I'd agree with what everyone here has said about learning a foreign language, it does teach you another way of thinking, another way approaching problems - and the world. Different languages have different ways of describing things, which refer the different values of the culture. It's also interesting to realize that in most of the word people will speak at least two languages, even in the developing world, where people will learn a local, then national language, before even starting on English! It really shows us anglo-phones up!
And word of caution, based on what I have found from trying to learn Indonesian: like programing languages, languages have rules (duh!), unlike programming languages, this rules are incredibly flexible, and often broken (this depends on the language though). This did frustrate me a little, but I think it is an interesting lesson on the boundaries between ordered systems and the somewhat chaotic results that sometimes evolve.
I would recommend Chinese, because of the progress China is making, and because very few Chinese speak English. Also given it's potential position in the world, I don't think that the pressure will be on us to learn Chinese, not the other way round.
Finally, you can only learn so much in class. You really have to go to the country, immerse yourself in it, force yourself to speak it. A month studying in the country would be worth a whole degree in a university (although you'd probably learn more theory in university, and they would compliment each other quite nicely).
And the comments about picking a language with hot women have some truth to them. The best way to learn a language is to have a girlfriend who (only) speaks it!
Ex military hardware being sold - that's nothing new.
On the outskirts of Peshawar in Pakistan, 50km away from Afghanistan, is the Smugglers Market, where you can buy a variety of USA Army "surplus" - training manuals, ration packs and various un-interesting hardware.
As a foreigner this is all that I was able to find - I wasn't able to enter the section where they sold the weapons!
I live in Indonesia - and there are mosques everywhere. In some places it won't be too hard to stick a WiFi router on every mosque, to give the entire city internet access.
I think that it's a pretty good idea - if only they could broadcast their calls to pray (which start before sunrise) over WiFi too, instead of over the speakers!
I currently work in Banda Aceh, Indonesia and have an Indonesian friend is working for the UN. He works on a similar project where he is collecting data from villages using a smart phone. However he doesn't actually enter it directly into a smart phone - he writes the information down on paper because it is easier and faster and then goes to the local coffee shop to enter it into smart phone. From personal experience I know that it's not that easy to quickly enter information into a PDA/smart phone.
This may still be a better solution than having the paper surveys taken back to a data entry person who enters them in a computer. At least in this example he is entering the data into electronic format while it is still fresh in his head.
The difficulty of entering data also depends on the type of survey. Quantitative information (numbers, check boxes and lists) is easier than qualitative information (words). However technology also allows for some information to be collected very easily (photos, GPS).
I also think that it is important to consider the barrier that a PDA will create between the interviewer and the interviewee. "Fancy Technology" like a PDA can be distracting, it can emphasize the power imbalance between the people and it could make people less honest with the the information they give. If you only earned $1 a day would you feel more comfortable telling that to someone with a clipboard or a PDA?
I don't want to come across as a paranoid tinfoil hat wearer, but I think that this serves as a warning against the reliance on technology.
Everyone says that the world is a better place, because thanks to technology, we can hear about human rights abuses all of the world. We can connect with other people with similar views. We can voice our opinions to thousands of others.
This is true, to a point. But we need to remember that technology can be easily controlled, as China is clearly demonstrating.
I worry that we become too reliant on technology, and forget the traditional person-to-person networks. And I think that it is the person-to-person networks that will really make the difference. Could another Tienanmen Square be organized by text message? Probably not, the government would have blocked the text messages before they reached too many people. Same goes for email. I'm sure Tienanmen Square was organized by people talking to people, something which is a lot harder to control.
OK, so I'm pretty sure that this is flamebait, but you did it on my comment, so I took it...
Sudan is already in the top 30 oil exporters in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chart_of_exports_and _production_of_oil_by_nation), so rubbish about what you're saying about it taking decades to get the oil out of there. Admitted I don't think that it's coming out of Darfur, but it's still the same government.
