Hello Tom, You said : Why in a remote village in Bangladesh when the urban poor in the streets of Dhaka mean you could begin right after landing. One reason I could think of is to stop migration. Young people from villages tend to move to big cities to find a 'better living', or being attracted by the choices. I came from a small village. After high school I left and went to the capital and eventually went abroad 35 years ago. I am one of the lucky ones because I am now in the same crowd as all of you, sitting infront of a PC and tell the world the plight of the poor and less fortunate. Most time I just feel down-right guilty. Countries such as China ... constructions in cities attracted villagers. One reason is, as a labourer, you don't need to know too much reading. Just pure muscle. And miserable lives. I saw that in China, Singapore (that was in the 80s, where foreign workers from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia lived in deplorable conditions as compared to the local. The Malaysian faired better since their home is only a hop away ...), now in Malaysia ... Digital Divide, migrations, refugees, education, corruptions, tyrants etc. etc. etc. ... go hand-in-hand. Taking care of one without managing the others is not going to work. If we look at all the ills created by migrations at this present moment in Europe, or any where eles in this world, then I am asking is DDN looking at the right directions? Is DDN working with the right stakeholders and partners? It has to be cohesive 'managing' and not with a one track mind of solving just DD ... we have to solve the fundamental problems, help them to build a solid foundations ... These are all the work of policy-makers. But what do one see with policy makers? POWER hunger. POWER mongel. GREED, DOMINATION .. Starting from the most powerful nation on earth. IF the US would spend less time fighiting with UN and EU, and give more constructive support, would it not be a better use of time and resources? But what do we see just from one simple example ... the Tsunami and earth-quake disaster in Asia ??? Or Darfur ??? Or the removal of the UN Refugee commissioner ... why? Digital divide is at the bottom of the list. Don't just give them fish. And sometime I think we do more harm than good. Cindy
Tom Abeles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 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. > > > > 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.
