing in China, and has since expanded to Ethiopia and Argentina. Mycoskie has also announced a plan to start a factory in Haiti. In more than thirty other countries where Toms donates shoes, however, no factories appear to be planned.

32.  O’Connor (2014).

33.  Rupp and Banerjee (2014).

34.  Merritt et al. (2010) provide a wonderful overview of the research on moral self-licensing. Of note, self-licensing occurs even when all that a person does is make a public statement of good intention, which is particularly relevant for Toms Shoes and other purchases where apparent proof of goodness is publicly visible.

35.  To be clear, I’m not against capitalism. Capitalism is a terrific economic engine, and the developing world could benefit from more for-profit companies. (One problem with firms like Toms is that the owners are rich-world people, while their workers are not.) But capitalism on its own concentrates wealth (and therefore power) in the hands of a few, as so many have noted, from Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty (2014). Other forces are needed to spread growth widely, whether it’s cooperatives, unions, progressive taxation, universal provision of basic needs, private charity, or a combination of these and other factors. Social-enterprise hype glorifies market mechanisms and therefore crowds out important approaches that come with few extrinsic rewards. We need more of what liberation theology calls a “preferential option for the poor” (Farmer 2005, p. 139).

36.  Franzen (2010), p. 439.

37.  Fisher (2012).

38.  McNeil (2010).

39.  UNESCO (2012). That still leaves over 50 million children out of school, though.

40.  International Committee of the Red Cross (2014).

41.  Richard Davidson is a leader in the field of affective neuroscience, which seeks out the physiological underpinnings of emotion. Two papers discuss the link between activity in the prefrontal cortex and subjective positive mood: Davidson (1992) and Davidson et al. (2000).

42.  Richard Layard’s (2005) book is a superb, easy-to-read introduction to the modern economist’s view of happiness.

43.  Cobb et al. (1995).

44.  Sen (2000), p. 14. Development as Freedom makes a powerful case that socioeconomic growth comes through the provision of freedoms and capabilities. Ultimately, though, the underlying philosophy provides an apology for liberal free-market democracy, with no discussion of the responsibilities that individuals must also cultivate. This book’s Part 2 is a response to Sen that could be called “Development as Wisdom.”

45.  Seligman (2002), Gilbert (2006), and Haidt (2006) are among psychology’s foremost scholars of happiness and “positive psychology,” and each brings his unique perspective. Rubin (2009), who is not a psychologist, tried a wide range of happiness tips in her own life for over a year. All of these authors acknowledge the importance of character and virtue as a cause of happiness, but in a demonstration of exactly the tendency I critique in this section, they focus more on tricks to improve present mood or to reinterpret the past. They spend surprisingly few pages on character and virtue: Seligman has an 8-page chapter on “Renewing Strength and Virtue”; Gilbert spends 3 pages explaining that virtue and happiness are different; Haidt’s “Felicity of Virtue” section is 25 pages out of 244; Rubin, surprisingly, spends the most time on virtues in the form of everyday habits. Still, many of those habits are again habits to improve present mood, and as Hoffman (2010) notes, she says little about the upbringing that allowed her to have a blessed life.

46.  Wall Street Journal (2009).

47.  Bentley (2012).

48.  Obama (2013).

49.  See, for example, Perry (1990), pp. 183–184. The original story has a cicada instead of a grasshopper, but I use the grasshopper here because it is more familiar to American audiences.

50.  Ed Diener has led much of psychology’s attempts to define and measure subjective well-being. Two of his coauthored works offer great summaries of what is known: Diener et al. (1999) and Diener and Biswas-Diener (2008).

51.  Lyubomirsky (2007) epitomizes the positive psychology movement, which, though it is based on good science, seems primarily concerned with mental tricks to uplift one’s mood, rather than the hard work of laying the groundwork for a happy life. Admittedly, I have cherry-picked from her book to make my point, but the unpicked fruit is not that different. Her book, and positive psychology as a whole, has a tendency to neglect important virtues in favor of easy lessons drawn from the latest research studies. For example, Lyubomirsky devotes roughly the same amount of space to “expressing gratitude” and “practicing acts of kindness,” though the latter seems dramatically more involved and more likely to increase happiness in the world. It also doesn’t help that at every turn, she takes pains to mention how little effort happiness requires – acts of kindness can be “small and brief,” and “many of the happiness activities do not actually require you to make time.” But isn’t this expectation of happiness without investment one of the problems of modern society’s widespread unhappiness?

