How much would you pay for a pathbreaking new phone? And would you pay more for a guarantee against being eaten alive by mosquitoes? The answer is out there on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo.com. The platform was created to raise personal funding for the arts and creative projects like indie films, bands, exhibitions, trade shows, unusual writing projects (one is collecting science fiction stories from social justice movements) and even seriously ill people unable to afford treatment. But this month, it is hosting fundraising drives for two revolutionary projects in science and technology. Both are potentially world-altering. Both are long overdue.

The Kite Patch, which was reported in Indian newspapers last week, is decades overdue. The wearable patch is impregnated with cheap, FDA-approved chemicals that disrupt mosquitoes? ability to ?smell? carbon dioxide, which they use to home in on humans. Its safe technology promises to end 140 years of dependence on toxic chemicals for mosquito control, ever since DDT was synthesised in 1874. Meanwhile, the UK-based Canonical Ltd is running an Indiegogo campaign to finance Ubuntu Edge, a mobile version of the Ubuntu Linux operating system scheduled for release in May 2014. The concept ?superphone? is the most ambitious crowdfunded projects ever, will not be mass produced but attempts to erase the distinction between the phone and the computer to create a single, always on plug and play platform for almost all work and absolutely all communications.

The Kite Patch enters the lists precisely when the battle against malaria, dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya is clearly being lost. The idea of disrupting olfaction owes to Anandasankar Ray, a biochemist and entomologist at the University of California at Riverside. If ethnicity was the peg for the agency story which Indian papers ran, it would explain why interesting elements of the bigger picture went unreported. For instance, this is one of several projects at the Ray Lab at the University of California, which develops molecular approaches to controlling insect vectors and pests via olfaction. Ray chose to work first on mosquito olfaction since the insect is the vector for multiple lethal diseases and a global source of debility. The infuriating housefly lies ahead, a tougher problem since it does not chase one particular chemical.

After making it to the cover of Nature in 2011, Ray co-founded Olfactor Labs to make a production model which disrupts the mosquito?s ability to ?smell? carbon dioxide and renders its prey ?invisible?. It is known to work across mosquito species and may succeed with other blood-suckers. Now, the Indiegogo campaign is raising funds for a field trial in Uganda, where about one-third of children reportedly carry the malarial parasite. If it?s successful, there will be a safe alternative to broadly toxic chemicals.

While the Kite Patch addresses an old problem, Ubuntu Edge is looking to end the form factor wars in computing which began a half-decade ago. For far too long, we have been confused by phones and computers trying to be each other. Now, think of putting a computer to the ear and going, ?Hello.? Ubuntu?s conception of the phone of the future supersedes form factor, which is mostly about hardware and physical design, with software design trailing behind. The Edge dual boots two operating systems. In your pocket, it?s an Android or Ubuntu Touch phone. Plug it into peripherals like a keyboard and a screen or a TV and it becomes a desktop running a full Linux OS with seamless access to the Android partition. Familiarity with Linux should not be necessary since Ubuntu is a comprehensive distribution. It packs everything and the kitchen sink. And the atomic toilet, too.

Canonical has been toying with phones and convergence across device categories for years, but the release of Ubuntu 13.04 in April made it clear that something concrete was in the works. While recent desktop versions had become progressively heavier and slower (sinks and toilet are ponderous things), this release was very snappy. A faster desktop was a prerequisite for a phone version of the OS.

But to return to the question posed at the beginning: Will people pay more to use a new phone or to not be eaten alive? It?s hard to tell because these two Indiegogo campaigns are on different scales. Ubuntu Edge is seeking $32 million, has collected pledges for about a fifth of that, and the campaign is open for another 22 days. The Kite Patch sought the modest sum of $75,000, is oversubscribed 400% and still has a month to run. It would take a statistician to arrive at a definitive answer but to the untrained eye, the mosquito does appear to figure more prominently in the hopes and fears of people than mobile phones. Even those that are dialling out a new era in computing.

pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com