I'm really feeling sorry for the dead horse I've been beating, but it seems it needs to run a few more laps. That would be mobile phone - the future of computing is being discussed on another email list I participate on with the changed context that the mobile phone brings.
In essence, the PC doesn't really know it's dead yet - partly because it isn't dead *yet* and also because no one really seems to understand how the market is changing. The mobile phone has forever changed the landscape - even gaining special mention in the UNESCO report brought out this year. If anything, the mobile phone is accidentally closing the digital divide. After all, it's ubiquitous even in nations that are pretty good at avoiding change (i.e., the developing world). That said, I have yet to see how disseminating information on bed netting on the Internet helps with dengue and malaria - and the same applies to irrigation (which I have been doing myself lately). Bed netting is a fact of life that many people grow up with - the true problem is *affording* it. Irrigation is a common sense use of science which varies upon application, so it doesn't translate well to the web until you can upload topography and soil type data and assure that the results are near perfect. No, maybe simply participating in discussion is the first step. Thus, the mobile phone. The truth is that the developing world doesn't need PCs as much as it needs better mobile phones and telecommunications regulation. Importing PCs into developing nations that have no legal or other infrastructure for disposal only pollutes developing nations that need the very fertile soil that is being polluted. The same applies to mobile phones as well, unfortunately. What we need to do, IMHO, is stop playing with the tiger's tail if we have no plans for dealing with the teeth. Steve Eskow wrote: > Is it the hardware and software divide that is our central concern here, our > goal to get as many computer per capita over there as we have here? Or is > our goal the information and knowledge divide, with the computer the > intermediary that gets the information about irrigation and bed netting and > the alternatives to kerosene lighting to the people who need it? > > If it's the latter, we might aim to get one computer to a poor rural > village, train one literate person in its use, and have him or her get the > information about irrigation and kerosene and bed netting to the people who > need it, perhaps using community radio as the disseminator. > > Is that one way of easing the "digital divide"? > > Steve Eskow > -- Taran Rampersad [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.knowprose.com http://www.your2ndplace.com http://www.opendepth.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/knowprose/ "Criticize by Creating" - Michelangelo "The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine." - Nikola Tesla _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@digitaldivide.net http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
