Slashdot Mirror

http://www.blowthedotoutyourass.com

More high tech solutions for the poor here.

Creating top-down high-tech solutions for the poor is a good way to keep middle-class civil servants busy. The poor in India will adapt cast-off computer technology to their needs the same way they adapt old cast-off bicycles to carry heavy loads. They are not naturally stupid and are quite capable of determining what is the appropriate technology at the appropriate cost for a given situation.

The Register (U.K.) is running this article which reminds us that there are billions more people in this world who couldn't care less because they don't even have basic human needs met. BlowTheDotOutYourAss.com offers this take on it.

Everyone's favorite angry SF site protest site has some interesting images from on the ground in Africa.

A little dated but sadly still very applicable I think...

=tkk

Everyone's favorite angry SF site protest site has some interesting images from on the ground in Africa.

A little dated but sadly still very applicable I think...

=tkk

I just happened to be going through my "where are they now" file and checked out BlowTheDotOutYourAss.com. Their last update, dated 10 months ago, had these great photos:

http://www.blowthedotoutyourass.com/mission_01/afr ica/africa_01.html

(the numbers at the top will help you navigate through the images...)

At first, it seems that the Internet is generally seen as some kind of cultural integrator between the First and Third World, between the sexes, between people of different colour and so on. At least where the First and Third World are concerned, this is plain wrong, as pointed out, for example, at the famous e-commerce criticism page BlowTheDotOutYourAss.com, where you see a rather well-made campaign under the slogan "ButWeDon'tEvenHaveElectricityInAfrica.com" - I think the point is quite clear. In fact, Jon has even pointed this out himself unwillingly, when he says:

... a New Jerusalem, potentially welcoming [...] First World and Third, is open to anyone who can afford a personal computer and a monthly Internet access fee ...

Even in the more developed Third World countries, it is very uncommon that anyone from a not-so-wealthy social environment can afford a personal computer; and as far as the Internet access fee is concerned, well, in Sudan the Internet costs a thousand dollars per year, at a flat rate. (If you're interested, the provider is SudanNet. The website is not very impressive, but you can contact them that way, and the access providing works, which I know from experience.) Did you know that in Egypt, which is definitely one of the more developed countries of the Third World, so that one might argue that it doesn't even belong to the third world at all, university professors get a monthly salary of eight hundred Egyptian pounds per month, equalling two hundred dollars? That settles it, I'm afraid. The Internet is a tool or a toy, whichever you prefer, for the rich. In the West, practically all of us are rich, which you undoubtedly will notice if you ever set foot on African soil, for example [possibly excluding South Africa].

A second thing is that this is just another example of a quasi-mystical attitude towards the Internet, as if it was some spiritual entity that eventually will lead to the solution of all problems on Earth. I personally don't believe in the Internet possessing any metaphysical qualities - it is just a very powerful facility of communication. When telegraphs or telephones were invented, the leap in ease of communication was probably just as great as the leap introduced with the Internet, yet no one would probably attribute metaphysical qualities to a plain telephone, not even then. It was just a practical, useful innovation.

To me, it appears that one of the unique qualities of Internet communication is that unlike in meatspace, you can choose your partners and means of communication with unrivalled ease and flexibility. The result is that people with a more technical interest (i.e. "geeks") who often lack social skills of communication hang around at discussion areas like this or communicate with people like themselves, while persons who are of a maybe more sociable type, possibly with less technical interest, interact with others of their sphere. As a result, the Internet only serves to give anyone what they want and to enhance the character traits that people already possess: geeks interact with geeks, which is communication, of course, but which doesn't help them at all in interacting with non-technical people and/or in the real world, while non-geeks interact with non-geeks, thus enhancing their communication abilities because the topics of their communication are most often derived from some social sphere in meatspace. The same applies to political opinions, with ethnic groups (if you find me a nationalist Israeli discussing things in a civilized way with a nationalist Palestinian, you are good) and so on. The Internet, as a result, does not help people interact with others of a different frame of mind.

