Deborah Byrd

People raised in the 1950s and ’60s tend to think of technology in monumental terms: buildings soaring ever-higher, superhighways, giant Saturn V rockets lifting off toward the moon, horrific yet fascinating nuclear explosions.

But today’s technological innovators are thinking small.

One example is in June 18 Newsweek: a story called Water for the World. It’s about LifeStraw, a much-lauded plastic tube containing a simple water purification system.

According to Newsweek, LifeStraw sells for $3 (not an insubstantial sum, by the way, to many in developing countries). If they can afford it, and have access to it, individuals in developing countries can use LifeStraw to purify water from wells, ponds and streams. Newsweek says:

… its impact on their lives can’t be overstated. More than 1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water, and 6,000 people die each day of waterborne diseases like typhoid, cholera and dysentery. In regions like sub-Saharan Africa, half of most people’s water consumption takes place outside the home—either while they’re working, or walking to and from school. Vestergaard Frandsen S.A.—which also produces mosquito nets and plastic sheeting coated with insecticide to fend off malaria—hopes that the $3 LifeStraw will drastically lessen their chances of getting sick.

Vestergaard Frandsen is a Danish company. The sanitized-looking video accompanying the Newsweek story is made by this company. The owner is 35-year-old Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, who, according to the Innovating with Diversity ‘07 conference website (a one-day event in Copenhagen on June 12, 2007) entered his father’s company in 1997 and began a process of innovating and developing products with a focus on humanitarian aid.

And it’s not just simple small technologies that the developing world craves. In late 2006, at a conference held at the United Nations, Fortune senior editor for internet and technology David Kirkpatrick discussed technology and the developing world, focusing primarily on digital technologies such as cell phones. He said, for one thing, that people are starting to talk about owning a cell phone as a basic human right.

That’s because cell phones provide people with access to information, and in the 21st century, information is the key commodity. For example, cells phones enable the rural poor to check the prices at which their goods can be sold in various nearby cities, without the expense of going there, sometimes only to be turned away or disappointed. It’s why when Jorge Salazar interviewed Cornell professor Stuart Hart for Earth & Sky a year ago, Hart spoke of the 100,000 rural poor in Bangladesh who are now phone ladies. And it’s why Muhammad Yunus – who is founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh – won the Nobel Peace Prize late last year for his efforts in helping millions of the poorest poor with small, low-interest loans: the very loans that, for example, enable the poor in rural area to purchase cell phones.

Something else Hart said has stuck with me. He said that the developing world has become a sort of proving ground for technologies that might ultimately transfer to the developed world.

You might end up with something that could – over time, if it’s good enough – displace the way that we currently do things now in the developed world.

At the time, Hart was speaking specifically of LEDs - light-emitting diodes that are 90-95% more energy efficient than light bulbs - combined with solar technologies to bring light at night to many in developing countries (see the Light Up the World Foundation for more). But I like to contemplate the what goes around comes around aspect of these technologies - developed for the billions of Earth’s inhabitants who now live on less than a few dollars a day - ultimately working to the benefit of us all.