3Com announces global Web poll
by George A. Chidi Jr., IDG News Service\Boston Bureau
October 05, 2000, 17:38
Joining giant constrictor snakes, birds of prey and great cats stalking
people in the jungles of the world is one more exotic predator: 3Com
Corp. representatives wielding handheld computers, asking residents
about their sex lives and how they sleep at night.
3Com said it is looking to cast light on the "digital divide" between
computer haves and the have-nots with its 'Planet Project', an
attempt, according to company public relations statements, to create
"the first global interactive poll of the human race."
To that end, it will tap about 2,500 of its worldwide corporate
employees and 500 "planet pollsters" from non-governmental aid and
business organizations, arm them with Palm V handheld computers
fitted with modems, and present an online survey to people in remote
corners of the world who lack Internet access.
The poll will be offered in eight languages and carried out over four
days from Nov. 15 to Nov. 18. As well as being offered to residents in
remote areas like the Australian outback and the jungles of the
Amazon and Papua New Guinea, the poll will also be open to Internet
users in developed nations who can answer the questionnaire using
their own PC, 3Com said.
"Because nobody has ever done something like this, it's hard to tell
how many people we'll poll," said Mark Plungy, a 3Com spokesman.
"We hope there will be millions."
3Com said the poll will provide a kind of "digital mirror" through which
people around the world will be able to glimpse a reflection of the
human race. After answering questions on topics ranging from religion,
health, marriage, dating and death, respondents will be able to
compare their responses instantly with those of other groups of
people by sex, age and location, 3Com said.
As well as being an experiment in using the Internet to gather data
about the human race, the Planet Project also appears to be a way
for 3Com to raise public awareness of the company and show off the
technical capabilities of its computer and networking equipment.
John Coons, an analyst for the technology market research firm
Gartner Group Inc., said he was unsure of 3Com's motives. "This
sounds like it's out of their bailiwick as an equipment manufacturer.
It's more like something we would do. I'm sure there are organizations
for doing this type of large scale survey."
This, according to 3Com's Plungy, is beside the point. "It is going to
prove that the technology works -- what we hope it will do is start a
global conversation, to start this global dialogue, to compare and
contrast one?s answers with someone in China, or Ohio."
The scope of Planet Project is ambitious, but the science of the poll is
not. Neither 3Com nor their polling company partner Harris Interactive
Inc. claims the survey will be scientifically valid. There are insufficient
safeguards against multiple entries, and it isn't clear that those polled
will be a representative slice of a region's population, said Dan Hucko,
vice president of marketing communications at Harris. "Is this a
scientifically valid poll? No. Not in terms of its scientific, statistically
projectable validity."
No farmer on the outskirts of Shanghai will see the same questions as
a farmer outside of Dayton, though. Harris saw fit to submit the
questions to a third-party partner in China, which vetted the survey
and suggested removing or changing many questions before it was
submitted to the Chinese Government. Polls in China must be licensed,
he said.
Among the questions removed in China, Hucko said, are sections on
political leadership, death and the afterlife, sex and dating, and
religion. Each one of the eight topic-areas in the questionnaire was
altered for Chinese consumption, except for the section on sleep, he
said.
Plungy described some of the questions as "provocative." Among
samples: "Would you switch your race if you knew you could not
change it back?" or, "When you die, what do you think will most likely
happen to you?" or, "How often do you think about your weight?" or,
"How do you and your spouse express affection for one another?"
The polls content, however, is less important than it's intent,
according to Giandomenico Picco, personal representative of United
Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan for the U.N. Year of Dialogue
Among Civilizations. "Anything we do to cross the divide makes plenty
of sense. The idea I have is that in the next ten years, the greatest
problem we face (will be) how we manage diversity."
3Com's Planet Project, and the $1 million it said it will use to connect
schools to the Internet along with it, is itself perhaps a small benefit
compared to the commercial gain 3Com will gain in media exposure
from the project, but Picco said he hopes to see a snowball effect,
where other companies also see the wisdom of reaching out to
connect the unconnected.
"There is a commercial objective in all of this, that's to be taken for
granted. But if the poll can be used to show how two individuals can
communicate horizontally, without going through government or other
intermediaries ... forget the poll, forget even the questions. If that
message can go through -- what is being done can be beneficial."
For aid workers in poor places, a handheld computer may have a far
greater impact than its $500 or so price tag would seem to indicate,
said Robin Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for Accion International, an aid
agency that provides "microloans" averaging about $600 to the
working poor in Latin America and the U.S.
Seventy "digital ambassadors" from the microlending institutions
taking part in the project will get the Palm computers, and will get to
keep them when the project is completed, she said. The Palms are
more useful to the agency's loan officers, who can't risk having a
more expensive (and more conspicuous) laptop computer that could
break more easily or be stolen.
3Com, in Santa Clara, California, can be found on the Web at
3com.com.
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