I hope you're all well. This week, I'd like to do a round-up of the technology I used/saw in India, with photos from my Indian photos collection:
As I've probably mentioned here before, India is a country of contrast. At the same time as having an amazing mobile phone network (I never had to worry about not getting signal, like I did back at the UK YWAM base), they still use pumps to get water in many areas.
In many places we went, VCD players (I'm pretty sure they were just VCD, not DVD, but I might be wrong) were used as sound systems, just plugging in to sound desks. This one was at an orphanage we went to for children with Aids who's parents had died from Aids. This time, it was connected to a TV.
The house where we stayed had many satellite dishes on the roof. I think only one of them was still in use though. TV seems to be as prevalent there as anywhere else though - even houses with just a couple of rooms would have a TV.
I can kind-of understand why Pepsi would join up with another company for this campaign, but I don't know why they still went for an address with .html at the end of it. So much easier to tell people a standard URL - and the site just redirects to a different domain anyway!
This is the wireless Internet key we used to get online for most of the trip. Wireless just makes sense in India: no need to dig up thousands of miles of countryside when you can beam the signals in the air. It would have been nice if it was a bit more stable though. We each had an hour a week (or there-abouts) to get online, and you could pretty much guarantee you'd have to reconnect at least once in that time. But hey - at least we had some Internet access at the house, and didn't have to travel to get to it!
I like the depth of this image. I'm not sure how often anyone comes out to read the meter though!
I would think having an uninterruptible power supply in India would be a very good idea.
Quite a lot of places had wind turbines for electricity generation. More power to them.
I'm not sure there is any technology this stand could have to convince me to use it: an outside dentist!
I don't think we'd be allowed to use camels for large-object-transportation in the west!
One of the many mobile phone towers. They really were everywhere.
These light switches are in the court yard outside the house Gandhi was born in. You are not allowed to take photos inside the house.
I don't think this pay-phone actually ran on Unix, but I could be wrong!
Pretty much all the the power gadgets I bought with me: an extension cable for extra sockets, a battery charger for my camera, behind the mosquito plug is a converter that allowed the Indian mosquito plug to plug in to my UK extension cable, and my universal plug converter, which also doubled as a USB charger for my phone.
I was pretty lucky to be able to bring my phone with me: DTS students are not really meant to bring their phone with them, but I was allowed as it had a spreadsheet program on it, and I was doing the team's accounts, so it was useful for keeping track of spending. It also meant I could send a text a day to my girlfriend. I became quite proficient at text-speak: cutting out vowels and using numbers as shorthand for groups of letters. It was also useful when we were in areas with wireless Internet access, as I could connect with my phone, meaning other people could use the computer with Internet access.
I'm not sure what this man was saying, but he was certainly taking advantage of amplification technology to say it.
Overall, I'd say you don't really need to worry about having a lot of technology with you for ministry. In fact, sometimes it could be a barrier. However, it also enabled a lot of activities we wouldn't have been able to do without it. For example, just having a CD to play during a skit made the whole experience better (instead of us having to sing along to provide musical backing).
Being able to blog during my journey with Posterous was also great: it enabled me to use my email account to blog: all I did (and still do now), is write an email, and it gets added as a blog entry - and then the link to the entry gets added to Twitter, and Facebook, which helped me update people on what I was doing.
Don't forget, if you have comments or questions, there is a comments box underneath this post where you can add anything you'd like (within reason).