I actually believe that the biggest problem comes as much from people with close minded views such as your. When people think like that it becomes a "war of civilizations", instead of just an peacekeeping-operation to end genocide, of course the Sudanese government is going to object. Your views of Islam and Muslims are incredibly narrow-minded, and I can only guess, very uneducated. By thinking like that you prevent peaceful dialog from happening.
I have personally spent the last 18 months living mostly in Pakistan and Indonesia - the worlds two largest Muslim countries. Despite standing out as a tall westerner, I didn't have any trouble at all, no terrorists, no jihads. Actually I found most of the people much friendlier than the people back home.
So please take some time to think about the situation, and what will make it better, before spreading such narrow minded rubbish.
I don't think there is really much debate that there are massacres taking place in Sudan at the moment. However is it very easy for the Government to control the flow of information out of the country. Doctors without Borders, who are often the organization on the front line of these crisis, who are willing to speak up about atrocities, got kicked out in 2005. A UN diplomat (http://www.janpronk.nl/index288.html#290) was also expelled for blogging about the Sudanese government.
NGOs have a hard time bringing in any sort of communication equipment (satellites for internet etc etc) and I'm pretty sure that you need to have a permit to take photos in Sudan, and the government controls where people can go. This is the same for many conflict zones, especially those with dubious treatment of human rights.
What this article shows is that there are now ways of documenting what is going on in Sudan, which is beyond the direct control of the Sudanese government. However it is very expensive (the images are costing about $1600 each) and there was an issue, when they couldn't book satellite time over Sudan. Whether this was because the government booked it out to prevent them from taking photos is unsure - but it does show the limitation.
Part of the reason that the international community is dragging their feet (or can drag their feet) is probably the lack of reliable concrete information - and this is what this project provides.
That and the fact that Sudan has oil, which the Chinese are heavily invested in.
It's kinda like in "V is for Vendetta", when V distributes the same masks and cloaks which he wears to all the people in London.
I think it's a sad sign of the times when a government can keep people in line through fear. However it takes true bravely to follow a course of action, even when you know it will lead to your doom. This is exactly what happened in Gandhi's time, when his followed were beaten and killed by the British during their non-violent protest.
There is also a difference between having information about me, and having control over me. You can only have control if I fear you (or what you will do with that information).
It's interesting that you mention Gandhi, because he had some interesting views on privacy (sorry I can't reference them online, I read them in a book on Gandhi)
Gandhi primary philosophy was discovering truth, which he believed to be like God. Quote: "Truth is God". In accordance to this he lead a very open life, and was not afraid to voice his views. As a result he spent quite a bit of time in prison. Neither did he hide his life from the world. He believed in full openness (It is common knowledge that he gave in to his carnal urges and was having sex while his father died - who shares those sorts of details?!?!?)
I think his idea worked the opposite way to Communist Russia, and more similarly to free speech. If everyone says what they think, how can the government prosecute all of them? The more we keep private, the more isolated it is for those who want to speak out to speak out. If everyone kept every private, how would the first revolutionary start talking to the second one?
I think Gandhi's views are interesting in the modern perspective, when technology is eroding our privacy. I do worry about what information there is about me out on the internet, and double check my blog posts for information that might bite me in the arse later down the track. However I think that I don't really have anything to worry about. Sure, there will be some photos of me drunk online somewhere, acting like an idiot. But it's not like that's unusual behavior. I've voiced some pretty opinionated views that would have got me thrown into the Gulag. But the internet is built by people voicing opinionated views, we're not all going to be thrown into the Gulag!!!
At the end of the day, I don't want to do the things which I might be embarrassed by or arrested for if they got out into the public domain. For the other things, who cares? I'd prefer to worry about making sure that I lead a good life, than worry about who knows what I'm doing.
I currently live in Indonesia, where people commonly burn rubbish - including farmers who burn the husks from rice production. Although this certainly isn't the most environmental form of waste management, I feel that if they are already burning rubbish, at least they could collect the energy from the burning?
Would it be possible to build a simple generator to convert the energy into electricity?
Isn't this a little ridiculous? Considering the current problems with energy supplies (Global warming, Oil prices, Middle Eastern politics, Nuclear waste), shouldn't we be focused on trying to make the cars as efficient as possible?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the purpose of cars to get from one place to another?
