Living in China, I see a few examples of leapfrogging every day. Many have already been mentioned, but I'll see what I can come up with.

-For many of the poorer people, internal combustion engines have been bypassed. They've gone straight from human-powered vehicles to plug-in electrics.

-The internet is now ubiquitous, at least in the more developed parts of China. However, China still doesn't have home postal delivery. And as previously mentioned, dialup is virtually nonexistent.

-Email and SMS spam is a constant fact of life, but without postal service, paper junk mail doesn't exist.

-ATM cards are everywhere, but the notion of writing checks is completely unknown here.

-It's not exactly leapfrogging, but the common electrical outlet design in China can accept plugs from almost every other country on Earth. It's a move made out of necessity, but it's far more future-compatible than the US-style outlet.

China is on track to leapfrog the developed world in nuclear power generation, because it will utilize the new and superior (safe, scalable, low-cost) pebble-bed technology. There was an article on this in Wired magazine a year or two ago.

The March 2007 issue of "Fast Company" magazine, p. 93, states that as an antidote to air pollution, and because some local gov'ts. have banned gas-powered scooters, "some 10 million electric bikes were sold in China last year." Strong growth is foreseen for the future too. So they're bypassing the regular-motorbike stage.

Ok, here are a some leapfrogs. The US is leapfrogging past some of the low-def hi-definition options in TV. Because we put it off so long and went without hi-def for so long we may end up with better hi-def in the long run. I just thought I'd mention that one since it seems there is a cultural bias here where only the third world can leapfrog, although haves certainly are less likely to leapfrog than have nots.

The next one hasn't happened yet. I remember reading one of the ancient Greeks, Plato I think, and he was recounting the King of Egypt's reaction to writing, saying that it was horrible, because it would mean that people wouldn't learn to remember things as well. Inside a generation it is weird to watch skills become obsolete. My brother couldn't read an analog clock until high school. My mother could used to tell me about having to learn to buckle or lace shoes with some sort of hook. (I can't even really picture what she was describing. It seemed like a useless skill to her at the time because it was already out of date but her mother insisted she learn.)

One of the hallmarks of a have-not society is a low literacy rate. With organizations trying to get $150 dollar laptops to remote areas some people may leapfrog two parts of what was once considered a basic education: handwriting and spelling. Yes they may have to learn enough basics so they can sign their name or tell which option the spell-checker is offering them is the word they want, but the days of the spelling bee may be numbered.

And on a political note, the more rural areas in the third world may leapfrog oil dependence all together when we use it all up on them before they can develop the financial resources to buy many oil dependent vehicles.

Here's an example of a stage-skipping that may develop--fuel cells in China:

Lisa Margonelli, author of the book "Oil on the Brain," is quoted in the magazine Fast Company, 3/07, p. 52, as quoting GM's China VP David Chen thus:

"Our theorists believe China has an advantage with fuel cells because it has no infrastructure and no resistance. It's been cut off from the world for 30 years. It may be a unique situation to leapfrog."

Here are a couple of examples where developing countries didn't entirely avoid the earlier technology, but mostly did:

1. Fax machines. The prior technology required ownership of a teletype printer and keyboard, plus acquiring a cable address. (Remember "sending a cable"?)

2. Answering machines. The prior technology required paying a monthly fee to an answering service.

Afterthoughts: China has stuck with steam locomotives, although they have many drawbacks. They may be waiting for diesels to advance to another level of efficiency, or for the development of inexpensive coal-derived fuel, before they move up to that level.

I suspect that someone in one of the development agencies in Washington DC would know of an expert or two who could help answer KK's question. Maybe if a question were posted on such an agency's website some fruitful leads would emerge.
===============

Cynthia Beal: I liked your post. Have you ever read "The Ugly American"? (Cheap on Amazon.) Its protagonist was a down-to-earth construction guy hired as an adviser to a 3rd-world country. He was unable to convince the modernizing hotshots in the country's development agencies, or their American funders, that what the people there needed was not the latest-and-greatest technology, bright and shiny, but simple, non-glamorous, basic stuff. (Like mason jars and potholders.) He got nowhere.

PCs have been adopted by umpty-millions who never touched a typewriter.

They "skipped a stage" or "cut a corner" or "jumped a grade."

Cheap digital watches were the first popular form of wristwatch in the 3rd-world (right?), which meant that the mechanical-watch-repair-shop infrastructure was (mostly) bypassed. (A trivial example of course.)

I suspect that there must be many more examples of gadget-level stage-skipping. I.e., where the first version of a gadget like a watch that was adopted in the 3rd world was much more modern than the first version adopted in the West. But it's hard to think of them. The sort of person who'd be aware of examples would most likely be an aged diplomat, or a long-time globe-trotting businessman, or a gray-bearded, technologically aware travel-writer. Those would be good persons to ask.

Another way to attack the problem would be to scan down a list of 1000 significant technologies of the past century (I assume there are lots of such lists in print) and ask (oneself or others) when they were first adopted in the 3rd world. In cases where adoption lagged by many decades, some stage-skipping must usually have occurred.

Hmm ... Here's one stage-skipping example that probably doesn't count as technology: The corsetry stage has been skipped by most (all?) of the 3rd-world countries where women now wear bras.

In the Highland of Papua New Guinea it was too mountainous and everyone walked. Have heard they had no use for the wheel. Recently there was a gold rush on one of the mountain tops and the locals were picking up nuggets as the tropical rain washed away the surface mud. The locals went from walking and walking tracks to helicopter and helipads and leapfrogged the wheel, draft animals, roads, cars, trains and railways.

Not sure if I "get" the Q, as isn't every 'great' invention (as opposed to improvement inventions)a leapfrog step? But what comes to mind are: printing leapfrogged over story-telling & inaccurate recountings; the internet leapfrogged over what would have otherwise been countless smaller intermediate steps (for information retrieval, education, shopping, price comparisons, selection location, time and distance limitations, people locating; GPS devices leapfrogged over maps; any invention that voids the regular assumed limitations of time and space (the phone, wireless communication, the internet, instant messaging, etc. Processes - such as bringing DDT to a malaria-ridden country; birth control, the "micro-loan system" enables the borrowers to change the level of their existence; digital cameras (which conceptually obsoleted an entire intermediate system of film making, distribution, processing, kiosks, etc.), disposable cameras, any real "killer apps", something like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - a focused outpouring of monies - (which may change the worlds poor in decades instead of centuries); the Andrew Carnegie system of libraries; getting music and books directly from the artists & authors, cutting out layers of middlemen; the $100 laptop; eBay, eBay! which connects a previously raggedly-connected world of buyer & sellers in a seamless way & leapfrogs over a centuries-old need to go see something to find/buy it.