52.  For a scathing attack on positive psychology and superficial recommendations for happiness, see Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). She chronicles her exasperation with the Pollyannaish positive psychology she encountered during her battle with breast cancer.

53.  Wikipedia (n.d.), “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Worry,_Be_Happy.

54.  I don’t mean to be unsympathetic to people who can’t pay their rent despite doing everything they can to make a decent living; nor am I denying structural causes of poverty. Some social circumstances are nearly impossible to make work. My point, rather, is that there is no simple path to happiness, and simply redirecting our aim toward happiness doesn’t in and of itself address the cause of unhappiness. If anything, it can be counterproductive by drawing our attention to short-term fixes rather than to long-term foundations.

55.  The Internet has amplified both our penchant for catchy fake quotations and our ability to verify actual sources. Variations of this quotation are often attributed to Albert Einstein, but thanks to O’Toole (2010), I was able to trace its true source to sociologist William Bruce Cameron (1963), p. 13.

56.  The United States grew to be a major economic power well before we were able to measure GDP. In the 1930s, the economist Simon Kuznets architected the first system of national income accounts. Since then, GDP has taken on a life of its own in exactly the ways that Kuznets cautioned against. A good account of his warnings and our failure to take them into account is offered by Rowe (2008).

57.  Rankism – the root of all forms of discrimination and abuse of power – is nicely defined and demolished by Robert W. Fuller (2004).

58.  Quoted in Fisher (1988). The quotation, though widely attributed to Genghis Khan, is probably not his (O’Toole 2012).

59.  The Tech Commandments are increasingly shared by people of all political backgrounds, but they do have a decidedly libertarian flavor. George Packer (2013) notes Silicon Valley’s libertarian leaning. Anyone who believes in technology and free markets alone to redeem politics and social challenges, though, needs to travel more. If you have technology, markets, and freedom without a strong state, you have Somalia.

60.  Deutsch (2011) makes a scientist’s case for the critical role of the Enlightenment.

61.  The seeds of the Enlightenment itself might have been planted earlier – Gutenberg’s press, for example, was invented in the mid-1500s, at least a century before the Age of Reason. Colonization, which contributed to Europe’s economic development, began in the 1400s. Nisbet (1980) traces the idea of progress back to ancient Greek civilization. Nevertheless, it seems safe to say that elements of today’s Tech Commandments were first given concrete voice during the Enlightenment – a point that is made by many whom Nisbet (1980) cites.

62.  Data in this paragraph comes from the following sources. GDP: World Bank (2012a), data for 2006 GDP world and OECD member countries. Life expectancy: United Nations (2007); US Department of Commerce, US Census Bureau (1949). Democracy: Kekic (2007). Happiness: Inglehart et al. (2008).

63.  US Energy Information Administration (2014a); Economist (2014); MarketLine (2014).

64.  Estimates for this ratio are hard to track to primary sources, and few sources provide the units of comparison. The per capita figure comes from Scheer and Moss (2012). Diamond (2008) notes a ratio of thirty-two times the natural resources. United Nations Environment Programme (2011) puts the ratio at ten times by weight in natural resources. Whatever it is, developed-world consumption, and American consumption in particular, is much, much higher than developing-world consumption. Poorer people, by necessity, know how to make a little go a long way.

65.  The Sarkozy quotation is from Wall Street Journal (2009). The reportage on Sarkozy’s commission appears in Uchitelle (2008).

66.  Stiglitz et al. (2009).

67.  In an incident that simultaneously illustrates a cause of the technocratic crisis as well as an outcome, when I was shopping this very book to publishers, one editor told me this: “I worry that part of what makes this book so distinctive – it’s evenhanded, less polemical approach – is the same thing that will make it harder for us to sell. Right or wrong, it’s often those books that take a firm stance that we have the most success with.” To paraphrase . . . We don’t care if you’re right or wrong; we’d rather have a more polarizing, less balanced perspective.

