It may surprise a number of folks in this thread that there's a rather large community of people who spend their whole lives trying to figure out how to turn money into sustainable development. So all the "what we really need to do is teach the poor civics/give them farm tools/train them to fish" comments are a little late, by maybe forty years.
Where Google has a chance to make a serious difference is not simply by pumping money into development programs, and their hiring choice shows they know it. Google has something no major NGO has: a vast supply of world-class tech resources. IMHO, they should leverage what they've already built to make powerful tools for humanitarian use: adapting Google Earth or Google Maps to make a rapid assessment tool for emergencies, for example. As someone who's worked for several big NGOs and watched them struggle with their tech needs, it seems to me that the best way for Google to change the world might be to help existing organizations who do successful development work (and yes, you cynics, they do exist) by doing what Google.com does best - setting up incredibly stable, well-thought-out, easy-to-use tools to improve some of the key humanitarian challenges, such as assessing need, identifying and fixing problems in a distribution chain, or measuring the impact of development work on a large scale in real time. In addition to making a significant philanthropic impact, such a move would also promote the Google brand, thus adding (you guessed it) shareholder value.
As in the Griffin and Sabine books, the key here is not the form of the story, but the medium - the reason that G+S were interesting was not really the writing (which was was well-done but nothing special) but the artwork and the physical nature of the medium. Holding someone's letter and reading it is actually quite a different experience from reading the same text in a book - you're presented not with the story of someone's life, but with physical objects from that life.
In the same way, I can see that the on-screen email epistolary novel could give you the same immersive feeling. But it's not a new genre, it's just a slightly new medium. It's still an epistolary novel, just presented in a form meant to make it more immersive.
As a sidenote, Nick Bantock, the writer/illustrator of the G+S books, also did a ook called the Venetian's Wife, in which most of the messages are emails. IMHO, this book was significantly less successful than G+S - the paper medium, entirely appropriate for the G+S letters and postcards, just looked foolish when applied to email. I can see how the software-based medium might be a really good choice for this kind of work.
All that said, I agree with the parent post that this is primarily a one-shot gimmick. I don't foresee many (read: any) real writers adopting this medium, which bodes ill for the DEN software biz.
The main question I always come back to on the subject of outsourcing is: What is the appropriate role of the various governments involved?
If trade is entirely free, then the natural trend is a "race to the bottom", in which companies compete to offer the lowest-cost product or service, often discarding any economically non-viable concepts like workers' rights or fair pay in the process. This maximizes profits for the company purchasing the service, but everyone else (the service provider, the actual workers, and all the companies that lost the race to the bottom) are unfairly exploited at best.
On the other hand, if governments are too closely involved in the economic exchange, applying protectionist policies and adding barriers to free trade, they risk denying companies in both countries the benefits of new jobs, increased profits, and general economic development.
So far, governments don't seem to have found a balance in this scenario. The WTO ought to be helping - this seems to be the very purpose for which it was created - but in practice it is run by the wealthy countries, and has largely failed to protect or aid less developed countries in the process of globalization, often enforcing economic policies that are actually detrimental to emerging economies.
So what's the proper role of government in this issue?
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It may surprise a number of folks in this thread that there's a rather large community of people who spend their whole lives trying to figure out how to turn money into sustainable development. So all the "what we really need to do is teach the poor civics/give them farm tools/train them to fish" comments are a little late, by maybe forty years.
Where Google has a chance to make a serious difference is not simply by pumping money into development programs, and their hiring choice shows they know it. Google has something no major NGO has: a vast supply of world-class tech resources. IMHO, they should leverage what they've already built to make powerful tools for humanitarian use: adapting Google Earth or Google Maps to make a rapid assessment tool for emergencies, for example. As someone who's worked for several big NGOs and watched them struggle with their tech needs, it seems to me that the best way for Google to change the world might be to help existing organizations who do successful development work (and yes, you cynics, they do exist) by doing what Google.com does best - setting up incredibly stable, well-thought-out, easy-to-use tools to improve some of the key humanitarian challenges, such as assessing need, identifying and fixing problems in a distribution chain, or measuring the impact of development work on a large scale in real time. In addition to making a significant philanthropic impact, such a move would also promote the Google brand, thus adding (you guessed it) shareholder value.
Everyone on ./ seems to have a friend who's done this with post-its - but it takes cheetos to make you an acclaimed artist.
As in the Griffin and Sabine books, the key here is not the form of the story, but the medium - the reason that G+S were interesting was not really the writing (which was was well-done but nothing special) but the artwork and the physical nature of the medium. Holding someone's letter and reading it is actually quite a different experience from reading the same text in a book - you're presented not with the story of someone's life, but with physical objects from that life.
In the same way, I can see that the on-screen email epistolary novel could give you the same immersive feeling. But it's not a new genre, it's just a slightly new medium. It's still an epistolary novel, just presented in a form meant to make it more immersive.
As a sidenote, Nick Bantock, the writer/illustrator of the G+S books, also did a ook called the Venetian's Wife, in which most of the messages are emails. IMHO, this book was significantly less successful than G+S - the paper medium, entirely appropriate for the G+S letters and postcards, just looked foolish when applied to email. I can see how the software-based medium might be a really good choice for this kind of work.
All that said, I agree with the parent post that this is primarily a one-shot gimmick. I don't foresee many (read: any) real writers adopting this medium, which bodes ill for the DEN software biz.
The main question I always come back to on the subject of outsourcing is: What is the appropriate role of the various governments involved?
If trade is entirely free, then the natural trend is a "race to the bottom", in which companies compete to offer the lowest-cost product or service, often discarding any economically non-viable concepts like workers' rights or fair pay in the process. This maximizes profits for the company purchasing the service, but everyone else (the service provider, the actual workers, and all the companies that lost the race to the bottom) are unfairly exploited at best.
On the other hand, if governments are too closely involved in the economic exchange, applying protectionist policies and adding barriers to free trade, they risk denying companies in both countries the benefits of new jobs, increased profits, and general economic development.
So far, governments don't seem to have found a balance in this scenario. The WTO ought to be helping - this seems to be the very purpose for which it was created - but in practice it is run by the wealthy countries, and has largely failed to protect or aid less developed countries in the process of globalization, often enforcing economic policies that are actually detrimental to emerging economies.
So what's the proper role of government in this issue?