They have leapedfrogged into obesity, high blood pressure and the other diseases that come with eating at fast food restaurants.

There are a multitude of examples of leapfrogging from when Europeans first invaded "the new world" and the South Pacific. Indigent peoples moved from Stone Age technology (which was all they needed) to the introduction of steel and iron (as well as gunpowder) without going through the mining and milling processes. They certainly welcomed the new technology, from muskets to axes to cooking pots and sewing needles.

I'm surprised the "first example to come to mind" wasn't the satellite/cable phenomena and THEN cell phones...

And while I don't know if this qualifies, a possible one-two punch, combining leapfrogging AND a paradigm shift, is the railroad--a 19th-century technology--becoming an internet provider--a 21st-century technology--simply because they can lay cable alongside the tracks without digging up the streets and have a national network in place...?

My first thought when reading this question was PVCs--photo voltaic cells. It looks like some touched on the idea with solar, but discounted its applications--which is too bad. The use of PVCs is growing rapidly across the devloping world--especially in rural health care centers.

PVC are increasingly used in developing countries eliminating the need for pure grids.

I have tons of hard copy research I could dig out of my shelves if you'd like more...but here's a few articles to explain the basics:

http://www.solarenergysociety.ca/photovoltaic.asp

This one speaks a bit more to its wider applications, with no need of fuel and little maintenance, e.g. water pumping...:

http://www.epsea.org/pv.html

When I hear the word leap frog, PVCs are first and foremost in my mind. I'll send along a few more as they come to me.

Late commer to this post but it appears that a critical factor is the level of change that technology has. Is it an incremental extension of existing technology or is it at least several orders of magnitude of innovation. letter post to telegraph is an order of magnitude change in time i.e. days to instant. telegraph (digital information in text) to early telecopiers analog images) can also be considered another one. The printing press and its associated mass produced publication machines (spirit copiers etc.) to the early Xerox one off copiers while an incremental change in printing was a order of magnitude change from the carbon based copy technology of the time. While the change from a hunter/gatherer income base (in parts of Africa and Latin America) to eco-tourism can be considered a change of severals orders of magnitude (both culturally and in western time lines) it has its basis in the impact of other cultures and technologies interacting with the local technology and life style. Remember that the very question goes back to "leap frog" a game that we played as children in which one individual hopped over the other by use of their hands to assit them over the backs of others. After they jumped then the other got to "Leap Frog" over the previouse jumper.

John Corliss' example of skipping over written checks and checking accounts is not one I've heard before. Any others?

Lebanon is another good example to China. Though prior to the start of the war in 1975 Lebanon was a developed country and with the most developed telecoms, broadcasting, and IT infrastructure and market in the region, after 1975 that infrastructure was all but completely destroyed over the next 15 years. Lebanon missed out on 15 years of modern ICT development but after the end of hostilities in 1990, billions were spent on reconstruction and ICT and today Lebanon has not only the region's but one of the world's most advanced networks with 100% digital switching in the wired and wireless domains, submarine optical cables, etc.
Lebanon has many firsts and records, including: technical world records for the highest busy-hour-call attempts and the highest erlang in the world. In otherwords, Lebanon's mobile networks are by far the world's busiest in terms of traffic per-capita and Lebanese monthly talk time minutes are 10 times the world average and several times higher than in Europe (at some point, half a million cell phone users in Lebanon generated as much traffic as all of France Telecom's wireless network in France). Their fixed network talk time is second only to the US. Lebanon was the first country in the world to pioneer the deployment of pico-cell networks and location-based services/advertising (8 years ago) and is still one of the only countries to have proven the concept. It was also one of the first countries to have a commercial GPRS network, one of the first to deploy digital Wireless Local Loop (WLL) technology in mountaineous areas where extending cable is not viable, was the first country in the region and one of the first in the world to deploy two gigabit (ethernet) Metropolitan Arean Networks (MAN), first in the region to deploy WiFi and has the largest WiFi network in the region, first in the region to deploy mobile and internet banking, internet radio and tv streaming in the 90s etc. Indeed, when practically starting from scratch, there is an advantage to plan things properly and make dramatic investments and thus have the ability to "leapfrog" from virtually nothing. Several former communist Eastern European countries have made the same leaps and bounds in Europe.

One striking leapfrog I have seen is that checking accounts and paper checks were skipped in Eastern Europe - at least Hungary which I know personally. Under socialism, it was a cash economy. By the early 80's the free market system was thriving in many parts of the economy. All transactions were in cash. The postman came to our door one day when I was alone in the flat, working on my Mac 128k. After working through the language barrier, I understood that he came to pay Nagymama's (the grandmother's) pension. He opened this large wallet stuffed with the pension day cash, and counted out her money, and I signed on the line. Or paying a bill - anything from parking ticket, gas bill, taxes, sending money to nagymama in her village - go to the post office fill out a green slip with the adressee, or use the one sent to you by the gas company, hand it to the clerk, she runs it through a little machine and then hands you the stub. Or if you got a green slip in the mail - tax refund, - somebody sending you money - you take it to the Posta and the clerk gives you the cash. Thus huge piles of cash in the Posta - but crime rate very low. Checking accounts never existed.

Then - 1989 - The Hungarians decide not to stop East Germans from going accross the border to Austria - which Hungarians were free to do - and it was over - the wall came down.

ATM and cash cards arrived, supplanting the old system which still functions just fine for all the same purposes, Except now with cards, you don't have to go to the Posta to do all your business - but that was never a big problem because they are everywhere.

Someone may have already mentioned this, but a prediction? China is going straight to alternative fuel transportation, and forget about oil.

Rob

Television/Internet. In countries far too remote/willing to have landlines or broadcast stations, satellite technology has leapfrogged them both. In America we had to receive broadcasts through the air, then through cable, then through satellite, not just straight to satellite.