Is all this extra power actually necessary, or is it just the modern equivalent of beating my chest?
It is a lot easier and more satisfying to fight fires, than work on making sure that fires don't happen it the first place. Part of this is because there are clear and achievable goals to aim for, and give yourself a pat on the back for reaching. Working to improve systems requires more complex thinking, and the gratification is delayed.
The same certainly applies to the Humanitarian/International Development sector. It is a lot easier to go into a crisis - war, natural disaster or famine - and provide emergency relief to the people. The goal is very simple - provide food, shelter and medical care to prevent people from dying. However when it comes to helping developing countries, to prevent them being so susceptible to such crisis's, there are many more methods available (education, improving government capacity, dropping trade barrier, market reform) and the goals are a lot harder to measure.
However long term improvement, either in a developing country or on a network, still have boundaries, obstacles and achievable goals, they're just more flexible, abstract, longer term, and harder to measure.
I think this sort of think is a great example of how Non Government Organizations (NGOs) can make great use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems).
More NGOs should follow this example and use technology like Google Earth to show where they are working, and what they are doing. This gives people a better idea of where the money they donate is being spent. It also gives people a better idea of what work needs to be done, be it to protect the environment, or to reduce poverty (although the two are fundamentally linked) - this is how technology should be used to make the world a smaller place. What would be great if WWF included on the ground photos of their program activities, so people could take a virtual tour of what was being done.
The next step is for NGOs to use GIS to help them with their work. A good example which I came across was in a refugee camp in Uganda, where they plotted to locations of Cholera outbreaks, and then compared this to the location of all the wells. Some of the wells showed high concertrations of outbreaks around them, indicating that they were contaminated - and so they were closed down. This is just a basic example, GIS could be used to make really interesting correlations between education, poverty and the environment.
However I work for an NGO and know how slow they are to adopt new technology, but that's a whole different story...
Slashdot Mirror
I'd agree with what everyone here has said about learning a foreign language, it does teach you another way of thinking, another way approaching problems - and the world. Different languages have different ways of describing things, which refer the different values of the culture. It's also interesting to realize that in most of the word people will speak at least two languages, even in the developing world, where people will learn a local, then national language, before even starting on English! It really shows us anglo-phones up! And word of caution, based on what I have found from trying to learn Indonesian: like programing languages, languages have rules (duh!), unlike programming languages, this rules are incredibly flexible, and often broken (this depends on the language though). This did frustrate me a little, but I think it is an interesting lesson on the boundaries between ordered systems and the somewhat chaotic results that sometimes evolve. I would recommend Chinese, because of the progress China is making, and because very few Chinese speak English. Also given it's potential position in the world, I don't think that the pressure will be on us to learn Chinese, not the other way round. Finally, you can only learn so much in class. You really have to go to the country, immerse yourself in it, force yourself to speak it. A month studying in the country would be worth a whole degree in a university (although you'd probably learn more theory in university, and they would compliment each other quite nicely). And the comments about picking a language with hot women have some truth to them. The best way to learn a language is to have a girlfriend who (only) speaks it!
Ex military hardware being sold - that's nothing new. On the outskirts of Peshawar in Pakistan, 50km away from Afghanistan, is the Smugglers Market, where you can buy a variety of USA Army "surplus" - training manuals, ration packs and various un-interesting hardware. As a foreigner this is all that I was able to find - I wasn't able to enter the section where they sold the weapons!
I live in Indonesia - and there are mosques everywhere. In some places it won't be too hard to stick a WiFi router on every mosque, to give the entire city internet access. I think that it's a pretty good idea - if only they could broadcast their calls to pray (which start before sunrise) over WiFi too, instead of over the speakers!
One could argue that this applies to all aid to the developing world - we're just growing markets that we can sell more things to!
