"No good deed goes unpunished" or "Do good anyways" and "Bloom where you're planted" - so people have told me in the past...when faced with the natural tendency of people to examine or criticize good work from a variety of important and legitimate perspectives. I remember once learning about how the federal budget process worked and the sharer of information said a very wise thing. He said "Of course, it is obvious, that very intelligent people can legitimately disagree about priorities."
I struggle with where the balance is too - is the most effective action policy and legislation based (to achieve a long term goal or open a market)? Is it the 'on the ground' one on one work in communities who may not ever directly benefit from changed legislation and market opportunities due to a variety of factors? Is it in the profit sector? Is it via faith based or NGO or nonprofit efforts? Is it with an individual (teach them to fish or in this case give them fishing poles)? An organization that's community based (teach them to fish together)? An institution that has far reach and the fiscal wherewithal to sustain effort (research best fishing practices, create models and provide resources to increase the catch for all fishermen - regardless of a lack of existing fishing poles and the money to buy them or put them to the best use of some fishermen)? Is sustained effort the measure of success? Are open markets the measure of success? Are increased communications/technology abilities the measure? Or is the actual increased economic condition of people living in poverty the marker(individually increased cash flow, and/or increased short & long term assets made possible via technology that would not otherwise exist)? And then with all these questions - there has come a new thought to my mind of late as I have observed the interaction of IT projects within more culturally traditional and more assimilated communities. In forensic science there is a concept that when a person goes to a place they leave an impact on the place - a speck of dust, a hair, something...and the place also leaves an impact on the person - reciprocally giving to them - a speck of dust, a hair, something...in some interactions the reciprocity is balanced, in others it is highly imbalanced and produces more of an impact on one or the other. As we focus on bridging the DD - it appears that there are cultural exchanges that are inherent in this work, with impacts. Are there models of completed DD projects that work specifically with the markers of retaining and/or strengthening the intact cultures to which the technology is introduced while bringing economic benefits to those communities? I wonder at the impacts technology can have that either purposefully, or without intent, act as a 'great assimilator.' Can anyone recommend readings/research on this topic? I am very interested in any thoughts any of you have on this topic and appreciate them in advance. Thank you, Wanda ThreeHoops.com Visibility & Resources for Tribal Nations, NA Businesses and Nonprofits 2011 Fall Hill Avenue - Fredericksburg VA 22041 - Tel: 540 371 4199 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tom Abeles Sent: Friday, March 11, 2005 1:39 PM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: Re: [DDN] The real digital divide (fwd) Hi Andy The mobile phone and radio, as others, here, have suggested seems to have been spot on. What we must also realize is that the many emerging features of the mobile phone, including txt msgs, gps and even pda capabilities are being actively deployed in the developed world for a number of commercial uses that, in the past, would have required a pc. Some applications, of course, require reading skills. But for many it is not needed. A colleague has been in a car where four different occupants were on cells in four different languages. The claim that phone access is not available in some remote locations is less of a problem than the regulatory issues within a country As I have said elsewhere, the issues are at the institutional levels more than in the technology arena. It seems that eager hands/minds in the NGO and foundation community find it easier to embrace a village project and rationalize it when a combined macro effort, with the stroke of a pen could release more opportunity and allow those who want to work in the field to be much more effective. The other issue in the DD which relates to this is where exactly to attack the problem. For example, working in a remote village is interesting: but when compared to the number of disenfranchised who are living on the streets of major urban areas driven out of the economc dearth of the remote villages to the city, then bringing the digital world to the urban poor seems to have leverage. Why in a remote village in Bangladesh when the urban poor in the streets of Dhaka mean you could begin right after landing. thoughts? tom abeles Andy Carvin wrote: > From the latest issue of The Economist.... -ac > > > The real digital divide > > IT WAS an idea born in those far-off days of the internet bubble: the > worry that as people in the rich world embraced new computing and > communications technologies, people in the poor world would be left > stranded on the wrong side of a "digital divide". Five years after the > technology bubble burst, many ideas from the time-that "eyeballs" > matter more than profits or that internet traffic was doubling every > 100 days-have been sensibly shelved. But the idea of the digital > divide persists. On March 14th, after years of debate, the United > Nations will launch a "Digital Solidarity Fund" to finance projects > that address "the uneven distribution and use of new information and > communication technologies" and "enable excluded people and countries > to enter the new era of the information society". Yet the debate over > the digital divide is founded on a myth-that plugging poor countries > into the internet will help them to become rich rapidly. > > <snip> > > Plenty of evidence suggests that the mobile phone is the technology > with the greatest impact on development. A new paper finds that mobile > phones raise long-term growth rates, that their impact is twice as big > in developing nations as in developed ones, and that an extra ten > phones per 100 people in a typical developing country increases GDP > growth by 0.6 percentage points. > > And when it comes to mobile phones, there is no need for intervention > or funding from the UN: even the world's poorest people are already > rushing to embrace mobile phones, because their economic benefits are > so apparent. Mobile phones do not rely on a permanent electricity > supply and can be used by people who cannot read or write. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