Chapter 6: Amplifying People

The Importance of Heart, Mind, and Will

1.  Sawyer (1999).

2.  Swaminathan (2005).

3.  Hindu (2006).

4.  Jhunjhunwala et al. (2004).

5.  See, for example, Best (2004).

6.  It was either Veeraraghavan et al. (2005) or (2006).

7.  For more about telecenters, see Kuriyan and Toyama (2007).

8.  Internet cafés typically end up catering to young men playing video games and consuming adult content. Assuming they do well as businesses, their primary benefit is to the entrepreneur in the form of increased or diversified income. But this is the same benefit that any additional line of business would have for a small entrepreneur, and success is less a function of the technology as it is the entrepreneur’s skill. Those same entrepreneurs often sell an array of products and services, but few people make a fetish of, say, using cigarette sales to increase business the way that telecenter proponents do with computers. For a comprehensive overview of telecenter research, see Sey and Fellows (2009).

9.  Digital Green was modeled on another project we supported at Microsoft Research India called Digital StudyHall (n.d.).

10.  Gandhi et al. (2009).

11.  For an alternate description of Digital Green, see Bornstein (2014).

12.  Jack and Suri (2011), Mbiti and Weil (2011), and Morawczynski and Pickens (2009) all report that the frequency of urban-rural remittances is greater with M-PESA. Mbiti and Weil (2011) and Morawczynski and Pickens (2009) also suggest that the total amount of remittances is greater. Morawczynski’s (2011) PhD thesis looks at M-PESA’s rise and usage patterns in depth.

13.  It’s very tempting at this point to suggest that Partner X become the go-between between the Internet and Partner X’s constituents. Whatever pregnant mothers want to know, Partner X would look up online and relay to the mothers. But unless Partner X has health-care providers on its staff, this is naïve and dangerous. Would you go to a hospital where the staff members aren’t trained doctors and nurses, but people who look up articles on Wikipedia and study surgery on YouTube?

14.  This phenomenon is not rare. I’ve been to several places in both India and parts of East Africa where communities have had so many failed packaged interventions foisted upon them that they have grown cynical of outsiders coming in with yet another one. Some communities are outright hostile. Anyone committed to supporting these communities must undo the damage of earlier efforts first, before being able to meaningfully engage.

15.  In a study with its partner, Voluntary Association for Rural Reconstruction & Appropriate Technology, Digital Green was found to increase annual income by 68 percent, on average, from $144 a year to $242. Some households saw their incomes double.

16.  It’s also possible for technology projects to build the institutional capacity required from scratch. Grameen Foundation (2014), a nonprofit I advise that seeks technological innovations for global poverty, did exactly that in its Community Knowledge Worker (CKW) project in Uganda. It identified, recruited, trained, and empowered local villagers to serve as CKWs in their communities.

17.  Ramkumar (2008) includes a case study on social audits, including challenges of implementation, as written by a former MKSS member.

18.  Veeraraghavan (2013).

19.  “Vincent” is a pseudonym used here to protect the boy’s identity.

20.  Gamification is a hot trend among tech-minded social activists, but it turns out to be incredibly difficult to design games that people voluntarily play that are also educational or productive. The essence of the problem is that it’s difficult to hit two birds with one stone. It’s very hard to design a compelling game, and it’s very hard to design a good educational app, so it’s extra hard to design a compelling educational game. Any given educational game is inevitably less compelling than the best fun-only games. Thus, the fun-only games tend to thrive and win out.

21.  Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2014b), pp. 305, 382.

22.  International Math Olympiad (2014).

23.  OECD (2011), p. 230; OECD (2013b), p. 174. The “ninth-worst in educational disparity” statistic is based on gaps in PISA math scores between students in the top ninety-fifth percentile and the bottom fifth percentile in socioeconomic status.

24.  Duncan (2012).

25.  I want to be clear that I’m not arguing against, say, programming classes for underprivileged teens. The important part of such programs, though, is that they apply quality resources preferentially for those with the least advantages – not that they involve technology. Thus, mass distribution of tablets is pointless, because it’s not quality education in itself. But afterschool arts programs for the children of poor families would be good, even if it doesn’t involve high-tech.

26.  Warschauer (2006).

27.  The OECD’s (2011) recommendations for the United States span twenty-eight pages and focus on culture, teacher capacity, administration, and spending policy (pp. 227–256). There isn’t a single word about computers or other technology, except to illustrate resource differences between rich and poor schools.

28.  Bilton (2014).

29.  Shirky (2014).

Chapter 7: A Different Kind of Upgrade

Human Development Before Technology Development

1.  Ratan et al. (2009). Positive responses like this are partly genuine, but Dell et al. (2012) also find that recipients of packaged interventions are good at second-guessing what providers want to hear.