I was struck by a television image of a group of dispalced Sudanese. Everything had been taken from them, including most of their loved ones. They looked around at the dry place they had been forced into as some aid workers on a truck passed out little plastic bottles of water. They each held one in their hands like jewels.

I think that in Ireland, they skipped straight from Oxen to tractors, mostly missing horsepower. In the US it went from Oxen->horses->tractors.

I may be wrong on this, but I remember when I worked on a farm that used oxen and horses (kind of a demonstration farm) that a guy from Northern Ireland came over to see how we used the horses because there wasn't a lot of horse wisdom in Ireland.

I know that they have smaller horses there. I could be completely wrong on this one, but truth be told, I haven't seen a ton of horses in my time in Ireland. And I've seen a crapload of tractors.

Paul McEvoy

Buses are an example of leapfrogging with respect to rail-based trolleys. Late in the nineteenth century, any western city worth it's salt had a fairly extensive network of trolley tracks.

Until fairly recently their popularity was slowly declining, particularly in North America. Now some developing countries are experimenting with so-called bus rapid transit systems: they use existing roads, don't need rails, and catenary wires are optional.

There seems to be a general trend of reducing hard infrastructure in favor of more flexible and pay-as-you-go infrastructure.

I guess another trend you could pull out of this is that early technologies have the environment adapted to them (e.g. railroads), whereas leapfrogging technologies adapt to the preexisting environment (jeeps).

Another general trend is consumer-style hardware being "back ported," as it were, into professional-grade uses, e.g. clusters leapfrogging conventional supercomputers.

And much more: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/cat_leapfrog_nations_emerging_technology_in_the_new_developing_world.html

An article from WorldChanging: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001276.html#more

"QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY" ?!!(Paul Leeves June 22) Mr. Kelly, what happens when our little reptile enters multi-dimensions (string theory)? Does leapfroging become 3 (or 4) dimensional ? We cannot think forward without traces of an historical leap keeping us connected (or leaving crumbs) as we populate the landscape with parallel technologies.

All systems of communication, transaction/exchange, are systems of a Mind. Should we not then, be able to see leapfrogging throughout all civilizations and eras? Could the Printing Press, for example, in Middle Europe during the Renaissance and Martin Luther's "95 Thesis of Contention" with church clurgy be an example of leapfrogging the system of papyrus and scribes to advance European civilization?

Obviously what drives technology is its usefulness - we must ask what are we using it for? When we discover that - I believe an enormous amount of precedence and example opens up.

Les mentions a good case:

"Satellite "dish" TV leapfrogs cable and can bring a very clear signal to a remote locale."

I'm wondering how much satellite TV actually replaces cable. I'll have to track some numbers down.

When medicine is developed for a specific purpose, then "leap frogs" into solving other, and many times, very unrelated diseases.

A simple example ... aspirin was developed for pain and fever management. Now it's used to prevent heart attacks.

Satellite "dish" TV leapfrogs cable and can bring a very clear signal to a remote locale.

Inherent in the concept of leapfrogging technology is the idea that there is a certain sequence of technological development, and that some quarters of the world may skip over a phase of technology that others have gone through. The sequencing of technology may not be true, in which case we can expect some areas to have more steps or phases than others. But my reading of history doesn't show that true for major techno inventions -- although it is true for many minor inventions. However I am looking for examples of significant inventions that were skipped by some significantly large (say a society) group of people.

imanyker - that's not the point of Kelly's question. Re-read what he's asking.

the contributions are beginning to suck.

All new technology is leapfrogging technology.....i.e. leapfrogging is part of the operational definition of new technology.

This might be controversial. Isthe concept of leapfrogging simply a way for one culture to put down another by saying, "we invented the technology and they took advantage of it. We built the bridge and they simply walked across. They should have to sweat and build their own bridge, instead of taking advantage of our hard work."

I suppose it all depends on your perspective.

So its OK for an American to build on the work of Americans, but not OK for foreigners to build on the work of Americans? But Americans built upon the discoveries and inventions of other cultures. If European (monks?) didn't invent the idea of laying out city streets in a grid pattern, then New York and Washington would be as haphazard as London or Boston.

It is an interesting discussion whether technology or marketing is responsible for leapfrogging. Do we credit refridgerated train car technology for leapfrogging, or do we credit improved distribution (which is called positioning is terms of marketing)?

If the specific technology does not affect the 4Ps of marketing (product, price, packaging, and positioning (aka distribution)), then I suppose you could credit the technology solely. But that's rarely the whole story...

Google search technology improves the product. More efficient manufacturing lowers price. Better sorting technology enables better packaging, such as the Kellogg cereal multi-flavor-pak. The refridgerated railcar tech enables better, more extensive distribution.

If a more advanced technology doesn't advance marketing in some way, who cares? If Merrill Lynch uses short division rather than less efficient long division, why should customers be impressed by their technological advance?

Later adopters of the Web leapfrogged early search technology by immediately using GOOGLE. Why learn how to use Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot, and Lycos once Google arrived in 1999? Google's technology was so much better than the other, earlier technologies.

I suppose the same thing could be said about EBAY leapfrogging sites like Classifieds2000.

This may be too finely detailed to be considered a leapfrog. In the past few years, the field cryptography has made some exceptional progress in terms of algorithms and computer hardware. In the last two years, the field has moved from a medium of just numerical analysis to quantum physics - thus quantum cryptography.

Here's a link to the topic:
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~jford/crypto.html

Well the car seems to be a pretty good example of a technology that leapfrogs. I mean there was a process of going from foot to horses, to horse and cart to car (In a round a bout way), So many countries never had horse and cart, or even used horses for that matter, but now they use cars or something similar to become mobile. I wouldn't agree that you need any more of an infrastructure to have transport as you do require to have cell phones. for cell phones you require cell phone towers and the cell phones themselves a long with the servers and repair facilities to cope with the new network. With cars you can import cars from a variety of countries and they can run in sand, dirt, concrete almost anything you can throw at them given the right type of vehicle (Buses and mass transportation included), you can set up cheap repair facilities (Mechanics) and petrol doesn't require much to be stored, at the worst you can store it in steel drums.

