Slashdot Mirror
Revolutionary Wants Technology To Transform Libya
pbahra writes in with the story of Khaled el Mufti, the network-security engineer who was in charge of providing telecommunications for the Libyan revolution. "It isn't often you get the chance to meet a real revolutionary. It is a term cheapened by misuse, but Khaled el Mufti is a revolutionary. It is no exaggeration to say that the role he played in the Libyan uprising last year was crucial; had he and his telecoms team failed, it isn't hard to think that Col. Muammar Gadhafi might still be in power. Today, Mr. Mufti is a telecoms adviser to the interim government and heads the e-Libya initiative, a bold plan to use the transformative powers of technology to modernize the Libyan state, overturning 40 years of corruption and misrule under Gadhafi. Mr. Mufti is an unlikely revolutionary, a softly spoken network-security engineer with a degree from Imperial College in London. Almost by chance he was in his native Libya when the revolution took place, working on a project with BT in the capital, Tripoli."
Dead within a year.
If you take good care of The Cartel, they take good care of you.
Let him help technology people find political office
Yes, techno nerds would make great leaders. *COUGH*. Clearly you have never dealt with any BOFH or PHBs in your life.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_African_Satellite_Communication_Organization
http://articles.janes.com/articles/Janes-Space-Systems-and-Industry/Rascom-Libya.html
"'ground network includes gateway Earth stations and low cost," -
It made parts of Africa spend less on Intelsat and a lot less on big telco interconnection fees.
Now the West is back and wants their telco interconnection fees back... all of them.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD14Ak02.html
No wonder The Wall St. Journal is gushing.
Into the Nightmarish Technology Cult of the Empire of the SANDS!
Bow before them or die!
Autobots, move out!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Technology is a tool, support to make something easier. It doesn't solve your problems for you.
That's why specialists rarely make it into leadership positions. They lose touch with reality. You know the saying, when you have a shiny new hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The first thing they need right now, is to print scads of leaflets about what democracy is, how different is from the previous regime and so on. And not just papers, but people to support those things with words. And they needed to do it just weeks after the end of the conflict.
Because a Libyan ex-pat who was hired by an oil company
BT is not BP...though given the nature of the two industries, the intent was still most certainly contrived evil.
The BBC just found out "SAS on ground during Libya crisis" - 9 January 2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16624401
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Not saying there isn't great potential for good there, but I don't expect to see it. Unfortunately, the Islamists in Libya and Egypt would like nothing better than to use technology the same way Iran does -- to stifle any dissent from the political/religious straightjacket that is Islamic fundamentalism. I hope for the best, but don't like some aspects of the political momentum I see in the "Arab spring". It seems like they are dumping corrupt secular dictators, just to prop up theoretically less corrupt, but still abjectly fascist slave masters wielding Sharia law.
It might surprise you to know this, but a Pointy Haired Boss is already in management.
Better to use a hammer to put on a screw than to be clueless as to why the spoon doesn't work.
Non technical leaders have had a lot of opportunies through history, and they rely on appealing to emotions in masses to screw the majority and get personal gains. So, why would it be bad that geeks and nerds get a real chance? Why are so many afraid of logic and reason being in power positons? Why would stancard politicians, lawyers and greedy businessmen be the only options to get the decision making power?
It is not the technology, rather it is the opportunity to practice the art of systems design.
Design what?
Designing a whole government is an impossibly huge job. Divide the problem into parts and solve the parts. One big part to fix: How about resolve one key problem that plagues governments worldwide... how to vote the incumbent out of office before the incumbent takes control of the voting system.
Why not use cell phone and Internet technology, together with some statistical sampling to overcome the physical problems of holding elections in Libya? The problem is to be able to vote a leader out of office before that leader seizes control of the election process.
So, why would it be bad that geeks and nerds get a real chance?
Why are so many afraid of logic and reason being in power positons?
You are talking about a Muslim majority culture in Libya.
Logic and reason mean nothing.
USA: starry-eyed techs go into IT in order to make our lives better through technology, end up having to update thoughtless websites, and hate it.
