The Digital Divide or Should I Bring a Laptop for Peace Corps?

"Should I bring a laptop?"

This might be one of the most common questions asked by people leaving to join the Peace Corps and there really is no correct answer. However, from my own experience, having a laptop was infinitely valuable.

I served in the Republic of the Republic of the Philippines, a technologically advanced country as far as the developing world goes. There are a lot of buzz words and phrases in development, one of which is the "digital divide". The digital divide essentially states:

The term digital divide refers to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. It includes the imbalances in physical access to technology as well as the imbalances in resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen.

-Wikipedia.org

The digital divide, and Peace Corps service in general, often conjures images of Africa, of stick huts, of telecommunications technology not exceeding that of the Pony Express. And of course, in some parts of Africa, and in some service assignments, this is true. However, my experience serving in the Philippines was quite different.

Most of Southeast Asia has benefited greatly from the .com bubble, which burst in '99, '00. During the bubble, millions and millions of dollars worth of fiber optic cables were strewn throughout SE Asia as the Asian Tiger markets attracted seemingly endless capitol investments in manufacturing and telecommunications infrastructure from around the world. As the Asian Tigers collapsed, so the .com bubble burst. Much like the railroad boom and bust of the 19th Century, which left thousands of dirt cheap and accessible railroad lines networking the United States, so had SE Asia millions of miles of fiber optics built by companies now long gone.The skeletal remains of late 20th Century telecom technology was then cheap, accessible and ubiquitous. For example, when I got to site, my students were already addicted to facebook, playing Farmville, using twitter and keeping a blog.

When I left for the Philippines to begin my Peace Corps service in the education sector, teaching high school, I decided against bringing a laptop for a number of reasons:

1. Theft, the laptop being a liability


2. Unreliable power/inconsistent voltage


3. An obvious economic disparity between myself and my host family


4. To idealistically ween myself from the technological dependence I developed in college

However, after my first month of Pre-Service training (PST), it was obvious that I needed to get a laptop. In my opinion, it is essential for Peace Corps volunteers to have a latop as they are assuming the role of a professional development worker. Indeed, for as many reports, projects, lesson planning and countless hours of boredom every volunteer inevitably encounters, a laptop is virtually essential.

I wound up buying an Asus eee PC 900 after a month into training. Netbooks are the perfect computers for volunteers as they are small, inexpensive and often times running Linux, which is impervious to the abundant viruses in developing countries. Recent developments in internet technology, essentially Web 2.0, give the netbook a leg up as social networking, photo sharing, online versions of Word and Excel and many other traditionally desktop-based computing has moved to the cloud and are free. Of course this all requires an internet connection.

The digital divide was nowhere to be seen in my small, rural community of about 5,000. I lived 10 hours from the nearest movie theater, yet I had wifi both at home at at my host agency, which indicates broadband, but not necessarily fast internet. I had a download speed of about 30 Kbps; downloading a 10 minute youtube video typically took 3+ hours, but it's internet nonetheless. This speed is definately fast enough to run cloud-based apps, such as gmail, yahoo mail, google docs, blogging engines and other services like Skype phone calls, delicious and evernote.

In fact, I highly recommend doing most of one's work in the cloud while in the Peace Corps. For example, I keep all my word, excel and powerpoint files in google docs because they are always backed up there. Power-loss is frequent and working on documents on the cloud is a great way to protect one's self from data loss due to power-outages. Secondly, theft is always a possibility and if one's laptop is stolen, the documents and photos are safe and backed up on the cloud.

This brings me to another important topic: backup. Backup is easier now more than ever, with external hard drive prices plummeting and online backup solutions like Carbonite and Mozy gaining popularity.

When leaving for Peace Corps, it's a great idea to leave backups of all your important files at home in a safe place. I brought my entire photo library with me on an external hard drive and I accidentally formatted the drive; just because something is stored on an external drive does not make it backed up! Fortunately I burned backup DVDs of my photo library and left them at home and can restore them when I get back. But I was photoless during my service.Now that services like Carbonite are available, I would suggest doing a full online backup, so all your data is safe in the cloud, for the full two years at $50 a year. Priceless assurance that if your laptop is stolen or destroyed during service, everything will still be there.

This ain't your grandpa's Peace Corps. The digital divide in many regions of the world is shrinking with the same rapidity that governs Moore's law. There is no reason to limit one's potential output because he/she didn't bring a computer. Chances are, many people in the communities to be served will have plenty of access themselves.