2.  There is an endless debate in the international development community about whether providing people with entertainment is worthwhile or not. See, for example, Arora and Rangaswamy (2014). Certainly, they increase momentary pleasure, and it could be argued that escape offers a palliative for an otherwise difficult life. And in any case, it seems wrong to prohibit or hinder entertainment. But it’s another thing to spend scarce resources for purposes whose long-term contributions to well-being are fleeting, and that could simply be sedating people into accepting unacceptable conditions (entertainment is the opium of the masses?). At the very least, if entertainment is the primary goal of a packaged intervention, proponents should advertise the goal as such, not fall back on it as a last-resort benefit for otherwise unimpactful projects.

3.  This was especially true in India, where the pay difference between menial work and even the least demanding office work can easily be a couple of zeroes.

4.  Ratan et al. (2009).

5.  Drexler et al. (2010).

6.  Banerjee et al. (2011).

7.  Mitra and Arora (2010).

8.  “Learned helplessness” is a psychological phenomenon first described by renowned psychologist Martin Seligman. Seligman and Steven Maier (1967) conducted experiments with dogs that showed that if dogs were inflicted with prolonged electric shocks that they couldn’t escape, many (though not all) stopped bothering to try to find ways to avoid the shock altogether. Notably, the learned helplessness persisted even after the dogs were offered an exit. Corresponding tendencies have been found in human beings, particularly with certain instances of depression (Seligman 1975).

Anthropologist Oscar Lewis (1961), who observed such traits in poor communities in Mexico, the United States, and elsewhere, believed they were social adaptations that were both a result and a cause of impoverished conditions. His notion of a “culture of poverty” was politically hijacked in America as a way to blame poor communities for their own plight, but Lewis meant it in a very different way. What he saw was that congenital poverty teaches lessons that are useful for survival, but not necessarily optimal for escape. So, for example, under conditions of extreme poverty, whatever effort a farmer puts in on the farm, other factors, such as pests, bad weather, or corrupt bureaucrats, might have more influence on his income. The circumstances don’t encourage personal initiative. Or, where there is an urgent demand to put a meal on the table today, it’s hard to learn the value of saving for the future. Or, if unjust authority figures are particularly ruthless, it might be safer to accept one’s situation than to expend one’s energy rocking the boat. The intention to help one’s future self can be snuffed out under extreme hardship. Lewis writes, “The subculture of poverty can be viewed as attempts at local solutions for problems not met by existing institutions,” and “the culture of poverty [has] a counter quality and a potential for being used in political movements aimed against the existing social order.” A good review of the issues occurs in Small et al. (2010), who also conclude that careful, sensitive study of culture’s role in poverty is merited.

9.  Singer (2011).

10.  Controversially, some differences between groups that are often explained as differences in culture or personality could be explained as different breadth of intention. For example, if superior intention correlates with concern for larger circles of life, then the radius of concern is one measure of intrinsic growth. Isn’t it wiser for a society to honor women’s rights as well as men’s rights? To seek the benefit of people in other groups or nations as well as one’s own? And even to be sensitive to animal suffering as well as to human suffering? As Jeremy Bentham (1789 [1907]) noted, “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

11.  Bourdieu (1979 [1984]). Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s discourse on cultural capital is part description and part political critique. His core claim is that various forms of social and cultural capital enforce class barriers, and that they are propagated by education and other social structures that have historical determinants. I borrow his ideas here without the social critique – middle-class cultural capital is important for anyone wanting a middle-class life. Bourdieu often rambles, so his interpreters have been helpful. See, for example, Grenfell (2008).

A similar argument is made by sociologist Annette Lareau (2011), who follows parenting styles in different households. What she finds are stark differences between working-class families and middle-class ones, leading to what she calls a “transmission of differential advantages”: Better-off families inculcate habits of the better off in their children; working-class families inculcate habits of the working class. Lareau cites Bourdieu and shares his social critique, but the problem is less that class advantages and disadvantages both propagate across generations (which has the positive benefit of ratcheting any gains that families make) as that we don’t have social systems in place to help the less-privileged children rise beyond their heritage.

Earlier drafts of this book contained a chapter on intergenerational transfer of intrinsic growth. I may make a version of it available at my website (http://www.geekheresy.com).

