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It would seem that starting up eight computer-related companies in Silicon Valley over the past 35 years, running several shopping centers in his hometown of Placerville and keeping up with his artistic wife would keep Steven Puthuff busy enough.
However, Puthuff has also found time to travel to India and work alongside the International Institute for Sustainable Futures (IISF) to help develop the concept of an information kiosk system. The IISF is a nonprofit organization affiliated with the United Nations.
The IISF's goal is to provide a way for people in Indian villages to access the Internet via voice activation, which in turn will provide a stimulus for literacy, education and economic hope in the country. Because the country has five main languages with several dialects each, programming the speech-recognition software has been a Herculean task, according to Puthuff, currently the chairman of SyberSay Communications.
"There are 600,000 villages in India with no education or technology at all. The economic plight of the country will be poor as long as that exists," adds Puthuff, a Saratoga resident. He says he and his colleagues are still working out the final bugs in bringing wireless Internet service to remote villages.
"We wanted to get the people involved in the project, so they are helping build the kiosks themselves," he says of the small buildings in which the kiosks will sit.
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Photograph courtesy of the Puthuff family
Steve Puthuff of Saratoga traveled to India this autumn to accept the Priyadarshni Global Award for his work in bringing Internet-based technology to Indian villages.
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To thank Puthuff for sharing his time and technical know-how, Deputy Prime Minister of India Shri L.K. Advani invited Puthuff and his wife to India this September to accept the Priyadarshni Global Award. Among the other dignitaries present were John Prescott, deputy prime minster of England, and Yash Chopra, one of India's most prominent movie directors.
"The Priyadarshni Global Award is the Indian version of the Nobel Prize in the West," noted Dr. Rashmi Mayur in a press release. Mayur, the director of the IISF, commended Puthuff for his "commitment and determination to implement interactive learning to improve information, communication and education in India and throughout the world."
"We were treated like royalty at the famed Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai, made many wonderful new friends and saw sights of wonder and amazement," Puthuff says of some highlights of the trip, which was the first visit to India for his wife, Judy. "The Taj Mahal is truly magnificent and ageless. It is never cleaned off, except for the rain, but it looks absolutely, spotlessly white as the day it was built."
The main purpose of the trip, however, was to accept the Priyadarshni award, at which time Puthuff explained the purpose of his high-tech project. "When you honor me, you honor India's recognition that technology and educational content can find its way to every man, woman and children throughout this country," he said as part of his acceptance speech.
"Education kiosks bringing the best of educational content via the Internet can be established in every village, driven primarily by the human voice. Everyone can start to develop their tremendous intellect without first having to read and write or without having to learn how computers work."
For more information about the project, call Puthuff at 408.474.0272, ext. 116, or email steve-puthuff@sybersay.com.
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Photograph courtesy of the Puthuff family