I currently work in Banda Aceh, Indonesia and have an Indonesian friend is working for the UN. He works on a similar project where he is collecting data from villages using a smart phone. However he doesn't actually enter it directly into a smart phone - he writes the information down on paper because it is easier and faster and then goes to the local coffee shop to enter it into smart phone. From personal experience I know that it's not that easy to quickly enter information into a PDA/smart phone.
This may still be a better solution than having the paper surveys taken back to a data entry person who enters them in a computer. At least in this example he is entering the data into electronic format while it is still fresh in his head.
The difficulty of entering data also depends on the type of survey. Quantitative information (numbers, check boxes and lists) is easier than qualitative information (words). However technology also allows for some information to be collected very easily (photos, GPS).
I also think that it is important to consider the barrier that a PDA will create between the interviewer and the interviewee. "Fancy Technology" like a PDA can be distracting, it can emphasize the power imbalance between the people and it could make people less honest with the the information they give. If you only earned $1 a day would you feel more comfortable telling that to someone with a clipboard or a PDA?
I don't want to come across as a paranoid tinfoil hat wearer, but I think that this serves as a warning against the reliance on technology.
Everyone says that the world is a better place, because thanks to technology, we can hear about human rights abuses all of the world. We can connect with other people with similar views. We can voice our opinions to thousands of others.
This is true, to a point. But we need to remember that technology can be easily controlled, as China is clearly demonstrating.
I worry that we become too reliant on technology, and forget the traditional person-to-person networks. And I think that it is the person-to-person networks that will really make the difference. Could another Tienanmen Square be organized by text message? Probably not, the government would have blocked the text messages before they reached too many people. Same goes for email. I'm sure Tienanmen Square was organized by people talking to people, something which is a lot harder to control.
Could this be used to add WiFi to a cellphone with an SD slot? That would be cool...
OK, so I'm pretty sure that this is flamebait, but you did it on my comment, so I took it...
Sudan is already in the top 30 oil exporters in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chart_of_exports_and _production_of_oil_by_nation), so rubbish about what you're saying about it taking decades to get the oil out of there. Admitted I don't think that it's coming out of Darfur, but it's still the same government.
I actually believe that the biggest problem comes as much from people with close minded views such as your. When people think like that it becomes a "war of civilizations", instead of just an peacekeeping-operation to end genocide, of course the Sudanese government is going to object. Your views of Islam and Muslims are incredibly narrow-minded, and I can only guess, very uneducated. By thinking like that you prevent peaceful dialog from happening.
I have personally spent the last 18 months living mostly in Pakistan and Indonesia - the worlds two largest Muslim countries. Despite standing out as a tall westerner, I didn't have any trouble at all, no terrorists, no jihads. Actually I found most of the people much friendlier than the people back home.
So please take some time to think about the situation, and what will make it better, before spreading such narrow minded rubbish.
I don't think there is really much debate that there are massacres taking place in Sudan at the moment. However is it very easy for the Government to control the flow of information out of the country. Doctors without Borders, who are often the organization on the front line of these crisis, who are willing to speak up about atrocities, got kicked out in 2005. A UN diplomat (http://www.janpronk.nl/index288.html#290) was also expelled for blogging about the Sudanese government.
NGOs have a hard time bringing in any sort of communication equipment (satellites for internet etc etc) and I'm pretty sure that you need to have a permit to take photos in Sudan, and the government controls where people can go. This is the same for many conflict zones, especially those with dubious treatment of human rights.
What this article shows is that there are now ways of documenting what is going on in Sudan, which is beyond the direct control of the Sudanese government. However it is very expensive (the images are costing about $1600 each) and there was an issue, when they couldn't book satellite time over Sudan. Whether this was because the government booked it out to prevent them from taking photos is unsure - but it does show the limitation.
Part of the reason that the international community is dragging their feet (or can drag their feet) is probably the lack of reliable concrete information - and this is what this project provides.
That and the fact that Sudan has oil, which the Chinese are heavily invested in.
It's kinda like in "V is for Vendetta", when V distributes the same masks and cloaks which he wears to all the people in London.
