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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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.