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."

Comments

Third world blogs

[kundor]

I'd think that the problem with using the internet to combat censorship and corruption is that the censored and oppressed people are precisely those without internet access. Those who have it are already in the privileged classes.

Re:Third world blogs

[kundor]

How many public libraries are there in Africa?

How many public libraries are in the African boondocks?

How many of those libraries have internet access?

I think you'll find the number is vanishingly small.

Re:Third world blogs

[MoralHazard]

First of all, RTFA. They're seeking to BRING the internet to the underprivileged in countries that are least likely to get it otherwise. That's the whole point.

Second of all, it's not like censorship and oppression uniquely affect the poorest of the poor. There's a thing called the "middle class", or perhaps "Bourgeoisie" (if you're that kind of cat). Everybody who isn't politically/economically elite can suffer from these kinds of things. Take a look at China: the Great Firewall blocks the traffic of the wage-slave and entrepreneur alike.

And yes, it's more likely that those in the middle class will have the resources, education, perspective, and political voice to resist censorship on their own, but that's a tendency, not a binary situation.

Besides, tools like these don't magically make oppressive governments stop being evil--the tools have to be applied to the problem by motivated actors. It turns out (despite what Marx thought) that the middle class is the source of a hell of a lot more political resistance to government than the poor.* This isn't a denigration of the poor--it's just an observed fact of social change movements around the world in the last 50 years. So the logic follows that giving tools to fight oppression to the middle class permits them to carry the fight for everybody.

* Personally, I chalk this up to the fact that the line between the middle class and the workers that Marx noticed has blurred and become a really big, fat zone. A huge portion of the American/European middle class are wage-earners, which would make them "workers" according to Marxist thought. But they also own a substantial amount of property (houses, cars, boats, bank accounts, investments), which would make them capitalists. Funny old world we live in, isn't it?

concusion

[virtualone]

at the end of TFI he asks you to reply if you are interested in transferring a large amount of money out of namibia. you wil get your fair share, for sure.

the world-wide-web as a tool

[tobi-wan-kenobi]

first: i admit to not having read the whole article, since it really is a bit long for the hour. second: his notion about "social source" software is really interesting. commonly, the wide-spread use of the internet is said to diminuish face-to-face contact between people. the other side that often is neglected is demonstrated by this article: the internet can also be used to enable communication, as a means for a war against "corruption" and especially "censorship". what people often forget is that, no matter how big, the internet still is nothing more than a tool. and most tools do not tend to be either "good" or "bad", but achieve their quality by the way they are used. this is an excellent demonstration on how to do it right. my 2 pence, n'tn more

The first time

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

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?

Outside?

[Tetsugaku-San]

There's a web outside the US? wait - There's an outside the US?

Hole in the Wall

[plimsoll]

This reminds me of Sugata Mitra's altruistic "Hole in the Wall" experiment; providing publicly-available ruggedized PC's embedded in protective enclosures for the intellectual arousal and enlightenment of street children.

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• Official site
• PBS Frontline story

Re:Hypocrite

[david.given]

Oh, gee, how terrible that people decide for themselves what stories they want to write and what stories they want to read.

It's a pity there isn't a -1, Missed The Point.

If people only read what they want to read, they'll never hear about anything that they don't want to read --- but should be reading. Let's say your country is having a war. It's going badly. Do people want to hear about yet another messy encounter where far too many people died on both sides with no actual result? Hell, no. They'd much rather read about heroic rescues of photogenic young soldiers, and then skip on to the sport pages. The result? They end up either not knowing about what's going on, or not caring, or both. It's good for people to have their world upset every so often, regardless of what they want.

Ever hear of freedom of the press?

Yes. It means that journalists are allowed to print anything that they think the audience should know about, which is totally different.

My experiance with Geekcorps

[Anonymous Coward]

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.