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Geeking in the Third World
suzipaw writes "Geekcorps founder Ethan Zuckerman, late of Tripod, gets some well-deserved media attention for his good works via an interview on oreilly.com. What he and other volunteers are doing on behalf of developing nations is pretty darn cool. And humbling--makes this first-worlder grateful for a regular power supply."
isn't there still an issue with things like, well, food, medicine, clean water, stuff like that?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
THEY NEED FOOD AND SHELTER FIRST!!
I think you're joking, but just in case someone takes you seriously: they need the means to PRODUCE their OWN food and shelter. That means technology.
Give a man a fish, and all that...
Something like this fits perfectly with Linux/OS philosophy. If technicically-minded people in developing nations can be shown how to run modern, full-featured computers/networks with the older hardware available to them, you remove the need for pricey (probably American) consultants, newer, expensive hardware, and newer, license-laden, expensive software.
Basically, I believe that developing nations deserve to get on their own two feet without tithing a percentage of their resources to American technology firms. Yes, I am an American. And yes, I will be volunteering in the future.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I was discussing with a friend of mine last night about organizations such as the peace corps, and my lack of applicable skills to help an NGO (non-governmental-org, I believe). She pointed out that NGOs need people to do all the same things that we need people for here in the first world, citing that the hospital for which she had worked in Haiti required administrative staff and an IS department, despite being a hospital run by an NGO in Haiti.
I agree that there are definitely priorities, the food and shelter bit. Also, it's remarkably difficult to give people technology when there are so many prerequisites for it. It's a tough call to make, whether www access is that helpful to people in the third world, who may not even have the necessary reading skills (language skills, too) to utilize the information they find.
That said, if bringing technology to these people also brings literacy and knowledge, then it can be an important step in enabling these people to grow on their own.
The world makes even more sense when you realize that the "rich" people aren't doing anything that you couldn't do yourself to become rich, and sitting around complaining about how unfair life has been to you doesn't help you at all.
Wait, I thought we didn't geek in the third world, we fabricated reasons for war and then went in and took their oil?
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Free your mind.
Surely this is a contradiction because geeks are the very products of our very rich, western world.
eg: People with too much time and money.
How many Africans do you know that waste huge loads of time and resources on creating scale-models of popular star-ships?
eg: You damn Star Wars fans!
Thanks for the pointer to their web site. I really like what they are doing.
I'd like to respond to your point though.
Money can buy food and water and shelter. So if you can make it possible for some of the brighter people in a poor country to earn money, then you are helping with the 'more important' stuff.
Even in the poorest countries, you will find a lot of bright young people sitting around with nothing to do. Of all the resources going to waste, surely that is one of the most valuable.
One of the amazing things about programming is that all you need is to be bright, access to a computer and documentation, and time and you can teach yourself.
I don't think someone who travels to a poor country and spends their time teaching programming should feel bad they are not tilling the fields instead.
It is nearly impossible to stop all hunger and disease - look at many 1st world nations that have not accomplished this.
If your philosophy is not to spend money on anything else until everyone is fed and healthy, then all you'll ever do is give out food and medicine. You'll never spend money on technology or infrastructure because there will always be at least one more hungry or sick person.
There was a program to distribute cellphones to remote villages in India. You might say they shouldn't do that because there is still unclean water, polio, and hunger. But the villages that received the phones prospered directly from them. Most importantly, they were able to call into the markets of the larger towns to find out how much their crops were selling for. In the past, the middle-men who would transport these crops to the market would pay only what they had to and would make lots of money. Now these middle-men make the money for transporting the goods, but the village most often gets a much better price. The village is now more self-sufficient and can make their own improvements in their living conditions.
By your philosophy, this would never have happened and they would be beholden the the middlemen who ripped them off, and the international aid agencies that would only give them food.
And again, there is little I can do to treat an HIV sufferer. But who knows. Mabye I could teach her to develop webpages and she can do something rewarding and even a bit profitable with her life. Would you have her simply waste away in a hospital? What kind of a life is that?
I can only do what I know how to do. I don't know how to teach better farming or even how to set up water purification, and nor could most geeks. These geeks go and do what they can. By improving one aspect, hopefully the whole system improves.
>> ,,, cultural homogenization!
The 21st Century's version of White Man's Burden.
It takes a fair amount of Western arrogance and bigotry to decide what's best for someone else. Let people decide for themselves what they want.
And, I know that's difficult for people who think that non-Westerners aren't really up to the job and have to be protected by "enlightened" anti-corporate well-fed Westerners.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
My feeling is that I don't have skills worth much for some problems. I'm not a doctor or a civil engineer. I can't treat sickness or starvation, and if I were to try, my labor would be little more than manual labor that anyone can do. To be utterly cold and calculating about it, I'd be doing work worth, say, 5 bucks an hour. But when I do this, with what skills I have, I'm donating time worth well more than that, and donating, hopefully, something many times more valuable.
Many people say that when we bridge the "digital divide" and allow uneducated, agrarian people to take part in the 21st century economy, we are helping to solve their food and medical problems in the long run by solving their poverty. Certainly there is some truth to this; as the old adage goes, when you teach a man to fish, you feed him for his life. This isn't my motivation, though. My motivation is just to do what I can. There are many kinds of service, but I think giving people the opportunity to help people in the ways they know how is best. I know many people who were extremely enthusiastic participants when they found out they could serve the community in a way they were suited to, rather than simply handing out meals at a soup kitchen or pushing around boxes at a food bank.
And by geek volunteers, do you mean the young, idealist sort? Or the older, wiser, professional, and still idealist sort? The GeekCorps website stresses that it generally declines volunteers who do not have at least 3 to 4 years of work experience under their belt. Idealism does not build irrigation systems, nor does it build efficient information systems. Unfortunately, it takes alot of idealism to work so hard for so little physical reward....it is hard to keep that alive inside of you once you are skilled enough to really make a difference.
But in a more technical sense, much more can be accomplished by using stolid, unixy tools over guiy, themeable tools. Shells scripts and ncurses menus, written in the local tongue (if possible), with simple editors like nano, and browsers like lynx, will not be able to WYSIWYG or play flash, but it will transmit and store information, and probably never, ever, break.
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Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.