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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."
makes this first-worlder grateful
for a regular power supply."
Our computers are horrible power hogs for what they do. if you had to conserve your electrical power like they do in a 3rd world or even a 2nd world you would realize this.
Try living off the grid, it is possible and many 1st world people do it.
What you are grateful for is the fact that you are spoiled by the luxuries we have in the modern countries.
many of the advances in personal powering and conservation is created by these people that are trying to get the 3rd world countries closer to where we were in the 60's.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
child: papa, will we eat today?
father: no my son, but we will get to search the internet for information on food and food-like products.
Trolling is a art,
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It can depend. For example, most of my distant relatives live in small villages in India. Having visited them, food isn't really a concern. There's plenty of that. Clean water? Maybe. However, their immune systems have adapted to the water, so only american born people like me needed to boil it first. Like it says in the article, power was key. At 9pm, every night, the power to the village would be shut off, so the city could have power. That, is the real technical hurdle.
Actually, with so much old computer kit being donated to the third world by companies etc (there must be a tax break or something - that and it saves paying to dispose of it) there's a lot to be said for sharing expertise, especially if those doing it are competent in working with Free software so that basic things like all the machines in a school running the same stuff can be taken care of. At the moment these machines run with what they came with and are nearly always next to useless. Well, unless you count the ones being used as doorstops and steps.
Of course there are other important things to do in these parts of the world, but the way I see it, sharing out expertise never did anyone any harm - it's a comodity both free and invaluable.
The Swedish Mac-guru Ulf "Omar" Henriksson have single handidly shipped over 1500 used and refurbished Macs to schools, libraries and hospitals in Kenya. Every Mac was donated by Swedish individuals and businesses for this charity purpose.
:)
In Kenya he have educated quite a lot users and admins in the ins and outs of Mac, the Mac OS and computers in general.
More info (in Swedish) at http://www.macs-to-africa.info/]Macs to Africa.info.
If you have any questions, feel free to mail "Omar" at guru.macsupport(at)telia.com.
And no.. PCs are not welome
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
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.
Bram Moolenaar, the author/maintainer of the amazing vim visited a school/community center/development center in Uganda a few years back, and when he returned to Europe, he, along with others, setup a charity in the Netherlands to support the center. Those who use and enjoy vim (and those who don't!) "are encouraged to make a donation for needy children in Uganda." Go to the International Child Care Fund and make a donation, or at least click through their Amazon affiliation links next time you buy something from there. That way, it doesn't even cost you anything...
Wouldn't it be nice to Slashdot a charity with donations? :-)
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
and
So you go ahead and post it on Slashdot! Like no one's gonna see it there! Sheesh! Remind me never to ask you for help moving my money out of the country! It's not like they send those e-mails to just ANYBODY ya know!
My journal has hot
If they are able to get internet, power, "e-commerce" etc... up and running then these "3rd world" nations will be able to start making money which will in turn open up jobs where people will have money to spend to buy and produce things like food and shelter or better tools to produce these things.
That's just my ($1.00 - $.98 tax) worth
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
I came to Guyana, South America in 1995, having worked in telecoms for 6 years. They had no internet access - not a single link. I used to dial Barbados and collect my email. Surfing was an expensive luxury. Still, managed to get the newspaper I was working for on the web (now Stabroek News).
The O'Reilly article is wonderful - clearly shows that the digital divide will not be bridged by IBM or Micro$oft and that hardware is not the answer - skill transfer is. Also shows how reliable power is not a given in developing countries (and, of course post-Enron California...
Now we have ADSL, satellite, fibre (Americas II). Still regular blackouts though.
Check out the Guyana SDNP, the UNDP Digital initiative.
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
Having just returned from three months connecting rural schools in Uganda, let me just offer one (small-sample-size) perspective:
It's a lot tougher than you think. I visited 16 schools several months after they had received an in-depth, two-week Linux training course. By the time I arrived their Linux computers lay broken, not having been touched for weeks.