Most technologies require the incrimental development of something in oder for them to tick but it is normally the end result that actual makes it a leap or not. although these are just my thoughts anyway.

United Arab Emirats is a prime example of a country that has taken advantage of leap frogging technology. They are in the process of building one of the largest buildings in the world, this building uses technology developed by Western countries through trial and error and years of research.

Satelites have probably by far been an excellent technological jump. A lot of developing countries couldn't even afford a weather station to really monitor their weather, like a lot of developed countries have, but with the advance of satelites and computers and internet etc, countries and farmers can have a cheap low cost computer to get the latest on the upcoming weather. Maybe a small change for most of us who are use to getting the weather each day via radio anyway, but to those countries not in the same position, not having to pay for their own weather stations and being able to get the same benefits from the internet mean great advances for them.

Although all of this is good, some of the more benficial jumps in history surround medical advances and a lot of developing countries can't afford to pay what our pharmaceuticals charge. So there could well be many more leap frogs if some of this technology was to make it to the poorer countries. I mean even in our own countries a lot of technology isn't available to lower income people, simply because the prices are far too high.

I look forward to the next 10 years and seeing all the technological advancements.

How about going from oil lamps, burning smelly, expensive, smoky and very weak - straight to white-light LEDs? The Light Up The World Foundation capitalised on a University of Calgary professor's optimisation of LED technology to produce cheap solar cell-powered lighting for remote areas without electricity. High quality, super long lasting Light without one electricty generator - that is a leap in life enhancing technology if i ever saw one

K.K.,

To the extent that GMOs allow skipping over pesticides, by generating them internally, they leapfrog some of the dirtier aspects of agricultural development. The direction of agricultural biotech - not restricted to GE, there are a variety of technologies that use genomics and other biotech methods to achieve the purposes of GE using more "conventional techniques" - may skip over many of the more environmentally destructive and resource consumptive parts of development.

ICT leapfrogs many aspects of social development. It isn't just wireless/wired, ICT also allows skipping some of the intermediate bureaucratic stages of devlopment by allowing P2P and distance learning. There are some good BOP examples from India.

Diane,
tchpd on clphn 2 mch trbl - m 2 glb 4 sch lmt8ions

West,
Human's conceived "protect feet from rocks" to evolve shoe.

Leapfrogging enables new thinking and calls back to the system for alternate/optimal ways. And so, redundancy is the strength of a working system.

Disagree with sean jin's 5/17 post that "Cell phones are still telephones, wireless or not." - it's not about the channel but the function ...specifically, in Japan, the phone is leapfrogging the personal computer for many as a means to instant message...why buy a PC if you can carry your 'message machine' in your pocket - especially in a culture where space is at a premium? Hence the popularity of DoCoMo.

Sorry to bear bad news, but your question is faulted to begin with. It assumes that the practical application of knowledge (i.e. technology) produces a tangible 'something', the occurance of which negates the need for a preceeding condition which existed in another circumstance. Cell phones did not eliminate the need for land wiring in China. The Chinese people just opted not to utilize land wiring. It was human choice. Not the divine intervention of technology. The technology did not jump over anything. A beginning at a given point in time is just that, a beginning. Early man had to conceive the concept of 'shoe' as it had never existed before. Modern man simply learns to tie one. That is technology. That is leap-frogging. But choosing to wear slip-ons is something different entirely. There isn't a leap. Just a choice.

What interests me most is your inquiry, the actual asking of the question about technology leap-frogging. I think the intrigue of you inquiry can best be illuminated by the words of Victor F. Weisskopf from his book Knowledge and Wonder where he says, "In man's brain the impressions from outside are not merely registered; they produce concepts and ideas. They are the imprint of the external world upon the human brain. Therefore, it is not surprising that, after a long period of searching and erring, some of the concepts and ideas in human thinking should have come gradually closer to the fundamental laws of this world, that some of our thinking should reveal the true structure of atoms and the true movements of the stars. Nature, in the form of man, begins to recognize itself."

Thank you for your time.

It's interesting to note that in 1949 cable TV was developed to bring television to rural areas of the US. By 1953 there were 14,000 subscribers. By 1963 there were 1,200 cable systems serving 1 Million homes. CATV is "Community Antenna Television". Cable was connected to broadcast towers and plugged into homes and provided clear reception.

The broadcast networks in radio and television were the first "wireless" technologies. I believe satelite will provide even greater reaching wireless networks within the next decade. Satelite radio is already making a significant dent.

I just came upon this over at Boing Boing..... dont know if its been suggested as an example yet or not... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3744075.stm

Seems pretty broad a jump for a frog to make.

-jjPoe

ahem...

I saw an example of what I think you mean by leapfrogging when I lived in Morocco during the 80s.

During the six years I lived there I saw the rapid deployment of ATM at banks, this in a country where most of the population didn't have a bank account.

Banks in Morocco weren't waiting to go through the long development cycle of banks in Europe and the US, they used technnology to leap to the future.

Perhaps this isn't as close to your idea of leapfrogging as you'd like, but living there and watching it happen has always stayed with me.

Jon

Rustin, thanks for the expansions. Although I would like to agree with you, I'm skeptical that any of the examples would hold up to actual data. Has ATMs dented the growth of paper-money banking in the 3rd world? I don't know. Brazil has a very active e-banking system, so perhaps some data may be found there. From my experience in China and other parts of Asia, ATM is a marginal force.

About WMD: most countries with WMD seem to be heavily armed with traditional stuff as well. If there was actual data on it lessening ordinary arms, I'd love to see it. I can imagine how it MIGHT work in the future, but that is only conjecture.

ParkyLondon:
WiFi is a good candidate. It is the parallel of the case I started this topic with: wireless cell phones leapfrogging wired networks. So far wireless bypassing the wired stage is the only example I think that actually works.

How about WiFi? Most homes these days wouldn't even *dream* about putting CAT5 cable all over the place. However mention WiFi and once you've explained it people get quite excited about it. Ergo, WiFi could be a candidate for a leapfrog technology? No network -> (miss out CAT5 etc) -> WiFi.... Howzat?

