Slashdot Mirror
Interview with Founder of Geekcorps
cynical writes "WorldChanging has a new interview up with Ethan Zuckerman, founder of Geekcorps, fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and editor of BlogAfrica, the best source of access to African bloggers around. Zuckerman talks about the growing role of blogging in the developing world, fighting corruption and censorship online, the emerging world of "social source software," and a lot more. It's a long, wide-ranging conversation; clearly, this guy is thinking big about the power of the web, especially outside the United States."
You know, this is the first time I've ever seen what could be called a viable use for blogs. The idea of posting your day to day affairs, life and opinions on the web for any stranger to see strikes me as being at best social networking, at worst repulsively narcissistic.
However using blogs to speak out against corrupt regimes etc. does seem to fill a niche that needed filling (although I don't see how it differs greatly from setting up a protest website). It gives an insight into the day to day life of a person living under such conditions, which we would otherwise not have. Its one of the reasons I enjoy chatrooms so much-where else can you get a real insight into the lives and cultures of people hal a world away?
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
We haven't had our first developing world A-list blogger yet. We haven't even seen anyone in the West who writes primarily, or even frequently, about developing world issues developing the kind of reputation that would help them get the word out on crises[...]
I wonder if any American or European agencies concerned with human rights issues, stopping censorship, etc. could encourage people in "developing" nations to speak out by providing space, publicity (a Slashdot-like list of links to individuals' blogs), or other efforts to help people tell their stories?
I'm not a blogger because most of the ones I've seen are (a) long-winded political rants or (b) personal drama; I'd much rather see, and tell others about, the world events we aren't seeing on the evening news and aren't hearing about from our government.
I don't have a Slashdot-account and I didn't want to create one just to say this, so sorry for the AC.
My experiance with Geekcorps is not such a good one. I first read about them a couple of years ago, I guess it was around 2000. I was very enthusiastic at this time and thought it was one of the best ideas ever, kind of like OSS applied not to software but to the real world. I had plenty of time before the start of university and I sent them my application because I wanted to volunteer to work for them about three months. Of course I can't judge for myself but I think I was qualified enough, having an excellent diploma, lots of experiance in building networks, GNU/Linux and programming, good references from companies like Vodafone and having a nice scholarship from Lucent.
Well, I didn't hear from them for a while and after a couple of weeks I decided to send a nice e-mail to ask. They almost immediately replied and sent me a rather rude e-mail where they wrote that I am not qualified. Well, they didn't even know about my qualifications because I never got the chance to tell them. They just had a very minimalistic web-interface where I could check several buttons. I really expected that after filling out this form somebody would get in touch with me to find out what kind of person I am, why I want to go to Africa to help, why I think I can do the job and stuff like this.
No, didn't happen. To me it looks like they really didn't want to bother and just were out to get their name in the newspapers in order to attract sponsors. I really hope that this impression is wrong and that they can achieve their goals because I still think that this is an outstanding idea. I am just not happy with the way they treated me and maybe other persons willing to support them.