We reached here on Wednesday 24th night 10pm after cycling 4 days. On 21st we (me and Sooraj) covered Thrissur to Ernakulam, on 22nd Sooraj, Manu and Vishnu Aluva (Madhusoothanan Nair) covered Ernakulam to Allepey and on 23rd Sooraj and Vishnu covered Allepey to Kollam (they visited schools on the way in Harippad and other places). On 24th we had an interaction with school students came from many schools. 24th night was a hacknight at hotel Ya Ali in Kazhakkoottam. It was arranged by ICFOSS. Anish and team ported Freedom Toaster to Raspberry Pi and burned a CD with it. On 25th morning we presented it to ICFOSS director Satish Babu. We visited Kerala University Karyavattam campus and had good disussions at Bioinfomatics and Malayalam departments. Haknight continued at SPACE. Yesterday we covered LBS engineering college of women and discussed Free Culture and pirate ideas. The response was very good and there were very good questions like if we don't have patents won't technologies like Atom bomb be misused. That time we couldn't think about the fact that you have to publish a patent and atom bomb is a state secret. We suggested if Japan had an atom bomb US would have thought twice before bombing. When I said we don't know everything, there was a comment that "they know it already" :)
Then we had another good session at Government College for women. This time we were interacting with students from Malayalam department and focus was on language and culture. Sooraj had to accept defeat when he said he don't like Adoor movies as he was criticizing people who didn't like Santhosh Pandit. We started our session asking them why are they studying Malayalam? Initially one said they will get a teachers job, but others said they love the language and some realized the important language play in our culture. We added Knowledge and Energy as two basic necessities of life and how we are made dependant. Creating dependency and erasing history are two ways of controlling a people. So we emphasiced on selef reliance in knowledge and energy. Solar and biogas were taken as examples. I focused on Eben Moglen's line of argument about how printing technology revolutionized sharing of knowledge and how digital tehnology offers a similar potential, but deliberately chained from achieving its potential of providing everyone all the knowledge they want. I also emphasised how copyright was born in the printing press era and how it is an impediment to progress in the digital world. Another favorite example of mine was of Akshaya Pathra in Mahabharata and how digital technology is an infinite source of knowledge. I posed a hypothetical situation of a machine like Akshaya Pathra which costs 1 crore to make. To recover the cost and make profit 100 rupees per meal is charged. What would they do if someone hungry turns up without money? Most people said they would feed the hungry. I told them how copyright denies people without money knowledge, entertainment and information. I also introduced crowd funding where people raise the money initially and share the product they make. We compared it with how local clubs organize events printing vouchers. In the evening we visited Shantigiri Ashram and had good disussion with Viswabhoda swamy and Gurudharmananda swamy. It was interesting. Especially since Viswabodhaswamy is already a wikipedia contributor, reported bug in openoffice, knows most people in the community and migrated the ashram to gnu/linux. Today I was at Technopark for Free Software Young professionals meet in the morning and we interacted with many journalists at SPACE office in Vellayambalam, where we are staying right now. Tomorrow I will be taking a session on contributing to Free Software again at technopark. We are planning to visit deaf school at Vellayani on Monday. If anyone has some contats there connect us. Tuesday morning we are planning to leave for Kollam district via MC Road. This time we will be spending 2 days in a district. If you are interested in organizing events on our way contact me 09561745712 or Sooraj 9995551549. -- -- "Freedom is the only law". "Freedom Unplugged" http://www.ilug-tvm.org You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ilug-tvm" group. To control your subscription visit http://groups.google.co.in/group/ilug-tvm/subscribe To post to this group, send email to ilug-tvm@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to ilug-tvm-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For details visit the google group page: http://groups.google.com/group/ilug-tvm?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Free Software Users Group, Thiruvananthapuram" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ilug-tvm+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