Alex, I feel badly hijacking Kevin's thread. Point me to another place we can discuss this and I'll explain why you're wrong :-)

North Korea has garnered signigicant world attention - and necessitated the need for a very large military presence in the South - since long before it claimed to have nuclear weapons. This military presence and attention was due precisely to the fact that North Korea had a very large and relatively modern conventional military. This, in my view, quenches any argument that North Korea's purported nuclear capability represents the deployment of a "leapfrog" technology.

over-the-top until you consider its not the use of a WMD that provides power - its the possession and implied threat of use.

Whoops. HTML tags were stripped. Another try:

On RPGs:
http://www.exile.ru/189/war_nerd.html

T.E. Lawrence:
http://www.bellum.nu/wp/tel/telsogw.html

Rustin's slightly over-the-top comment about WMD - in fact, these have *not* yet been used as he suggests - reminds me of a more real weapon leapfrog: the RPG. There's a very good article here. A true leapfrog technology. Actually, assymetric and guerilla warfare are intrinsically leapfrog technologies. Ever read TE Lawrence's Encyclopaedia Brittanica entry on the subject? A classic.

Kevin,

Happy to clarify as best I can (in reverse order)-

RE: Superfreighter

Japan could effectively compete against US in autos b/c superfreighters(sfs) disrupted the economics of geography. There would be no discussion of cheap foreign goods flooding Western markets but for cheap overseas freight from China to Western nations. The point being that globalization is an economic phenomenon and a distruptive technology does so by viture of its economic value. The economic impact of the superfreighter was enormous.

RE: ATM Machines

I love this example, but how to explain in a 240 pixel textbox. Developing nations are notorius for their reliance on hard currency and distaste for banks. Why? Because day-to-day necessities (and the police) require cash in these liquidity starved economies. Enter ATM's and 24/hr on-demand access to hard currency -- and the incentives for entering the banking system even for poorer members of society change. But for ATM's how many banks/branches/money-changers would a city of 14 million (Shanghai) need? The ATM may be the greatest distribution technology to touch the common man when you consider the sheer value (in dollars) it supplies.

RE: WMD

I should have said WMD technology allows 3rd tier nations and groups to leapfrog the nasty business of obtaining power through conventional military might or economic strength. That N.Korea garners any attention in the world is evidence of this; and the lesson is not lost on other countries who want to use this disruptive technology to obtain leverage and power in the world to advance their interest. Can you think of a technology that provides more raw power to a group in a package as small as a briefase or a spraycan?

RE: Ag Tech

Fish farming in Asia. Genetic engineering throughout US dramatically increasing farm output. Irrigation technology allowing Western US, Israel and others to produce crops.

Cheers,

Rustin

The iconoclastic economist Thorstein Veblen raised the issue of a country's being leapfrogged in Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (1915). He referred to it as the penalty for a nation's taking the lead, and, implicitly, being stuck with an extensive infrastructure that was expensive and difficult to upgrade.

The example of steel was mentioned in the thread: after World War II, the US had a bunch of new (as of 1945) mills that had used old open-hearth technology to build the armory, but as Japan rebuilt, producers there could adopt the new Basic Oxygen Furnaces faster than American producers, who by 1970 lagged the Japanese in aggregate cost and quality measures.

Uruguay leapfrogged in telecommuniations. I think they have an extensive optical-fibre network and apparently also have a good wireless network.

Don't know if this is leapfrogging but Finland's government opted to throw out Microsoft and took on Linux a few years back.

In Australia mobile messaging (sms) was not possible until around 1999. This was due to the fact that carriers could not come to an agreement! Anyway I had used sms for years in Finland and it was funny when sms became a big thing with our Aussie friends. Now in Australia we're able to use 3G (3rd generation technology ) mobile phones with live video. It seems like Australia leapfrogged sms multiimedia messaging (the sending of still images) and went straight to 3G phones.

All leapfrogging I see listed here are simply cheaper ways to get things done. A true leapfrogging would be China going to from no telephones directly to internet - Cell phones are still telephones, wireless or not. In fact, it is probably (I don't know for sure) cheaper and easier to get a cell phone network going than getting a hardline phone system going, since there's no need to install wires into all the houses and stuff. You can take this and think furthur about it, perhaps extracting rules for leapfrogging, which I would do, except I'm busy right now.

This may not be in the range (or context--3rd world) you're looking for (most examples so far have been pretty grand), but I've always seen leapfrogging between the US and Europe in terms of standards. AFAIK, PAL has higher resolution than NTSC because Europe adopted a TV standard after the US. GSM is better in some ways, at least than early US wireless formats.

Adopting a standard locks you in and slows you down, so others can leap ahead. One doesn't necessarily see a mutual benefit in such jumps, but adopting technology later usually reduces costs and gives you more.

Take simple things such as faucets and electrical wiring. In Sweden, for example, newish buildings have systems that are more advanced, on average, than in the US (for example, thermostat-regulated single-handle faucets and pervasive grounded outlets). I believe this is related to time of standards adoption, but I could be wrong.

My father, in Sweden, has an 8Mb/s internet connection, while I'm 20 miles from Microsoft headquarters with a maximum of 144Kb/s--and he pays 1/3 of the fee for his service. I hope we get to leapfrog here in the US soon. ;-)

I know Sweden adopted internet banking way ahead of the US. A major Swedish bank, SEB, opened a spinoff bank, Sesam, which had no physical presence, and operated entirely by internet, phone and mail in the early or mid '90s. On the other hand, Sweden was probably about 2-3 years behind the US in taking the internet seriously (this is just my personal "feel").

Another set of examples is the development of operating systems and personal computer systems, where there's been a mixture of evolution and leapfrogging. I assume this audience is familiar with the Apple ][, Mac, Amiga, Windows, NeXT, BeOS, Linux, etc.

I see the effect as similar to deflation. Hold on to your money while technology advances, and you get more for your money.

Regarding 3rd world adoption, I think Brazil may have been fairly early in adopting smart cards, but it happened after I left the country, so I'm unsure if it ever took off in any major way.

Otherwise I didn't see any major such effect (especially the _skipping_ of steps) in Brazil while I was there, since they generally weren't that far behind, and haven't yet surpassed their mentors.

I imagine Japan can be seen as a pretty major leapfrogger over its mentors, though.