12.  Carol Dweck (2007) is a leading psychologist whose research shows the value of a “growth mindset” over a mindset that values traits that are hard to change. Her book’s back cover says that it’s something that “all great parents, teachers, CEOs, and athletes already know.” That is, those with discernment intuit this without the research. Mueller and Dweck (1998) show how child-rearing is better served by praising effort (thus leading to a growth mindset) than by praising ability.

13.  Differences along these lines lead to vastly different levels of attainment even in the developed world, simply because they act as barriers between social classes, as Bourdieu (1979 [1984]) emphasizes. For example, personal initiative and effort are underappreciated with some consistency in communities that rarely witness upward social mobility. Oscar Lewis (1961) cites “resignation and fatalism based upon the realities of their difficult life situation” as one of many characteristics he observed in impoverished communities.

Coleman et al. (1966) report on the status of US education, where they found that children from disadvantaged backgrounds were more likely to believe that luck matters more than individual effort. The report was a landmark study of the state of American public education, particularly with respect to its effectiveness on different racial groups. It confirmed the importance of parental educational status and documented the relatively small role that schools played to equalize incoming disparities in academic achievement among students. Among its most interesting findings was a disparity in how different racial groups felt about their sense of control over their lives. In response to statements such as “Good luck is more important than hard work for success,” and “Even with a good education, I’ll have a hard time getting the right kind of job,” disadvantaged groups were more likely to agree compared with the white, middle-class majority. The report also strongly suggests that these differences are a factor of the environment – upbringing and education – and argues against segregation. The verbatim summary:

“The responses of pupils to questions in the survey show that minority pupils, except for Orientals, have far less conviction than whites that they can affect their own environments and futures. When they do, however, their achievement is higher than that of whites who lack that conviction. Furthermore, while this characteristic shows little relationship to most school factors, it is related, for Negroes, to the proportion of whites in the schools. Those Negroes in schools with a higher proportion of whites have a greater sense of control. Thus such attitudes, which are largely a consequence of a person’s experience in the larger society, are not independent of his experience in school.”

A similar emphasis on luck has been reported in other cultures. Research such as Henrich et al. (2004) and Jakiela et al. (2012) find similar luck-focused beliefs common among poor communities, such as in the Peruvian Amazon and rural Kenya. Of course, the belief that effort goes unrewarded is often a survival mechanism for conserving energy and minimizing despair, but it is a self-defeating prophecy that reaffirms the status quo.

14.  “Practical wisdom” as defined by Schwartz and Sharpe (2010) is very close to the concept of discernment that I am defining in this chapter.

15.  With regard to individuals, there is a rich line of research in the psychology of self-control (explored under various names, such as executive function, self-discipline, self-regulation, delay of gratification, and willpower), as well as in its pathological absence (such as akrasia, the breakdown of will, self-defeating behavior, and, in an extreme form, addiction). Academic experts sometimes make fine distinctions between these terms, but the concepts are closely related. Among those who champion the primacy of willpower are Walter Mischel, George Ainslie, and Roy Baumeister. Mischel is best known for his “marshmallow experiment” which demonstrated that young children who were able to delay gratification by giving up an immediate reward for a larger reward later grew up to be more successful in school and life than their peers who were not. See Shoda et al. (1990) and Mischel and Shoda (1995). Baumeister and his colleagues confirm that self-control is a predictor for better health, education, and employment, and further find that greater amounts of it as a character trait appear to confer a consistent advantage in life. See, for example, Tangney et al. (2004). Baumeister and Alquist (2009) also argue that self-control is an unmitigated good in the sense that having more capacity for it has no drawbacks (e.g., having more self-control doesn’t mean overusing self-control). A very readable summary of Baumeister’s findings occurs in Baumeister and Tierney (2011). Ainslie (2001) looks at the dark side of lack of willpower. He is known for proposing “hyperbolic discounting” to model how people consistently prefer a near-term reward far more than they ought to, at least as expected by standard economic models of time discounting.