We (geeks and nerds of the developed world) have been suckling at the teet of technology all our lives: drivers, file systems, and the like are now second-nature. However, to someone from another, non-technically-innundated culture, it's extremely difficult to use Linux.
Proof? In 16 schools, only one Linux machine was still running when I arrived. But every Windows machine was still being used, and loved.
For the time being, at least, let's give developing nations what they CAN use (Microsoft) not what we WANT them to use (Linux).
I would love to hear other people's experiences with MSFT vs OS in developing nations.
These are issues as well, but there is also
Education.
1. How to grow food
2. How to clean water
3. medicine
a. How to treat the ill
b. preventive
i. diet
ii. HIV!!!!!
One major issue with 3rd world contries is the massive HIV infection rate. Had a friend working for peace corps who's major irratation was the fact that it was so hard conviencing people that HIV was infact a disease... one which kills. It's somewhat hard to believe, but dispite it's existance in the 1980s it wasn't something people believed either.
Communication between the 3rd world and the rest of the world would promote little trivial things like taking preventive measures to stop the spread of HIV and other infectious diseases. Hardcopy and people take resources to move... digial communciations takes only power and equipment, equipment the likes we replace every 1.5 years.
Communication would open the door to the global market place. While under developed countries lack much in the way of industry, there is art, music, and stories. All of these are marketable products.
Technology is what seperates us from animals, wether it be the basic Bushmen of the Kalahari level that is excelent to insure survivial in a very harsh enviroment, or the high tech that we who can read this enjoy.
I see a great benifit of raising the global I.Q. of a planet of roughly 6 billion people.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Maybe these guys deserve attention, but not nearly as much as Engineers Without Borders. It may be considered trolling on Slashdot, but to most people it is obvious that there are more urgent problems for many of these countries/cities/villages than lack of Internet access.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
this guy should be admonished for attempting to teach IT skills to a third world country. Next thing you know, greedy american companies will be outsourcing IT or programming work to people in Ghana for pennies and letting 3 well-paid American programmers go.
For the sarsacm inpaired, I think what this guy is doing is great. What I don't think is great is the guild/labor mentailty of some programmers and IT people who think there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world.
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.
If you've never been to a third-world country and you have a chance to go, please go.
I recently (fall 2002) went to Nicaragua to do research for a website for a Nicaraguan mission group. In reality I somewhat disagree with what they're doing, my friend and I joked that it was the Inquisition all over again. Anyway...
The first thing you notice upon landing in Managua is how unbelievably poor everybody is. Sure there were a few people in suits but most people were wearing T-shirts that had obviously come from the U.S. (high school reunion shirts, prom night shirts from high schools in Virginia).
We stayed in Leon and the people there had no concept of a computer, they damn sure knew what a camera was though! It's completely unbelievable to someone from the States to see how they live. But they don't know any different, so they're happy, or at least content.
Some of the kids had never seen television so when we taped them on DV and played it back for them on the spot they went apeshit. Most of the people in the outskirts of Leon just steal electricity by throwing wires across the main lines. We saw a dog that had been in the way of one of these wires and it was burned clean in half. The poles that hold the wires up are usually just sticks or the wires are stapled into a tree. Unbelievable.
A country like Nicaragua needs more infrastructure before a truckload of computers would do them any good. Good luck getting that truckload of computers through customs anyway. The mission group we're doing the website for had the damndest time getting a container of clothes and miscellaneous goods through customs.
The best part of the trip was riding around the streets of Managua with our driver California... that kid could outdrive Colin McRae, I shit you not. We'd be doing 120KM/hr through the busiest street I've ever seen anywhere and he's hanging out the window singing Nelly (andale andale uh-oh... you know the song) Christ that was funny.
I should probably tell my side of the trip on my own site but I guess the mission site will have to do, due to my laziness.
You've got an easy breezy wind at your back...most of the time.