The pattern for that sort of leapfrogging is: pirate/copy/learn, streamline, make money, start taking next steps. Hmm, sounds pretty similar to the operating system story, really. I guess we'll see it in India and China next.

In France, they could leapfrog dialup, going straight from Minitel to broadband:
http://business.cisco.com/prod/tree.taf%3Fasset_id=88776&MagID=88873&public_view=true&kbns=1.html

In China, I've heard that they are leapfrogging dialup and going straight to broadband.

Also in China they are leapfrogging the motorcycles that are the bane of countries like Taiwan, and going straight to electric bicycles.

Some have said China will leapfrog a fossil fuel economy and go straight to Hydrogen, but I don't buy it, since they seem to already have a serious fossil fuel addiction:
http://www.emagazine.com/january-february_2003/0103conv_cannon.html

You could also look for instances where we've leapfrogged things here in the US that have been recent imports from elsewhere. Like we leapfrogged, say, (making this up) thatched sandals for rubber flip-flops. Or by leapfrogging soymilk in whatever container is traditional (in Taiwan they sell it hot in little plastic bags tied and hanging from a piece of plastic twine, with a sharp plastic straw to poke right through the bag at the top), we went straight to Tetra-pak.

You could also look at professions, not just geographies. Is there any profession that leapfrogged voicemail and went straight to the Internet? I'm not thinking of any right now. Here's one: Maybe there are call centers where the representative workstations leapfrogged the web-as-we-know-it, going straight from console applications to locked-down web services in kiosk-like restricted interfaces. That might not qualify, though, since neither of these plays and equivalent role to the web... That last point must be a crucial one in your analysis.

Gopher was so short lived, as a leading technology, that most people everywhere leapfrogged it, except for those people who were already on the net at the time.

The eskimo's leapfrogged from sleds to snowmobiles as a form of transportation not requiring the building of expensive roads.

Rustin,

Your examples are intriguing,but perplexing. I'm wondering if you could clarify my questions on these:

Penicillin/anti-biotics come to mind as a technology that helped many 3rd world countries sidestep intermediate steps toward improved healthcare.

You wrote:
Agricultural technologies (i.e genetic engineering, irrigation, fertilization) had the same effect in leap-frogging fuedel farming.

Me: Where is this happening?

And, it seems to me a number of countries (Iran?) can sidestep the costly business of builidng and maintaining a heavy military capability by acquiring WMD -- that's a technology that certainly leaps over the need for tanks, etc.

Me: Perhaps in theory, but neither north Korea nor Pakistan or India lacks for conventional weapons.

ATM machines in China for example bypassed the huge problem of how to get liquidity/currency into the hands of 2 billion people.

Me; I don't quite get this one. How does an ATM speed up access to currency since you need a credit or debit card to use one? Isn't it easier to pay a farmer 5 rembis for is melon that to get him to sign up for a card?

The superfreighter (ship) made it possible for developing nations to finally monetize their cheap labor - bypassing the need to develop domestic demand for goods and services fully before relying on export to create national wealth.

Me: Sounds like a good one. What country would you use as an example? I'm guess it would have to export many things but have nothing to sell in markets at home? I can't think of any, although I might be able to think of ones whose exports are greater than their internal markets, but I'm still not sure which ones.

(non-water based toilets)
... Yes, I remember now seeing a very large recycling test facility on TV, where they actually succesfully recycled toilet waste into soil. The problem is of course the risk of infectious elements, but they seemed to have succesfully solved those issues.

Operating Systems and software development:

Adopting GNU-based operating systems like Linux and BSD, and GNU-based software development, would be really leapfrogging, utilising 40-50 years of development. I think China, Korea, and Japan is actually planning to do this. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/10/open_source_windows_replacement_mpeg/ . This would mean leapfrogging past Windows monopoly including Longhorn since they would then be in control of their own code. I think there is a consesus that this mentioned monopoly is holding back innovation.

If the Far East goes open source big time, they could soon be soaring past the Western World in the area of server-client computers, PC:s and handhelds. Recent exampe: the Indian Amida Simputer into which you can log into the handheld computer with your smart-card. (That would had been great even in a developed countries were the elderly and under-class households are dragging behind (thus slowing down the optimal use of IT technology in society) since they cannot afford buying their own computer).

Here is a potential leapfrogging: non-water based toilets.
(not kidding ;-)

Seriously, here in Sweden, I've heard and read now and then about waterless toilets as solution for remote and isolated cabin houses, (actually my cousin and her family has one of these toilets out in the country-side). The technology is already developed (solving infection issues and for the possibility for recycling the "by-product"), and I believe there was a radio program where the conversation was going along the lines that actually the whole (Swedish) society should go this way for the sake of the environment, and that the technology could be exported to developing countries which haven't yet developed the sewage system, because then they wouldn't have to, at least in respect to the toilet sewage.

So they saw the possibility for whole societies of leapfrogging the whole water toilet system. It would also be more ecological since researchers have parallelled this dry toilet technology with recycling technology (I think researched at the Chalmers Univ. of Technology here in Gothenburg, if I'm not mistaken) simultaneously creating good value soil for agriculture!

We have introduced several telecenters in the venezuelan Amazon, within some very isolated communities. They are using computers and surfing the net. They belong to "Waraos" communities and are still very pure culturally speaking.
At the moment we are studying how ICT are transforming their society and thier everiday life and what have been changing within those communities.
If we are to talk about leapfrog , this could be the right example to take into account.

How about eBay, which allowed the average Joe to transcend the garage sale and local newpaper ad, disintermediate the auctioneer and consignment shop, and sell to an national/interational market?

1. Steel mills - "mini" mills that produced at the same productivity as the old giants but which had a much smaller start-up cost came in the 70's and helped steel production shift to Korea, etc.

2. Automated machine tools - de-skilled a lot or production line jobs allowing new economies to boot-up without taking long periods to build a skilled labor force.

3. PCs, spreadsheets and modems let the new economies leapfrog past having to train huge numbers of clerical workers.

Penicillin/anti-biotics come to mind as a technology that helped many 3rd world countries sidestep intermediate steps toward improved healthcare.

Agricultural technologies (i.e genetic engineering, irrigation, fertilization) had the same effect in leap-frogging fuedel farming.

