On Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:56:58 -0400 Sean Moss-Pultz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [...] > Think: The collapse of so many hi tech companies on our stock exchanges > has humbled many. Creators within the digital world -- no matter how > novel and exciting -- will have no value unless they impact the material > world directly. > > So this is my call to all of us today. Our work must begin to impact the > material world. We have the tools. We have the knowledge. We must use > our knowledge to transcend the digital world. [...]
Coming into this thread late, as I was travelling. Firstly, thank you for a nicely-written, and passionate posting. I am a little curious, though, what exactly do you mean by the "material world"? >From part of your message (the reference to companies collapsing on stock exchanges), this seems to be largely a definition based on financial health, though the rest of your message seems to indicate otherwise. I am also of the view that FOSS developers need to get out of the software ghetto, and take a larger view of the world, and the possible impact on the world of the software, and hardware that we jointly produce. In my opinion, FOSS has managed to overturn "traditional" thinking in the world of software because it was not considered a significant-enough threat to entrenched interests till it was too late. We have the possibility of making such efforts count in ways which really make a difference to people in the world, but that work will be much harder, both because of more external opposition, and because of our own failure to visualise and cater to real needs. > Hardly a day goes by for me without thinking about this elegant idea. > The smart phone has become too complex. Our challenge is to make it > simple and wise. > > Yes I am well aware of the distance between us and this goal. The > complexity of our system pains me as much as I'm sure it pains you. But > starting today, I hope we can become more conscious and more focused on > simplicity and wisdom. [...] (I will take the liberty of snipping your well-reasoned points---which are already being followed-up to, in order to add a perspective of my own, which comes from living in India, and working on localisation efforts in Indian languages.) As many of you might be aware, mobile phones are a huge success story in India. Currently, India has the fastest-growing population of mobile users, and it is likely to remain that way for a while, as the per-capita usage is well behind even countries like China. This revolution is happening not only among the rich, as poorer sections of the society have been among the first to appreciate the cost/benefit ratio of a mobile phone. I have personally seen rickshaw pullers using mobiles. To my mind, a killer application on mobiles in India will be support for Indian languages on the hardware, in a manner transparent to end-users. The cost of an OpenMoko phone will also need to come down significantly, but that can come from sheer economy of scale. I would like to know about people working on such efforts in an open-source environment. There are various people (e.g., Nokia) trying to do such things, but as Sean points out, we can do it better. Such work will also have implications for console-mode support for Indian languages in free operating systems like Linux, which can again be a big win for FOSS penetration in India. Regards, Gora _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
