Like you, Andy, I am a believer. What I want to keep in mind is John Gardner's discussion of two kinds of people who create problems for a cause: "unloving critics" and "uncritical lovers."I want to be a "loving critic."
That's fine. I guess.
What I picked up on Castell's snippet was a tired argument that we should be watchful that (printing presses) (machine guns) (atom bomb) (stem cell research) might "fall in the wrong hands".
My cousin just returned from a trek in the far outback of Nepal and Mongolia. Yet even in the most remote places she managed to find a cybercafe to email us updates of her travels. Sure -- Osama & Company can also use those same cafes.
Does that mean we should outlaw the cafe's? Does that mean we should be a critic of them?
"Freedom" cuts both ways. We can have Taliban "freedom" where a very few decide what the rest can have; or we can have Russian or (Middle Eastern) style "freedom" where only the very rich can decide how the rest should live; or we can have "freedom" as seen in the "modern" world - Western Europe, Canada, the United States, most of East Asia. Or something in between - India, China, South Africa, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, etc. etc. etc.
The question I would like to ask SteveE is this one: Which of those societies are the ones most likely to want to increase the numbers of telecenters? And which ones would just as soon they disappear entirely? And which side of that fence are you, the "unloving critic" on?
Please give me some reason why there shouldn't be more (rather than less) telecenters --other than the one that the bad guys could use them too.
--
John W. Hibbs
http://www.bfranklin.edu/johnhibbs
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