Will Google Balloons help turn the tide in developing countries? (page 2)

james_woods

The cynical side of me wonders if this is not merely a meaningless PR effort by Google -

Isn't it obvious that they have had some very negative news reports over their activities lately?

Simon

There's two ways of looking at it.

Is access to knowledge, information and education a good thing? Yes - in the long run it will make things better.

Do people who need food and water care about internet access? No, not right not. It's low on their Maslow hierarchy of needs ...

Should Google instead supply water and food? They have money, but it's not really their expertise or what they do. The same argument would be that GM, Ford, Starbucks, Amazon and every other big company 'should' stop what they are doing and become a charity instead.

Why should Google get criticised for doing 'something' in developing areas when it is the thing they specialise in?

Seems like a good thing to me on balance and if nothing else it's stimulated debate and interest.

Shrinking the world by bringing more people on line can maybe help equalize things and stop people treating them as 'out of sight, out of mind'

james_woods

Possibly, Simon.

But what I am wondering is how the people who are in the most need are going to have a device in their hands to get access to these balloons.

The engineer side of me wonders what keeps the balloons floating in the correct place, given the wind and the weather.

I still suspect this is shameless PR.

Simon

I think worse than 'PR' (and it seems expensive for just PR) would be that it's infrastructure used for multinational to make money from the resources that the people live on / around and they don't get the benefits.

breakfast of champions

In the 20th century, Bell Labs performed some crazy 'stunts' not unlike this. . . and they were arguably the worlds greatest innovator of communications technology.

I'm glad to see Google doing what they're doing.

[And a welcome back to CEDARS, btw]

Paralipomenon

I see no problem with this.

There are hundreds of charities focused on bringing food and clean water to empoverished nations around the world. If nothing else, the internet can inspire. The sum of current human knowledge is available at the fingertips (as well a geopbytes worth of porn and cat videos)

It would likely have a greater impact on these developing countries since they don't have the generational structure that industrialized nations have. If someone learns the truth about the Watchtower, they are less likely to have their entire family and friends held hostage against them.

jwfacts

I had thought the same when I read the article last week.

Sorry, most of these countries need clean safe water, adequate food, and security more than the internet.

I don't agree. The reason those countries are still in the situation they are, is due to lack of education. Handouts from charities over the last century has done little for the long term good. People in the poorest countries, kept that way through corruption and war, need the next generations to be aware of how much better off they could be through education. There are great initiatives for cheap laptops, it is internet connectivity that is a bigger issue.

biometrics

Information is what topples dictators

Disinformation empowers current leaders.

The problem is discerning between information and disinformation.

The USA is a classic example. Arguably the leader in the information age, yet the people are not united. Some of the official lies the majority believe is very concerning.

Defianttruth

Wireless data systems are only about 1 percent wireless in terms of the average broadcast length. If I send a message on my iPhone it will travel to a tower where it is converted to a land based signal and broadcast to other processing centers. The power used by these towers is typically between .5kv to 3.5kv(as much as 70kv on large towers) That's a lot more power than that small basket ball size unit could carry on board. Also I checked the winds aloft for Africa at 10,000 ft and it was 36 knots about 38 miles per hour. So let's say these babies get a 20 mile range (which is stretching it at best) one would have to launch a new unit every 31.6 minutes to establish a chain for communication. That's not even weighing in the aviation dangers of this device. The thin soft walls of the fabric are invisible to radar. An airplane would never see the balloons in IMC conditions. Having two hundred in the air at a time and launching around 48 per day would allow for about .00001 coverage Africa. To cover the whole land mass (using a 20 mile radius) it would take around 40,000 units with 1.9 million launches per day. I just don't see the efficacy of 720 million launches per year. I dont think people who have limited food and water could support this system.

Warning all math was done in my head.

Julia Orwell

JWfacts

Hey Cedars, good to see you again. I've missed you (((Hug)))

Will Google Balloons help turn the tide in developing countries?

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