Slashdot Mirror
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."
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 -
father: no my son, but we will get to search the internet for information on food and food-like products.
I know you were just being glib, but let me amend that for you:
"but we will get to search the internet for ways to stop our crops from dying off, so we can eat tomorrow."
Of course, you could put in other lifestyle improving search terms, like say, how to build a sewage treatment plant so your village doesn't dump raw turds in the river that you drink from, or using all that pig/chicken/cow shit around the place to make enough methane for a small generating plant. Or even how to construct a nice cheap house that'll hold up to cyclonic winds and monsoon rain.
Living in a modern country, and going to a even a second-world country (never mind a third world one) is a real eye-opener - things that I've said:
(This is when I was staying in a town of about 300,000. Picture a small idyllic fishing village, then cram 25,000 people and cars into it)
"What're all those tanks on the roof for?"
"Oh, the tap water's just bore water - it's not really fit to drink. We get the drinking water trucked in."
"Damn! What's that stink?"
"Dead cow in the open drain outside the window there, see?"
"How long will the power be off for?"
"Oh , two or three hours... it normally comes back on around 10."
"Howdy'a get a line out here? I need to ring home"
"I'll book you a call, the guys at the exchange will ring us back when it's hooked up. There's only 15 lines out of town."
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
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.
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.