Information Technology  – Simpler, Cheaper, Smarter

Onno W. Purbo

Advances in electronics, microelectronics & telecommunication technology enclose in advance software & firmware drives the current advancement in information technology (IT). Simpler, cheaper but smarter & more intelligent may characterize the trend in information technology. As more functions imbedded into a single chip, much simpler, smarter but intelligent systems are produced. In return, electronic devices at the end user premises become more advanced in features but simpler to operate.

Physically, IT may represent itself in a form of a computer running some sort of operating system in it & may be connected to the network through a telecommunication network. Most of these equipments can be easily found in the marketplace. These simple forms & its advancement is actually the one that drives the famous 3C media convergence of Computer, Communication & Content (3C). For example, one may have some difficulties to differentiate between Internet, broadcasting & telephone network in the case of Internet telephony or audio / video streaming. It converges.

However, in a simplistic view, IT is not more than just a tool. It results in efficiency in information & knowledge flow. Unfortunately, only those who are educated & knowledgeable would be able to gain maximum advantages & able to produce knowledge from the IT driven rapid information & knowledge flow. Mass of knowledgeable people is the key factor in successfully deploying IT infrastructure; as they are the one who are able to fully exploit the infrastructure as well as pay back the investment. In short, a good education system would be essential.

Fortunately, ability to share resource is embedded in any IT infrastructure that will significantly lower the cost. Internet café is one of the real example; sharing a single Internet access (either thru phone / terrestrial line or any wireless means) by ten (10) or more computers proven to be able to reduce the Internet access cost from Rp. 10.000 / hour / single user to Rp. 3000-4000 / hour while returning the Internet café’s investment   in one or two years time. As 60-70% Indonesian Internet access is dominated by these cafes, it proven to be the most strategic approach to penetrate Internet into Indonesian market. A simple business plan written is excel can be found in various sites, e.g. http://www.bogor.net/idkf/, or directly to onno@indo.net.id at no cost. Discussion on various aspects of Indonesian Internet café can be found in several Internet mailing lists, such as, asosiasi-warnet@yahoogroups.com & asosiasi-warnet-broadband@yahoogroups.com.

Internet access costs within Indonesian educational institutions are more brutal. At University of Parahyangan in Bandung  costs Rp. 4300 / student / month! In various schools & university, Internet access is ranging from Rp. 1000-10.000 / month / student. It is incredibly low, as the access costs & investment are shared by larger number of people. Thus, a self-finance scheme can be achieved in building the needed platform to transform the people toward a knowledge-based society.
Having all information & knowledge transparent thru the Internet enables some of these guys experiment in various aspect of the technology. Most Internet cafes are now working hard to by pass the slow & costly Telco’s line, a US$450 2-11 Mbps wireless LAN at 2.4GHz technology is now common in replacing Telco’s line. Most of the activists can be found at indowli@yahoogroups.com & pushing the regulator (DG POSTEL) to merely give away the frequency to the community – well, they managed to push the license fee to Rp. 2.4 million / year / access point; approx. Rp. 20.000 / month / station. It is much cheaper than paying Rp. 10 million / month for leasing 2 Mbps line from the Telco. Some of these guys are now working on 155-622Mbps links using near infrared laser link without Telco.

Having lost cost access to information & knowledge infrastructure is one aspect; it drives two major movements in IT. Knowing that a vast amount of knowledge is accessible thru the Internet at very low cots, content & transaction type services spurs in various locations in Indonesia. The second movement is the open source movement, these people promote for no software piracy in Indonesia.

The open source movement is driven by the development of Linux, an alternative operating system for PCs. GNU public license (http://www.gnu.org) or something similar is normally used in open source software / movement. These licenses gives as much freedom to the programmer including to put their source code in public & share it for free to others; such as at http://freshmeat.com. Logically, many type of Linux are distributed, such as RedHat (http://www.redhat.com), Debian, Mandrake (http://www.mandrake.com), Caldera, Slackware etc. Most of them can be found in CD-ROM distributed in various computer stores at Rp. 20.000 / CD. Some of the documentations are available on Linux CD or can be downloaded for free, such as, at http://www.linuxdoc.org. Consequently, mass & demand is created as well as educated as people can read the source code. Having such huge mass & demand, one can do many things within this domain; various services are a common place. Linux activists can be found many Linux mailing lists. The Indonesians, can be found in several mailing lists hosted at http://www.linux.or.id.

The current state of Linux is fairly similar to Windows on user interface as it uses mature X-Windows system. In some aspects, Linux is more advance than Windows especially for server applications, such as, Web server, mail server as well as various Internet server applications. StarOffice is a freeware & fairly similar to the MSOffice, it can even read MSOffice generated files. There are several other office applications in Linux, my favorite is AbiWord as the licensed free MSWord.

Interestingly, Linux empower those who want to utilize their old 486 PCs. Linux Router Project (http://www.lrp.org) & Linux Terminal Server Project (http://www.ltsp.org) is the real example. LRP enables one to use their old 486 machines as a low cost gateway / router for their Intranet / Internet café. Using LTSP software, a diskless 486 workstation can be used as terminal in offices & Internet cafes; one needs to use a slightly powerful server such as a single Pentium III machine to serve tenths of these diskless workstation. Thus, maintenance would be fairly simple & leads to reduction of downtime.
Linux is exceptionally good for networking & Internet. However, for multimedia & office applications Microsoft is still much more easier to use. My video capture equipment at home is a US$100 Dazzle (http://www.dazzle.com). It is really easy & helps a lot in transferring the family movies from my Sony handycam. It includes a video editing software that enables us to produce home made VCD (thru your CD writer on PC) or streaming it over the Internet if you wish. Most of digital cameras can talk to Windows based machine & most of them include picture-editing software. Flash & dreamweaver are common among web programmers can be found easily in Windows environment. This exceptionally good environment for office & multimedia applications can be obtained at cost. It is unfair to pirate these software, one should pay the license fee.

Having these environment at hand & accessible at low cost, it spurs the development of many businesses in content or transaction services. Dotcommers are scrambling to get viewers & their community in the Internet. Jakarta might be the city where Indonesian dotcommers are concentrated with  detik.com as one of the leading breaking news site in Indonesian Internet. While Indonesian hackers can most likely be find in Bandung. The evil carders who hijack other’s credit card number, most likely to be find in Jogyakarta. Well, the evil side of IT  occurs in the Internet.