Psychologist Roy Baumeister, whose seminal work on self-control has reinvigorated modern science’s interest in the concept of willpower, finds that all effortful human activity – e.g., dieting, concentrated thinking, physical exertion, and emotion regulation – draws on the same physiological reservoir of will, one linked to glucose in the bloodstream. Meanwhile, studies confirm that low self-control leads to “compulsive spending and borrowing, impulsive violence, underachievement in school, procrastination at work, alcohol and drug abuse, unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, chronic anxiety, explosive anger” (Baumeister and Tierney 2011). Baumeister distinguishes between “trait self-control” and “state self-control.” If self-control is a reservoir of water, trait self-control is the total capacity of the reservoir, and state self-control is how much water is left at any given point. With respect to individual self-control, we should make efforts to raise trait self-control.

16.  Emotional intelligence is the concept popularized by Daniel Goleman (1995). To the degree that emotional intelligence is about intention, discernment, and self-control, it overlaps greatly with intrinsic growth. However, Goleman’s concept of emotional intelligence also includes traits such as the ability to emotionally empathize that are not strictly necessary for intrinsic growth. It’s possible (if difficult) to be wise without having the emotional sensitivity that Goleman highlights. Economist James Heckman’s (2012) usage of the phrase “noncognitive traits” also overlaps considerably with the idea of judgment and self-control, but his definition lacks the element of intention.

17.  Intrinsic growth is internal to, and under the partial control of, the person or the society. Heart, mind, and will are neither external advantages nor purely inborn talents, even though circumstances, genetics, and maybe even epigenetics can play a part in forming them. How healthy you are depends on your genes and the larger environment, neither of which you can personally control. Yet, you do have within your control the ability to gain the intention to have good health, the discernment to choose nutritious foods, and the self-control to go for a daily walk.

18.  Oppenheimer (2003) and Toyama (2011) both have strong things to say about television’s poor performance in education. Wilbur Schramm (1964), considered the father of communication as a field of social science, illustrates some of the high expectations of TV for international development in the 1960s.

19.  See, for example, Polgreen and Bajaj (2010).

20.  Peterson and Seligman (2004) provide a reference book that identifies twenty-four character strengths clustered into six virtues that the authors found to be valued by cultures across the globe – knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Assmann (1994), Takahashi and Overton (2005), and Yang (2001) provide additional discussion of cross-cultural issues in wisdom.

21.  See Paulhus et al. (2002) and Takahashi and Overton (2005) for two such lists. Paulhus et al. (2002) additionally demonstrate that people distinguish clearly between wisdom, intelligence, and creativity.

22.  I use well-known examples, but it’s very possible to be capable of high intrinsic growth without being notable or famous. I used to volunteer at a hospice, and a few of the nurses who worked there seemed like pure angels – they were deeply compassionate, highly capable, and worked long shifts that were frequently visited by death without losing their heart or their cool . . . and all with little praise or recognition. They were models of heart, mind, and will.

23.  I think of the three pillars as what are called “basis vectors” in vector mathematics. The bases of intention, discernment, and self-control span the total vector space of causes of virtuous activity. I should mention, incidentally, that I don’t necessarily mean intention, judgment, and self-control to correspond to physiological or psychological constructs. They are philosophical concepts around which to organize a theory of social change. It may very well turn out that good judgment, for example, is a complex combination of twenty-three separate mental faculties, seven of which also underlie good intentions. So, while the three pillars are conceptually independent, in our brains the wiring may be interconnected. For example, there’s a large and convincing body of research suggesting that greater self-control leads away from criminality and toward prosocial behavior, which means that expressed intentions themselves might change through greater self-control (e.g., Ainslie 2001). What we often call enlightened self-interest might be a case of selfish intention combined with discernment that leads to less selfish intention in practice. The psychology matters to the extent that we need to understand it to nurture the traits; but for the sake of social change, it’s the final, expressed traits that matter. Whether you volunteer your time to charitable causes out of empathy or out of cold, long-term self-interest matters less than the fact that you volunteer – the expressed intention is similar.

24.  Of course, good health also requires other things, ranging from genes and luck to the right medical technologies, but these other factors are largely outside of individual control. And if they’re a part of individual control, they will fall into something covered by intention, discernment, and self-control.

25.  See Bloland et al. (2012) for how the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention views the importance of health systems. The 2014 Ebola crisis was an object lesson in health systems, since the disease has no known cure as of this writing, yet there was a huge difference in death rates between those who were treated in Africa and those who were treated in America. Global health luminary Paul Farmer noted that there was a “know-do gap” between what we know we should be doing and what actually gets done; much of that gap is due to weak health systems (Achenbach 2014).