I think it's a sad sign of the times when a government can keep people in line through fear. However it takes true bravely to follow a course of action, even when you know it will lead to your doom. This is exactly what happened in Gandhi's time, when his followed were beaten and killed by the British during their non-violent protest.
There is also a difference between having information about me, and having control over me. You can only have control if I fear you (or what you will do with that information).
It's interesting that you mention Gandhi, because he had some interesting views on privacy (sorry I can't reference them online, I read them in a book on Gandhi)
Gandhi primary philosophy was discovering truth, which he believed to be like God. Quote: "Truth is God". In accordance to this he lead a very open life, and was not afraid to voice his views. As a result he spent quite a bit of time in prison. Neither did he hide his life from the world. He believed in full openness (It is common knowledge that he gave in to his carnal urges and was having sex while his father died - who shares those sorts of details?!?!?)
I think his idea worked the opposite way to Communist Russia, and more similarly to free speech. If everyone says what they think, how can the government prosecute all of them? The more we keep private, the more isolated it is for those who want to speak out to speak out. If everyone kept every private, how would the first revolutionary start talking to the second one?
I think Gandhi's views are interesting in the modern perspective, when technology is eroding our privacy. I do worry about what information there is about me out on the internet, and double check my blog posts for information that might bite me in the arse later down the track. However I think that I don't really have anything to worry about. Sure, there will be some photos of me drunk online somewhere, acting like an idiot. But it's not like that's unusual behavior. I've voiced some pretty opinionated views that would have got me thrown into the Gulag. But the internet is built by people voicing opinionated views, we're not all going to be thrown into the Gulag!!!
At the end of the day, I don't want to do the things which I might be embarrassed by or arrested for if they got out into the public domain. For the other things, who cares? I'd prefer to worry about making sure that I lead a good life, than worry about who knows what I'm doing.
I currently live in Indonesia, where people commonly burn rubbish - including farmers who burn the husks from rice production. Although this certainly isn't the most environmental form of waste management, I feel that if they are already burning rubbish, at least they could collect the energy from the burning?
Would it be possible to build a simple generator to convert the energy into electricity?
Isn't this a little ridiculous? Considering the current problems with energy supplies (Global warming, Oil prices, Middle Eastern politics, Nuclear waste), shouldn't we be focused on trying to make the cars as efficient as possible?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the purpose of cars to get from one place to another?
Is all this extra power actually necessary, or is it just the modern equivalent of beating my chest?
The same probably applies to every field of work.
It is a lot easier and more satisfying to fight fires, than work on making sure that fires don't happen it the first place. Part of this is because there are clear and achievable goals to aim for, and give yourself a pat on the back for reaching. Working to improve systems requires more complex thinking, and the gratification is delayed.
The same certainly applies to the Humanitarian/International Development sector. It is a lot easier to go into a crisis - war, natural disaster or famine - and provide emergency relief to the people. The goal is very simple - provide food, shelter and medical care to prevent people from dying. However when it comes to helping developing countries, to prevent them being so susceptible to such crisis's, there are many more methods available (education, improving government capacity, dropping trade barrier, market reform) and the goals are a lot harder to measure.
However long term improvement, either in a developing country or on a network, still have boundaries, obstacles and achievable goals, they're just more flexible, abstract, longer term, and harder to measure.
More NGOs should follow this example and use technology like Google Earth to show where they are working, and what they are doing. This gives people a better idea of where the money they donate is being spent. It also gives people a better idea of what work needs to be done, be it to protect the environment, or to reduce poverty (although the two are fundamentally linked) - this is how technology should be used to make the world a smaller place. What would be great if WWF included on the ground photos of their program activities, so people could take a virtual tour of what was being done.
The next step is for NGOs to use GIS to help them with their work. A good example which I came across was in a refugee camp in Uganda, where they plotted to locations of Cholera outbreaks, and then compared this to the location of all the wells. Some of the wells showed high concertrations of outbreaks around them, indicating that they were contaminated - and so they were closed down. This is just a basic example, GIS could be used to make really interesting correlations between education, poverty and the environment.
However I work for an NGO and know how slow they are to adopt new technology, but that's a whole different story...