Middle East: starry-eyed techs go into IT with hopes of bringing democracy to their countries, end up working for Islamic Brotherhood and designing suicide vests, and hate it.
See, we're all the same after all....
Futurist Traditionalism
You are talking about people.
Logic and reason mean nothing.
Fixed that for you.
My hats off to the Libyan IT team that kept the communications going.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The PHB is middle management by definition. The characteristic of the PHB is just that he leads a team but has no knowledge at all in the tasks for which his team are responsible - they enter the position via sideways transfer, and their training is limited to management concerns. The PHB is loathed for their inaccurate estimates of the difficulty of a task leading to unreasonable expectations and their disregard of technological concerns in decision-making. From the point of view of their unfortunate underlings, they appear to just be idiots. The original PHB character in Dilbert was the head of an engineering team but had no personal knowledge of or interest in engineering, and so could only provide his team with empty encouragement ("Work smarter, not harder!") and requests to do the impossible.
Democracy is probably the last thing on people's mind. First they need electricity and water. Then they need food. Then they need shelter (actually this is a big one considering that thousands of building were almost completely destroyed in the war)....then the big one, they need JOBS. They need industry to get back on its feet, children to go back to school, hospitals to reopen, supermarkets to get restocked. Democracy? Elections? Who cares about that when you have roving bands of heavily armed militia trying to boss everyone around and having turf wars with the tribe next door? No, law and order first, then redevelopment, true democracy comes much later. It's a long process, decades in fact.
Gaddafi was a BAD guy, he funded insurgencies and terrorist groups around the world for forty years. He kept his population in poverty, neglected infustructure, and enriched his own family. He also tortured and murdered thousands of his own people with foreign mercenaries. The opportunity came for the west to end his reign of terror and they took it. There is no need for conspiracies.
The current interim Prime Minister of Libya is a PhD in Electrical Engineering, and a former university professor.
Telecoms won't be the big money maker for Libya, solar thermal will. The EU wants to build some massive plants over there, and Libya will be happy to work with us because they know that oil is running out and going out of fashion.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Man, there are a lot of raging hate-mongers and crazy in this thread. I mean, there's those few in every story about Muslims, but it seems to be a little bit more prolific here. What's up Slashdot?
We've got blatant racism like this guy, people that think the only technology they're concerned about is AK-47's, the one nutjob who thinks Muslims are 40% gay, the conspiracy types who are saying the whole arab spring is a CIA action, and they have their cohorts who claim it's entirely because of Libya's desire for a gold standard.
Bloody hell, it's like Slashdot is off their meds.
Well bless the few who are calm enough to respond with a simple rebuttal.
Good luck to you. If you can get technology into the hands of people it empowers them. The fear of big brother and a panopticon society works both ways. Those cameras can be in the hands of little brother and can point at cops. It keeps them honest, reduces waste, and makes life better for all.
I don't know how well he'll do with e-commerce, but some basics for government transparency would do a lot for a budding government. Hell, it's doing a lot for my government.
Stories like this are the sort of thing that makes me want to show up with a crate of OLPCs and start teaching kids python.
A highly trained undercover MI6 spy just happened to be there when the revolution started?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"quack quack quack conspiracy theory..."
A major point of the article I posted was that the situation in Libya was very much unlike the Arab Spring in places like Tunisia and Egypt.
The latter pipes gas from Turkmenistan to India. Again, what the fuck has that got to do with the US? What do either of these have to do with oil and the petrodollar?
Why would the U.S. goad the world into using only dollars for purchasing oil and gas without creating ways for them to access those resources? Also, the article looks at the role that international banking plays... no one is saying that its a simplistic U.S.-against-the-world contest, although it is true that the U.S. establishment is interested in maximizing globalization. It is also true that uniting Africa under a common gold-backed currency would have created a continent-wide hold out from globalization (which includes unfettered corporate access to oil).
The rest of your 'argument' (which is little more than a mixture of ad-hominem and 'we just don't do those things here' posturing) doesn't hold up well either.