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Providing Access to Info in Developing Countries

Posted by michael on from the bandwidth-of-a-747-full-of-dvds dept.

matt writes "Widernet is a program run at the University of Iowa to provide developing countries access to information. Most of the universities they work with (mainly in Nigeria) have no internet access or have a very expensive, limited one. So Widernet ships hard drives with a data dump of about 100G to place on the local network. Students have access through the eGranery. Some the of the problems they are dealing with are how to provide updates to the already distributed libraries, how to provide the eGranery such that it can be setup with little or no IT knowledge, and how to stretch a limited budget and donations. I sadly had to turn down an internship with them, but would still like to contribute. Surely we can help with time, resources, and/or knowledge." And you thought sneakernet was dead.

2 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Give them info, and teach them to USE it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Give them info, and teach them to USE it. Having one without the other will just lead to a duplication of the situation we have here. Wired 100% of the time, unprecedented access to so much information... but still lead down a path of war by a bible bashing president and allowing our own government to turn over and beg for the RIAA, MPAA, ignoring our own rights at home AND those of prisoners of war overseas.

    Information is one thing. Using it is something else entirely.

    1. Re:Give them info, and teach them to USE it by flimnap · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I know someone who went to Nigeria (and other nearby countries) as part of setup for an Africa-wide online learning university (computer science components). It was a miserable failure because none of the Nigerian universities were able to meet the requirements for computing, most notably steady electricity supply.

      Rather then shipping developing countries information, it is much more important to get them set up with infrastructure so that they will eventually have the access required to retrieve the information themselves.

      Information is one thing. Using it is something else entirely.

      Part of using information effectively is learning how to get it properly, and extract effective information from it. That's what we do every time we use Google: filter the wheat from the chaff, if you will.