And, it seems to me a number of countries (Iran?) can sidestep the costly business of builidng and maintaining a heavy military capability by acquiring WMD -- that's a technology that certainly leaps over the need for tanks, etc.

ATM machines in China for example bypassed the huge problem of how to get liquidity/currency into the hands of 2 billion people.

The superfreighter (ship) made it possible for developing nations to finally monetize their cheap labor - bypassing the need to develop domestic demand for goods and services fully before relying on export to create national wealth.

Again on the negative side... ultrasound/access to abortion has made it possible for at least two nations I can think of to select for sex prior to birth - with all the consequences that come with that "advance" in technology.

I could probably go on. To say I loved your book "Out of Control" is an understatement. It changed my thinking about my business and technology forever. Hope you'll repeat the effort in the coming years.

I'm not sure that leapfrogging is the right metaphor. One hopes that the appropriate technology is chosen for the task at hand. If an isolated villiage is opened up to the outside via a railroad rather than a road would we consider that a leapfrog of technology? After all roads existed prior to rails. If we stick with the term leapfrog than we do it all the time when we teach a child to use a calculator rather than a slide rule, or a spreadsheet program instead of a ledger book.

I remember some referance to India and Mexico leapfrogging offset-lihography in printing. From (largely) hand-press to digital. Look to the second tier, the peoples under, for innovation. They observe the dictates/restrictions and innovate for survival.

That's "Thought writer"; a step towards computer assisted telepathy, to go along with "text to speech" through hearing nerve connections.

For many poor folk, cars & bikes have leapfrogged horses for transportation, but this is more economic then tech.

Similarly, as electricity goes into villages, for refrigerators; microwave ovens will likely leapfrog gas & electric stoves.

Flat screen monitors will leapfrog CRTs. And telephone itself quickly leapfrogged telegraph, as airplanes leapfrogged blimps.

Similarly, most computer users use Windows, leapfrogging over DOS; and businesses now on Win95 & Wind98 can upgrade to Win XP, leapfrogging over Win 2000. In the future, it will be Win Longhorn.

Few remember that "drive B:" was for the second floppy drive, before hard drive C: was standard. Many who have r/w CD drives (D:, etc) can leapfrog any floppy drives.

And it's not clear that the real soon now coming "Voice writer" is really going to be here faster than a brain attached direct "Though writer".

Tech wants to interact with human thoughts, supporting fancy and creating a better reality.

How about the impact of the introduction of satellite television and cell phones in the Kingdom of Bhutan?

This reminded me of a paper presented at the 2003 Conference on Universal Usability (http://sigchi.org/cuu2003/). There was a presentation on the successes and failures in introducing a device/standard for micropayments to semi-literate women who already ran successful and sophisticated micro-payment systems. The paper is available online, though the link is much too long to post. Go to http://sigchi.org/cuu2003/program.htm and click on ‘Community Portals through Communitization‘.

My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I believe I read somewhere of organizations which are working towards setting up small Solar Power generators for third world, rural communities. I did a quick search and found a few hits on Google, but didn't fully research it. Is this what you're looking for?

I'm not sure if this fits the bill, these may just be paradigm shifts, but I have been thinking of how the individual lately has been able to leapfrog various industry standards to produce something on their own. Individuals are now empowered by lots of easily accessible computing power and the internet to bypass tranditional methods of creating a work, examples:

o Digital music production software (ProTools, etc) let anybody edit and produce their own songs, bypassing the recording studio. And who needs record producers or music stores to distribute the music when you can stream, or mp3 a song to your listeners via the internet. If a fan needs a CD, they can just burn one. Used to be that a special factory was needed to stamp out vinyl records or string together tape cassettes, then a trip to the store or mail-order was the only way to obtain music; no more.

o Digital film cameras let one leapfrog the traditional need for having a film development lab, projectors, dailies, etc when making a movie.

o Digital photography lets me pretend that I've leapfrogged all the history of Kodak. No more system of needing to send off film cannisters to get processed and printed at some development factory, then waiting for them to come back. Of course, no more needing film to be made. I can take pictures, store them, and print them at home on my desk.

o Some companies leapfrog traditional chip fabs by doing custom chips using FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array) and CPLDs (Complex Programmable Logic Device) rather than ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). No need to wait for layout and production of a chip when you can program your own with a PC.

A follow-on to the cell phone leapfrog idea is that cell phones themselves can be leapfrogged as well. There are places in Asia (China, Vietnam) where they are setting up VoIP (Voice over IP) systems to make voice calls. Some countries may just decide to have only IP services throughout their borders; using VoIP coupled with wireless networks (using wlan enabled phone sets) would give cell capability without having cell towers every couple of miles.

Many companies are leapfrogging traditional phone services not with cell technology, but with VoIP.

Also, a similar notion can be had with TV: e.g. satellite dishes. I saw a picture somewhere of shantytowns in Rio that don't have running water, but they do have satellite dishes -they are addicted to soaps. They may lack the TV antenna / broadcast infrastructure but they don't need it if they have geosychronous satellites.

A friend of a friend lives in BFE Alaska and during the long winters when the roads ice over, he survives with no basic services like electrical wires or water pipes running to his cabin. He does have a generator and a satellite dish though, getting his internet and voice calls and maybe TV from it. (He also has tons of canned and jarred food.)

I don't know if this is a leapfrog thing, but I read somewhere that some villages in India are being converted to use pig and cow waste to produce methane. This, in turn, feeds a generator to provide electricity. No centralized power plant, no high tension wires. The little village does string some wire to power some light bulbs and a village computer. Clint Eastwood's golf resort in Carmel is totally powered by solar.

There are other things we take for granted now that at one time were leaps... telephone switchboard operators replace by switches; filing clerks replaced by databases; the typing pool replaced by word processing and photocopiers.

Does that fit?

Thanks for the above, all. These examples are good, but they seem to suggest to me that technological leapfrogging, while desirable, is not very common. Unless I am missing something obvious.

In a narrow sense, I believe that PowerPoint is an example of a leapfrog technology.

Millions of users who would have never considered public speaking aids like transparencies or 35 mm slides or printed media (let alone the prospect of speaking in public) have, for better or worse, been emboldened, assigned or otherwise motivated to create multimedia presentations. MS estimates that there is an installed base of nearly 400 million users creating 30 to 35 million presentations per day.