Part of the argumentation here is derived from the notion that the Internet is not the cyberspace invented by Lem in the sixties and made popular by Gibson in the late seventies and early eighties, and that it is not some sort of place apart from the "normal world". Lem's and Gibson's idea of cyberspace encompasses the notion of it being ever-present, which the internet is not (go looking for Internet adverts in Kaduna, Nigeria), and it providing sensual immersion beyond looking at a however-large screen and being played the occasional streaming noise. At its present stage, the Internet is just an addition to meatspace, and as long as we still live, dream, eat and raise children in the "real world" as opposed to the "cyberspace" that the Internet is (erroneously, I think, but that's just my humble opinion) commonly referred to as by the media, it will not serve to raise people's problems from the frame defined for them by their environment provided in the real world. To assume that the Internet would solve any real world problem beyond some people not making enough money and some other people not having anything to play around with is in my opinion mainly a na?ve, progress-optimistic, overly-Modernist self-delusion about the nature of problem solutions.

"28 MAR 00 // Update 001_we got crushed by traffic. laughingsquid.com, thanks for holding on as long as you did. 002_to the good folks at sporkism.org who put us back up and everyone else who offered to mirror. thank you."

Which means that they got /.ed, and may have continued to have problems after the 28th.

It's kind of unfortunate that this story was posted after they got back up... is there really this much of a lead time before stories appear (it would seem so, with the "Are There Any Linux DVD Players" story running after the story about one coming out), or did Cliff just not bother trying to go there?

i just tried it and it works just fine.

hey isn't the internet a network of networks? If the rest of the world doesn't like the .us or .com or .xxx just go around them.

In a couple of years Corporate America will be doing B2B over VPN and the rest of lowly users will be able to reclaim the rest of the net. No really, the consumer stuff is small time and as this points out a lot of it is irritating.

I think that if it gets to the point where this goes crazy...the comp. geeks will unite to use a different protocol or something.

There was still a producer dictating what I was going to see; the speeches were still teleprompted; the Blame Canada number was still choreographed. Where's the freaking interactivity in that? Backstage and prop and set shots do not equate interactivity -- they just represent further commodification of the process of filmmaking. And this has been happening at least since David Gerrold wrote "The Making of Star Trek," and probably much before that.

Connecting the buzzwords may be a fine journalistic strategy at USA TODAY, but it ain't working here.

</KATZFLAME&gt

More seriously and constructively:

Interactive and passive entertainments scratch different itches. I don't see how either can be posed as being generally superior to the other. In fact, I'd say that some forms of entertainment *must* be passive in order to be effective. When I read a book or watch a play or a film -- all decidedly passive experiences, despite Katz' proclamations -- I'm doing so because I want to experience something that I can't conceive of myself. It's hard to imagine any interactive exercise duplicating the single-minded genius of an Iain Banks or the punkish sensibility of Bruce MacDonald.

In fact, judging by how my tastes mesh with the tastes of Western culture at large, I'm a little leery of letting interactivity creep into non-interactive entertainment. The last thing I'd want to do is be trapped in a theatre with a bunch of people voting America's Funniest Home Video style on how the film we're watching will end.

Additionally, passive media have a strength that interactive media generally do not and that's the presence of an editor. When you buy an issue of a newspaper or magazine, you have some assurance that the content therein has been vetted by an educated eye for entertainment value or relevance or whatever.

(Slashdot is an exception to this, of course, with its elegant moderation system. It's not perfect, of course, but it does tend to bubble the interesting stuff upwards.)

I predict that as more grassroots content providers pop up and the Web becomes more ubiquitous, broadcast channels will not be organized around broadcast hardware, but around editors (or, perhaps, discussion sites like Slashdot -- what content provider wouldn't love to be slashdotted, especially given the stats on blowthedotoutyourass.com?) whose tastes are well known.

So, when I want to check out what's happening or cool or whatever, I'll log onto AICN or Slashdot or Joe Bob's Science Fiction Culture Mine because when I do, I know I'll find links to stuff that will sync with my entertainment wants.

Of course, this kind of narrowcasting can strangle one's exposure to new experience, but no more so than, say, choosing only to watch The Family Channel or reading only Reader's Digest.