26.  I-TECH (2011).

27.  Bendavid and Bhattacharya (2009).

28.  Walensky and Kuritzkes (2010).

29.  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2008); Colindres et al. (2008).

30.  For another such example in public health, see Toyama (2012), which is about Aravind Eye Hospital and its emphasis on staff and organizational intrinsic growth.

31.  I fail in this book to sufficiently stress collective action and its critical role in social change. That is partly because of limits of page count and partly because of the incredible difficulty of telling collective action stories without highlighting individuals. Based on what I’ve witnessed, however, unified group action is the single most effective way to address abuses and imbalances of power. Chapter 10’s Pradan assists self-help groups to engage with local politics for this reason. The Egyptian revolution was more than anything a story of collective action. Farmer unions and cooperatives support their members more effectively than any farming household can do on its own. But collective action again requires group intrinsic growth – there is no effective collective action unless the group has enough heart, mind, and coordinated will.

32.  Tara Sreenivasa’s story is based on my interviews and email exchanges with her as well as a paper questionnaire distributed to Shanti Bhavan students who were in the eleventh grade in 2009. Dmitry Kogan, an intern who worked with me to conduct a study of English-language learning across several schools, administered the questionnaire.

33.  This phrasing is used in the Constitution of India (2011), Part XVI, Clause 340.

34.  Detailed descriptions of Shanti Bhavan are provided in George (2004). Thomas Friedman (2005) wrote about Shanti Bhavan in The World Is Flat; his daughter was a volunteer.

35.  George (2004) is part memoir and part social critique. It describes George’s extensive efforts to build Shanti Bhavan and other institutions and programs – a medical center, a campaign against lead poisoning, a journalism school, etc.

36.  Psacharopoulos and Patrinos (2004).

37.  Mandela (2003).

38.  Citations have been removed from this quotation from Patrinos (2008). See also Psacharopoulos and Patrinos (2004).

39.  Education is close to being a silver bullet, but it’s not quite: Because the human qualities essential to an effective education aren’t easily replicable, good education as a whole cannot be a packaged intervention. Textbooks are packaged interventions; laptops are packaged interventions; school buildings are packaged interventions; laws for mandatory schooling are packaged interventions. But good education itself is not. For tremendously inspiring stories of the value of girls’ education, see Kristof and WuDunn (2009).

40.  There are scholars who question the value of education. Some cast doubt on any correlation between education and national growth. Benhabib and Spiegel (1994) and Pritchett (1996) argued that additional years of education do not correlate with economic development at a national level. But research since then, for example, by Krueger and Lindahl (2001), has cast doubt on the quality of data from which Benhabib, Spiegel, and Pritchett worked. Even as Pritchett himself offered, school enrollment doesn’t necessarily translate to good education. Obviously, educational quality is what matters, not whether a child has technically enrolled in school.

A related, more realistic problem is that education by itself may have little economic value in contexts where jobs are limited. See, for example, Bhide and Mehta (2004), Deininger and Okidi (2003), Krishna (2010), and Scott (2000). But economic value isn’t everything. There’s still an argument to be made that education makes it more likely for people to demand changes to a system limiting their opportunities. Friedrich Engels (1844 [1968]), p. 125, wrote that “the middle class [who own the means of production] has little to hope, and much to fear, from the education of the workers.” The French and American revolutions were fanned by deep thinkers writing pamphlets against monarchy. A cleverly titled book called The Dictator’s Handbook notes that “no nondemocratic country has even one university rated among the world’s top 200” (Bueno de Mesquita and Smith 2011, p. 109). The authors continue, “Highly educated people are a potential threat to autocrats, and so autocrats make sure to limit educational opportunity.”

41.  There are occasional debates about how much luck and other factors (e.g., skill, effort, personality) contribute to various ends (see, for example, Frank 2012). However, while these questions have academic value, precise measures are not important for the sake of practical action. In fact, for certain things, better outcomes can result if you believe (or act as if you believe) something that is factually wrong or exaggerated. Optimists are less realistic than mild pessimists, for example, but they’re more likely to take the risks necessary for success and more likely to be happy (Seligman 2006). This is true of any quality you have control over when it occurs in opposition to luck. It’s interesting, for example, that a lot of self-made people emphasize how important it is to make your own destiny, and belittle the role of luck. What that proves is not that their model of the world is accurate, but that personal success is more likely to come if you act as if you believe – correctly or not – that it’s all up to you.