Moreover, those users are asking the application to do tasks above and beyond slides. Since it is often the only "design" app people have, people have pressed it into service where Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Quark XPress, HTML, and the like would have "normally" been the tool of choice.

As well, there are inklings that verbal-visual communication as a whole, and certainly business communication, have experienced a noticeable shift with the advent of PowerPoint. Over the past few years, a backlash has arisen against bullet-point thinking. Examples like the Columbia shuttle disaster, the justification for war, and bad dot-com investments are the most common offerings of how decisions are being made despite light context, buried details, and false authority. It is argued (e.g., Tufte) that the design of PowerPoint encourages these shortcomings.

Responses usually follow a blame-the-user-not-the-tool rationale. Discussion ends there.

So, we know what users want from the technology. What does the technology want? I'm not sure. I think it wants an audience. It wants linearity. It wants ideas to fit into a prescribed format. But to its credit, successive versions want to tell stories in more ways (embedded media, links, add-ins,non-linear navigation).

I'd like to hear what others think. Thanks.

This goes along with cynthia's post a little. Refrigeration would be a great technology to bring to the third world without a doubt. Also water pump and filter systems would be usefull in many areas.

These devices generally run on straight electricity, but of course installing power lines, hauling coal, finding natural gas, and building power plants is a little too large a task for most third world nations.

A way to leap frog the usual producers of electricty would be to give cheap solar panels or wind mills to individual villages.

Of course a few solar panels could only provide enough electricity for the absolute essentials, but for remote medical equipment, peltier cooling, or communications solar panels could fit the bill perfectly.

I visited Nepal in 1995 and passed time in the Solu Khumbu region along the Dudh Kosi river. I hung out in a number of traditional homes and spent a lot of time checking out the cooking technology there.

A small micro-hydro-electric plant was in operation locally, with controversial plans to install a very large hydro-plant nearby in the coming years. The reason: people wanted refrigerators to store perishable food. (Actually, most people I met didn't want them – the promoters were the Village Development Committees who had ideas about what was needed, but that would be a digression if I went there...)

Anyhow, I looked around to see what would need to be refrigerated. People ate seasonably, primarily from their gardens and the animals on site. Things were eaten immediately, as they were prepared, or they were dried and stored for later. An interesting step that my hippy-background noticed right away was missing – outside of imported tins of evap milk and a few other things, there was no canning technology to be seen, especially not of the sort that our mothers and grandmothers did. Given that canning was one of the most innovative food preservation technologies ever invented (and is sadly underutilized once again), I became mildly obsessed with exploring this vacancy.

I talked with a couple who ran the Hillary School in the area and learned that no one there had ever heard of applesauce, even though apples were a staple. There was no canned jam; no canned pickles; no kraut – but there was fruit, cucumber and cabbage galore. They had an infrastructure ripe for canning – large clay kitchen stoves that often cooked food for hours a day; pressure cookers in every house for beans and rice; a helicopter for supplies in from Kathmandu at least 2-3 times a week, and not a worry about red hands or broken fingernails – but not a jar of home-put-up food anywhere in the house!

In fact, the only place I saw canning jars in use at all was in Kathmandu proper, at a place called Nepal Biotech, where an innovative pair of conservationists were using Ball jars (shipped in from India) to grow plant tissue cultures in. They were using them because they could be heat-sterilized and were uniform in size – but they had absolutely no interest in canning...

After sharing my recipes for applesauce with several of the women I met, including the didi who ran the hotel I stayed at for awhile (I raved about the combination of applesause and pork chops, since they certainly had pork chops), I visited the VDC office again and proposed that they consider some canning workshops. I told them about the source for Ball jars (through the bio-tech guys), raved about the benefits of self-reliance and home-food preservation, plugged minimized electric infrastructure as much as possible (hoping for a tech leapfrog in this department, actually), and left after my few weeks were up, hopeful but doubtful that canning would see the light near Everest.

In retrospect, the reason I devised to explain this technology oversight was that Nepal was relatively closed to the western world prior to the 1950's and access to the tech before then was unlikely. In the 50's, canning technology was already beginning to fade into the twilight of American Self-Reliance, as the image of the modern housewife began to clash severely with the rough hands and broken nails that true household-keeping seems to require. Glass jar canning was passe by the time the West came rattling at the Nepali gates, and was not a sign of modernity – something the West desperately wanted to convey – though just 30 years before, teaching it was all the rage throughout the American Land Grant College system, and kept many American families from starving throughout the Great Depression.

I observed a similar thing when I went to India, although this time it wasn't canning jars – it was pot holders. I had read a number of stories about women who had been severely burned when their saris caught fire. After learning that there were no potholders in Indian kitchens, I observed how women would take the ends of their saris and grab hot pots off the stove. Of course, this technique probably was a lot safer when the saris were made of silk and cotton, but when highly flammable synthetics became the rage, I suppose that the dearth of potholders had an uncounted cost. A few years later, I learned that the wife and sisters of the Brahman host of the small hotel I stayed at had formed a club and were crocheting potholders to give away to people.

I think the Nepal canning chasm is probably a very clear example of leapfrogging tech, and would suspect that more examples would be found in communities that have had a punctuated contact over time with early tech adapters. Religious convictions often create barriers to technology, so communities that have a history of religious power alternating with "peoples' agenda" upwellings may be prime candidates to research for such leapfrogging.

Thanks for asking this question. I've wanted to write this somewhere for a long time, and now I have!

Now, back to the radiant edge map....

interesting point. I think cell phones are particularly relevant, and perhaps an anomoly in that their deployment does not rely on incremental improvements on existing technology. Most others that I can think of require SOMEthing to be there already. transportation needs an existing infrastructure; industrial technology (factory automation) requires a vast amount of groundwork (perhaps most notably, transportation and shipping infrastructure; though material supply can't really be ignored either.) There's very little in any area of technological advancement that can simply be developed and produced at point A and dropped in to point B without B having some kind of existing foundation.

Even most existing big-steps (cotton gin, printing press, etc.) were really just incremental big steps, not leapfrogs.

See, now this is going to bother me until I figure one out.