At 11:37 AM +0100 05/11/01, Daniel Taghioff wrote:
>Finally, private business might be seen as donors in such a project,
>since they would gain market research information. snip snip snip
>Simplistic black and white judgements do not help in this area, if
>the good guys and bad guys were easy to identify then "development"
>would not be the largest social crisis of our age.
I've had telephone conversations with others on this List that touched on
this, which in our case was booted along because of the Sri Lanka radio
station and their funding problems, which (I believe?) triggered this
thread.
We discussed what John Lawrence has called on this List "railhead" and
"depot" approaches....where the very heavy lifting (in support of ICT) is
done by the big funding agencies. The question we knocked around was this:
What happens after the "chunky stuff" gets to the "depot"? While the Big
Boys have pretty well figured out how the cattle gets to Chicago, what we
don't know is how it gets slaughtered, sliced up, marketed and made
affordable, especially to those with slim wallets and no refrigerators?
How does ICT happen, commercially, in places where
tecno-entrepreneurial skills are as rare as a good working telephone?
My thinking continues to drift toward profit making cyber-cafes and
modernized, connected post offices which become an ordinary part of
every landscape on earth - whether rural or urban. The activities in
these Centres, preferably 24/7, include distance learning, technical
training, money transfer, overseas Net telephony, data loading,
tele-work (especially for First World clients), job matching. If
built on two levels, upstairs is print shop and small radio station,
the local bank; downstairs are whatever it takes for people make sure
a stop there is as important as a stop to the food stalls...bee-hives
of knowledge sharing and job opportunity where every one of them is
as different as a good art gallery, but all use easels, good
lighting, have trained personnel...and make money.
Radio, especially radio connected to the Net, plays its part by
advertising the services and benefits of the stops to these
tele-centers/cafes as well as their their overseas clients. These
broadcast services might include info-commercials about such
activities in Ghana as Tom Friedman wrote about in the NYTimes a few
days ago telling of tele-work in Accra on behalf of an American
insurance company. The underlying theme, methinks, is that knowledge
is an exportable commodity and that if *brains* are what is
developed, people in Bangladesh can compete with people in
Boston (meet Debra Amadon www.entovation.com for more on this).
The point I am trying to make is there must be a multiplicity of
effort, with an understanding within the entire community that those
railheads and depots John Lawrence promotes are just *part* of the
heavy duty commerce. While they are highly visible and as important
as clean water, what *really* sparks the community are the bon fires
of activity that take place in these New Economoy Centres,--
advertised by profit making radio stations of a kind now stalled in
Sri Lanka.
Join us during Global Learn Day V. We will be featuring people like
Martha Davies in Peru doing things like the above. Our theme is
"reach". This year, railheads, radio and cybercafes will be as
important as realaudio, education gurus, and gee whiz computery.
Better yet, write to me with ideas about activities where we can
shine our spotlight. October 7 approaches.
John Hibbs
About GLD - generally
http://www.bfranklin.edu/gld99/plgld3
About GLD5 -
http://www.bfranklin.edu/gld5
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