Microsoft Corp’s research unit is turning to social scientists in a new effort to understand the long-term possibilities for computer technology in developing countries.A new Microsoft Research lab, that was inaugurated on Wednesday in Bangalore, plans to employ anthropologists, ethnographers, political scientists and others to observe and document the lives of people in India’s rural villages. Kentaro Toyama, a 35-year-old Microsoft computer-science researcher who will lead the lab’s emerging markets group, has already begun trekking to distant outposts in India to begin the work.A primary aim of the new group is to help Microsoft understand the situation in rural villages before the company tries to create appropriate technologies for them — rather than first creating the technologies and then trying to find areas where they might apply.“If we want to approach that market, we have to rethink how we do computing — and what computing is,” said Microsoft researcher P. Anandan, a native of Chennai, who has returned to the country from Redmond, to lead the company’s Bangalore lab. “We don’t know the final answers yet.”Although social scientists aren’t unprecedented at Microsoft Research, computer scientists are far more common. The company’s 700-person research unit employs a sociologist in its Redmond lab, and it has begun hiring social scientists at its facility in Cambridge, England. But the focus in those situations is on areas such as online social networks and general communities of computer users.The work to be done by the India lab’s emerging-markets group is also expected to help the company better understand similar situations in other developing nations around the world. In some ways, Microsoft is revisiting its original corporate motto — “a computer on every desk and in every home” — with the recognition that, in a global sense, the company isn’t anywhere close to realizing that goal. “In fact, I would think we have to start somewhere else — like maybe a PC in every village,” Microsoft’s Toyama said.The new lab, Microsoft Research’s sixth facility, was inaugurated on Wednesday. Microsoft is still working to finalize a lease for the lab in the city.The event was attended by dignitaries including Science and Technology minister Kapil Sibal, who signed a “memorandum of understanding” between the government and Microsoft Research India to partner in science and technology research projects. —NYT
