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GeekCorps v2.0
GeekAbroad writes "GeekCorps has sent its second wave of volunteers to Ghana, Africa. The group has re-made Geekhalla where you can read about their experiences (yes, it's a blatant slashcode rip-off). There are a few good writers in the group and lots of new content being posted. Check it out." We had a story last year about GeekCorps.
I think we could all take a valuable lesson from GeekCorps. Most of you are content sitting in your apartment all day "fragging" your friends in The Sims, but if you stop and think about it, there are people dying at an alarming rate on the other side of the world. Quite frankly, I'm sick of all you people whining about censorship world hunger in your Slashdot posts. If you "really" cared about the well-being of others, you'd get off of your La-Z-Boy and go out and do something about it. GeekCorps should be commended for their bravery and you should all be ashamed of yourselves.
I found the site to be clean, legible, and a pleasure to read, things that I've never accused Slashcode of being. It's like comparing the layout of Google to Yahoo: it's so much cleaner that you wonder why you go to that other site in the first place.
If it's a Slashcode rip-off, then I hope they eventually provide source, but that might be asking too much... I bet Slashdot *still* looks like a black page in older browsers, too...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
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Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
I have to question one of the implicit assumptions that you make:
What's so wrong with leaving those in power alone, or maybe allowing them to increase their control in the country?
I understand why you wouldn't want to leave a murderous tyrant in power, but why not leave an ineffective/confused/modestly corrupt government inpower? The reasons I can think of for leaving the government in power are:
1) stability is important for growth. If people have to contend with a revolution/government change that could get bloody, that does bad things to their ability to work/be productive/attract foreign capital.
2) a well fed people are a moral people. If you can make a place stable enough so that folks don't have to worry about the coup of the week, then you can get down to fixing the real problems. In my opinion, a great deal of the fixing can be done from the bottom up. If the people do well, they can worry about things other than finding dinner, and that includes government. Working on the economic problems first, even if it means stabilizing/entrenching a less than ideal government, might help people more.
What do you think?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
sponsor a kid in Ghana, kill a kid in Colombia...
:)
assuming your cofee is colombian
I do agree with you up to a point -- my first reaction was this was a patronizing effort: "If only the world had ICQ and hackers, they'd be as good as us." But at the same time, despite the somewhat self-aggrandizing nature of "GeekHalla" and "GeekCorps," I can see value in what they're doing. Some of their projects are helping small businesses and training workers.
One could argue that they should all be there as Peace Corps volunteers, building aqueducts and sustainable agriculture--developing countries certainly need that infrastructure as much or more as they need IT. But at the same time I think there's something admirable about putting one's skills to work in this kind of way. Is it possible that it's just as narrowminded to neglect technological training and development as it is to neglect basic education and safe water? It seems that they both are part of a comprehensive development program.
-schussat
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
THarris from Geekhalla writes on their site: "The air-conditioned expatriate havens - I've seen a few now already in my week here - annoy me. As I see fat, rich people inconsiderately acting as they wish with no regard whatsoever for the people around them it just makes me want to SPIT!(This is accepted here, I've heard so I hock a loogie now in honour of all those kind and gentle people who make the effort.) Cheers my comrades. We can make the difference. Not all of us are ignorant, obnoxious buffoons. We know it's true. See you at the street-stalls and market places.
I'll see the rest of you in HELL!!"
It seems presumptuous to be in foreign land for a week and decide that the fat "ex-pats" are all ignorant, obnoxious buffoons. It's particularly surprising given Tim's well-traveled upbringing. Such aggressive language seems ill-considered from a group that would do well to bring the local community together, rather than broaden its divisions.
Geekhallans may not have talked to those they demonize. In many cases white Africans have been there for generations, so if they're pre-judging national origin of these so-called ex-pats based on skin color, they may be surprised to learn family histories.
If the wealthy seem fenced off from their community, or neighborhoods seem racially segregated, here's an article from Salon that may broaden your perspective: Rape, robbery and anguish in the new South Africa. Ghana is certainly very different from South Africa, but there are examples across Africa of racial intolerance that can lead to such divisions. For that matter, "fat, rich" Americans usually live very separately from their less fortunate fellow citizens, as well.
To condemn a group of people as ignorant without understanding their perspective is ironic.
Even though I am 99% sure that the Urban Existentialist is a troll based on previous posts, I have to respond to this one since it currently rated + 5 insightful implying that this is what the Slashdot community thinks of Geekcorps and Geekhalla.
It is true that most African's live in the kind of abject poverty that most Westerners can't even imagine let alone endure. It is also true that basic infrastructure like regular power supply, potable water, health care services, etc. but this doesn't mean that this should somehow preclude African's from the fruits of the 21st century. I've looked at the projects page at Geekhalla and I am impressed by what they hope to achieve. Instead of being like most Westerners whose only thoughts of Africa occur when they guiltily switch the channel whenever one of those commercials asking for money to feed starving children who can be fed for less than $1 a day shows up, these people are contributing something. It is in extremely poor taste for you to bash them for donating their time and resources to a society desperately in need.