There was still a producer dictating what I was going to see; the speeches were still teleprompted; the Blame Canada number was still choreographed. Where's the freaking interactivity in that? Backstage and prop and set shots do not equate interactivity -- they just represent further commodification of the process of filmmaking. And this has been happening at least since David Gerrold wrote "The Making of Star Trek," and probably much before that.

Connecting the buzzwords may be a fine journalistic strategy at USA TODAY, but it ain't working here.

</KATZFLAME&gt

More seriously and constructively:

Interactive and passive entertainments scratch different itches. I don't see how either can be posed as being generally superior to the other. In fact, I'd say that some forms of entertainment *must* be passive in order to be effective. When I read a book or watch a play or a film -- all decidedly passive experiences, despite Katz' proclamations -- I'm doing so because I want to experience something that I can't conceive of myself. It's hard to imagine any interactive exercise duplicating the single-minded genius of an Iain Banks or the punkish sensibility of Bruce MacDonald.

In fact, judging by how my tastes mesh with the tastes of Western culture at large, I'm a little leery of letting interactivity creep into non-interactive entertainment. The last thing I'd want to do is be trapped in a theatre with a bunch of people voting America's Funniest Home Video style on how the film we're watching will end.

Additionally, passive media have a strength that interactive media generally do not and that's the presence of an editor. When you buy an issue of a newspaper or magazine, you have some assurance that the content therein has been vetted by an educated eye for entertainment value or relevance or whatever.

(Slashdot is an exception to this, of course, with its elegant moderation system. It's not perfect, of course, but it does tend to bubble the interesting stuff upwards.)

I predict that as more grassroots content providers pop up and the Web becomes more ubiquitous, broadcast channels will not be organized around broadcast hardware, but around editors (or, perhaps, discussion sites like Slashdot -- what content provider wouldn't love to be slashdotted, especially given the stats on blowthedotoutyourass.com?) whose tastes are well known.

So, when I want to check out what's happening or cool or whatever, I'll log onto AICN or Slashdot or Joe Bob's Science Fiction Culture Mine because when I do, I know I'll find links to stuff that will sync with my entertainment wants.

Of course, this kind of narrowcasting can strangle one's exposure to new experience, but no more so than, say, choosing only to watch The Family Channel or reading only Reader's Digest.

If you care, here are the statistics on the Blow the Dot Out Your Ass site.

http://www.blowthedoto utyourass.com/stats/www2000/stats.html

That's media's weak point. Media exists to be consumed - otherwise, it fails, both in purpose and financially.

Children have no immunity. They are hard-wired to absorb everything that surrounds them, and it helps form the neural passageways that make them who they are. This is where parents can have an effect, by directing the children's senses to correct things. Even a little proding will result in positive effects, and the children will seek out more for themselves.

As they become older, they become better consumers, realizing a little how the media sources are not always benevolent. I remember as early as grade school being taught the basics of advertising, and how effective techniques (bandwagon, celebrity endorsement, etc.) are not always logically consistant. Kids should probably get a media class early in life, the earlier the better.

Soon, the tricks become transparent. They recognize simple trends (Gap trying to make products look cool, Coke associating their product with a catchy tune), and they become less effective. Media that once worked becomes less effective (remember the Hanna-Barbara shorts that were always the same? Hawkman confronts enemy, gets caught, bird saves, Hawkman is victorious. Or how about the fill-in-the-blank Scooby Doo plots?). Even when the media recognizes the consumer is getting smarter, they still have a hard time (Sprite still tries celebrity endorsement, but refers to the fact that they are doing it, and it hasn't worked on me yet).

Eventually, we become the Regulons. We walk out of the room during commercials. We play drinking games around product placement. We buy the same product for less at the off-brand store. We create content, instead of consuming it. We create products like the TiVo to eliminate comercials, or SlashDot, which bars the most annoying of ads.

They try harder and harder (creating Java game commercials, million-dollar superbowl spots, advertisements on bannanas, chalk drawings), but we get smarter and smarter. They will survive, since there is always the unaware to fall into the trap, but there are some predators out there, and some of them have a moral obligation to educate others.

Why not join us?