42.  Coleman (1966). The Coleman Report was controversial when it came out because the effort/luck difference was found to cut across racial lines, which was no surprise then because of the strong correlation between race and socioeconomic status in 1960s America. Conservatives seized on the report as proof of bad culture among blacks; liberals reacted with claims of “blaming the victim.” Ever since then, American society has been unable to have an intelligent conversation about culture and personal virtues. I return to this issue in Chapters 8 and 9.

43.  See, for example, Elizabeth Kolbert’s (2012) descriptions of a six-year-old girl from the Matsigenka community in the Peruvian Amazon acting like a very responsible adult.

44.  See, for example, the Agricultural Self-Sufficient School by Fundación Paraguaya (n.d.). Also, prior to widespread formal education, apprenticeships were a common method of handing down knowledge and wisdom (De Munck et al. 2007).

45.  This is a bit of a generalization about Japanese education, which, like any educational system, has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, as a result of misguided yutori kyoiku (“relaxed education”) policies in the 1990s, Japanese student achievement fell for a while (Brasor 2001). Attempts to return to the previous state of rigor have just recently begun (Kato 2009). On the other hand, there are continual efforts to improve the way in which teachers teach, such as more recent efforts to have students think and discover mathematical algorithms on their own (Green 2014). On the whole, however, much of basic Japanese education is about rote memorization, especially compared with what I have experienced in American schools.

46.  Wai et al. (2010) hypothesize that greater “educational dose” is one key to a good education. In addition to quality of education, variety of experience may be critical. Mahoney et al. (2006) provide a thorough review of the literature on extracurricular activities for children. They find that on the whole, and contrary to worries of over-parenting, a richer set of organized activities is correlated with better child adjustment and self-esteem – except when piled on to excess.

47.  Pal et al. (2009).

48.  Plutarch (1992), p. 50. Thanks to O’Toole (2013).

49.  Prahalad (2004), p. 16.

50.  Data on government expenditure per student is from the World Bank (2012c). The figure varies depending on how it’s calculated, but $250 is a conservative upper bound. Using figures available or extrapolated for 2011, per capita GDP was $1,489; primary-school pupils numbered about 150 million; secondary-school pupils, about 110 million. During the past decade, and for years in which data is available, education expenditure per student as a percentage of per capita GDP was highest in 2003, when India spent 11 percent per primary-school student and 21 percent per secondary-school student. This comes to about $226 per student. However, while primary-school enrollment is 116 percent (due to children outside of the age bracket who attend school), and secondary-school enrollment is 63 percent, there are still 45 million school-aged children not in school. Thus, government expenditure per school-aged child is closer to $192. Meanwhile, using the total government budget of $47 billion for all education, and dividing it among the school-aged population (305 million), results in only $154 per student, even though this includes the budget for tertiary education.

51.  Inglehart et al. (2008).

52.  Shanti Bhavan has a policy of only accepting one child per family. Although this strikes some westerners as unfair, it aligns with cultural norms in rural India, where families tend on their own to invest in a single child. In fact, many Indian people would consider it less fair if more than one child per family were given the opportunity to attend Shanti Bhavan. Why should one family receive so much, when there are so many families in need?

53.  I have encountered many stories of child sexual abuse in impoverished and less-educated communities. There seem to be complex reasons for this, ranging from co-sleeping family members to weaker social norms against abuse. However, this issue is all but invisible outside of those communities, and there is surprisingly little documentation of the phenomenon, either in scholarly papers or popular journalism. Two exceptions: National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (2003) discusses the domestic US context; and Resources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (1997) discusses South Africa. Similar findings probably hold in many other countries.

54.  An effect analogous to this was established by economist Rob Jensen (2012) in an experimental study in North India. In rural villages that witnessed some women getting jobs in the relatively lucrative outsourcing industry, other women were “significantly less likely to get married or have children during this period, choosing instead to enter the labor market or obtain more schooling or postschool training.”

55.  Awuah (2012).

56.  Actually, it would take about thirty-six years and four months at a 10 percent growth rate per year. At 9 percent, it would take more than forty-one years. The poverty rate for a single household in 2014 was $11,670 (US Department of Health and Human Services 2014).