Frankly I'm glad they're doing this, with the advent of the Net I've kept in touch with friends I left behind via ICQ and email whom I thought I'd never talk to again due to the prohibitive costs of calling or locating them after they moved. Anyone who is helpingwith the proliferation of the Net in Africa has my thanks and undying appreciation. Oh by the way, for all the other people who are bashing them for going to Africa to make web pages and teach OO programming What the fuck are you doing for the poor and starving of the Earth.
PS: I just spoke got an email from a friend I haven't seen since 1997 who lives in Nigeria and he told me he has a job writing VBA applications for a local company and he is brushing up on his COM and C++. Hope that makes some you guys think before you rate this kind of jingoistic claptrap up.
Grabel's Law
Heck, the US needs flash like it needs raw sewage in the water. ;)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
What's funny, though, is that my Social Implications of Information Processing class recently went over just this type of idea. As it turns out, computers in third world countries often make the situation worse. Why? Because it helps those in power, with the ability to run computers, stay in power. It helps the rich get richer and has no end effect on helping the poor at all. In the class discussion, every single person in the room concluded that trying to get computers and the Internet into third world countries is not only stupid it's counter-productive. There are better things to do for $2000!
The people in developing nations need a much better infrastructure - this is one of the reasons the US is able to produce and consume so much food - it can get the food grown in California over to Maine and vice-versa. That requires an infrastructure. That requires roads, one of the first things that needs to be developed. Then running water and a sewer system would help a lot - not just wells. (In other words, water to every house, not just water to the select few, or a central well.) Medicine would help - creating hospitols would greatly help. Any sort of local, comprehensive, medical care would really help the nations.
What we decided in the class discussion is that there are many, many, more important things to do in regard to third world nations than simply giving them computers and internet access. Giving them the things we take for granted would be a huge help. Giving them computers is showing a large lack of understanding for any of the real problems.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I'm not saying that computers are the end-all, but wouldn't anything help at this point?
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Carmack is an elitist, pseudonerd bastard.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
"Dude, one more time. Listen this time:"
/. and see what everyone is posting about this kickass trip we're taking. Well, that and porn. I also need more porn"
"WHERE IS THE CLOSEST HIGHSPEED ACCESS POINT?"
"Cmon dude, I need to check
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Let me give you the lowdown
Patronizing? Patronizing?! If there's one word to describe this post, that's it. "How could those poor Africans possibly learn anything about computers? They need to spend 200 years in a dark industrial age first." Right. Every time this subject comes up, people moralize about the need to send food over there before computers, without considering any sort of economic reality, namely, that all the humanitarian aid in the world isn't going to do any sort of long term good without an economic base for them to build on.
You talk about the excercise being "patronizing," then say that we need to "bring them into the 19th century." Don't those two statements strike you as a little odd? That you accuse people of trying to establish computer literacy and an internet infrastructure in a developing country of being patronizing, then say that said country needs to be brought into the 19th century?
Your offhanded and incoherent slam at Americans - "save it for your Imperial dreams" - comes off as very ironic, considering the problems in these countries stems from 19th century British imperialism. Exploiting these countries for the resources Britain needed in the industrial age is what ruined their economies and political systems - building new mines there isn't going to help anything.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
The point of these programs is to help the economy to get a leg up. They tend to work with small businesses run by people who have demonstrated a commitment to bringing new approaches to troubled economies: Using new technology, employing workers from underutilized components of the labor pool, perhaps even avoiding the too-typical sly relationships with corrupt officials.
Those are exactly the people you want to be helping if you're trying to improve a country's self-sufficiency.
Furthermore, the government, healthcare sector, etc., already have plenty of mega-pocketed institutional sources of aid (from the World Bank and UN on down). The indigenous private sector has no such luck - except programs like this.
And to everyone else, dissing any sort of aid that presupposes Africans are intelligent enough to do anything but eat food dropped out of a helicopter: There are all sorts of aid programs. Some provide food. Some provide medicine. Some provide expertise. The fact that food is needed (though not particularly in Ghana) does not mean that other aid is not also useful - perhaps more in the long run.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Why don't we all just stop sucking back three coffee's a day and donate the money for one of those cups of coffee and sponsor a kid.
Well, I'm sorry to dissappoint you kids, but thats just not the case at all. What Ghana needs is not a bunch of pony tailed do gooder 'geeks' (how they can have pride in that despicable word is beyond me, but then I'm not American), its sanitation, agriculture, education, books (thats right, old fashioned books, not Internet connections), and end to civil strife and decent irrigation. Once it gets these things we can start to consider some light industrialisation, perhaps.
Doesn't it strike anybody else that this whole exercise is patronising and absurd? Jesus, save the technical talk and trying to bring them into the 21st century - lets bring them into the 19th century first.
What I have said is the plain honest truth as I see it. I have been to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Ghana, and the problems I have seen there are all the same.
This project is just a liberal dream. We need to get practical types there, who know about practical issues and can teach the practical natives. Sending people versed in OOP design is pointless, and a patronising waste of money ('Oh look! You too can be like the white man' - save it for your Imperial dreams).
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.