Staff Reporter

Eminent computer science and robotics expert Dr Raj Reddy (pictured) has called for developing capacity building programmes to make 100% of the world population e-literate.

“Developing programmes to overcome language barriers and building of domain-specific capacity, content, and partnership for education should also be on the research agenda,” he stated.

Dr Reddy, the Mozah Bint Nasser University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, US, was delivering one of the keynote addresses of the second symposium in the Innovations in Education (IIE2) series yesterday.

Speaking on ‘Empowerment of Masses through Education and Capacity Building,’ he explained that multi-lingual interfaces, spoken language interfaces and multi-lingual translation systems ought to be developed.

Dr Reddy observed that the grand challenges for the emerging economies are universal availability, accessibility, and affordability of education to the 4bn people at the bottom of the pyramid who subsist on less than $2000 per year income.

“Many of these people are in the rural areas without electricity, most have never used a phone, and they subsist on $1 per day,” Dr Reddy pointed out while asserting that the world’s poor have more to gain through the access to education and knowledge.

Referring to the exponential growth trends in computers, the expert who has been a member of the Carnegie Mellon faculty since 1969, recalled that PCs which used to cost $1,000 each has now come down to the $300 to $400 range.

“Soon PCs may break the $100 barrier and thus it will be possible to have PC access at rural homes or village schools for $3 or $4 per month,” he said.

The expert, who served as the founding Director of CMU’s Robotics Institute from 1979 to 1991 and the Dean of School of Computer Science from 1991 to 1999, cited ‘e-lectures, e-laboratories, and e-libraries’ as the three Ls of learning.

He elaborated on the Million Book Digital Library, one of his current research projects, and part of CMU’s Universal Library project.

The mission is to create a Universal Library, which will foster creativity and free access to all human knowledge. The Million Book library, its first step, involves creating a free-to-read, searchable collection of one million books, primarily in the English language, available to everyone over the Internet.

The expectation is that within 10 years, the collection will grow to 10mn books and accessible to anyone in the world round-the-clock.

“So far, about 600,000 books have been digitised, with the participation of countries including India and China,” Dr Reddy pointed out.

The research interests of the expert, who was instrumental in bringing a CMU campus to Qatar, include the study of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence.

His current research projects include PCtvt: an Information Appliance for rural environments (PC, TV, PVR, Video Phone, Audio Phone all in one) for use by illiterate people; FTTV: Fiber To The Village Project; Mobile Autonomous Robots; and Learning by Doing.

Dr Reddy is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was president of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence from 1987 to 1989.

He was awarded the Legion of Honour by President Mitterand of France in 1984. Dr Reddy was also awarded the ACM Turing Award in 1994, the Okawa Prize in 2004, and the Honda Prize in 2005.

He served as co-chair of the US President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1999 to 2001 under the Clinton Administration.

The second keynote address of IIE2, is to be delivered today by Dr. Benjamin Barber, a Distinguished University Professor of Maryland, and Director of The Democratic Collaborative’s New York Office.

The topic is ‘How Democratic is the Internet?’ Dr Barber is a distinguished scholar with a life of practical commitment to democratic civic practices and the arts that has given him widespread experience as a fundraiser, public speaker, educational and political consultant and television and theatre writer.