One of the university’s six strategic goals is to foster the spread of technology around the globe.

Eric Abbott, professor of journalism, is an active proponent of the development of appropriate telecommunications infrastructure for developing countries and rural communities.

Three separate projects created in support of the strategic goal and with which Abbott is involved take him to other states and to other continents.

Into Africa

In one project, Abbott works with Dale Grosvenor, computer science professor, devising means to connect African countries to the Internet.

“The motivation for this and other projects is that we don’t want knowledge that’s created somewhere to not be accessible everywhere,” Abbott said.

According to the report from a workshop held in June 1996 at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, interest in Internet technology in Nigeria developed as a consequence of unreliable phone lines and congested highways within Nigeria, and the international move toward the Internet as a routine and principal means of business on the part of the academic and scientific communities.

Nonetheless, the report states, different financial and infrastructural challenges for communication in Nigeria make implementation solutions like hardware compatibility and power-system adaptability used in the United States and Europe irrelevant in Nigeria.

Grosvenor said that in order to get on the “full” Internet, the Nigerians need more reliable phone lines and better power sources.

The land of the bear

The second project Abbott works on has taken him to Russia, where he supports a World Bank project to develop a new agricultural marketing and information system for Russia.

When the Soviet empire collapsed in 1990, the top-down/central planning system for the economy collapsed as well, creating the need for new markets and for new information about those markets. This created the need for market information services and extension programs to help develop the economy, Abbott said.

Abbott’s small part of this five-year World Bank project involves working with Russian officials to create a new Press Video center, Abbott said.

The Press Video center is a unit of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Procurement of the Russian Federation, located in Moscow.

Abbott said the Press Video center is concerned with both print and broadcast media, and he and his colleagues are involved with training a group of people at the center to produce both videos and printed information about agriculture.

Abbott credited ISU agricultural economics professor Bob Jolly and agronomy professor Jerry Dewitt with leading the training that’s been going on for the individuals who are going to be creating the extension service for all of Russia.

Abbott led a seminar at the agricultural ministry in Moscow in November 1996, titled “Designing an Effective Agricultural Communication System for Russia.” During the seminar, he said, three concerns when promoting agricultural change are making farmers aware of new and relevant information or technology, ensuring that the farmers completely comprehend the information or technology, and remembering that there may be additional steps necessary or factors to consider in motivating actual changes in farming and ensuring the adoption of new practices or techniques.

In the heart of the U.S.

In his third project, Abbott considers rural communications in the U.S. Earlier in the semester he attended a conference entitled “Telecommunications for Rural Communications Viability” in Kansas City, Mo.

The purpose of the conference was to “design an action and research agenda in the area of telecommunication and rural development,” Abbott said.

The North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, (NCRCRD), one of four regional centers coordinating rural development research and education throughout the United States, is located at ISU and was the sponsoring agency for the conference.

“We had 20 thousand dollars of funding from the NCRCRD to put on this conference, which enabled us to bring in key policy, community and research people,” Abbott said.

Explaining the need for the conference, Abbott said, “Rural communities may be in some way disadvantaged in telecommunications.

“We need to address the whole question of how they are organized, what they want, when and why they chase jobs instead of investments, etc.”

“We will try to create a network of people who attended the conference, so that when the rural communities are ready we’ve got a way to link them together,” he said.

All three projects attempt to bring people, technology, resources and time into closer harmony, and all three continue to be subjects of interest and research.`