Hi Ami, I travel to Brazil several times a year for various Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) conferences.
I have been following the Telecentro sites for some time. They vary from cites in the middle of the city of Sao Paulo where the city government is funding them along with other "community" centers (dancing, small business development, etc) to places which the community itself puts together a Telecentro out of an abandoned building, donated computers, FOSS and volunteers. When I visited the one in Sao Paulo, I saw not only people using the computers to scan the web, send email and edit documents, but volunteers teaching people how to program in the "C" language, using the computers as a "lab". I also saw people learning systems administration skills, so the Telecentros were going beyond just the idea of "simple computer skills". I have heard that in other areas people thought the Telecentros would not survive, that people would break into the buildings and steal the computers. This (for the most part) has not happened, since the inhabitants of the area value the services of the Telecentros so much that they keep an eye on them, and people who stole the Telecentros' computers would have a hard time reselling them, so they look for easier prey. In some areas the Telecentros are creating a "reverse blight", giving traffic to an area that ordinarily would not have people going past, and therefore opening up the area to small shops, etc. One small piece of bad news is that the choice of software for the Telecentros is becoming a political hot button, and there is at least the threat that some of the Telecentros might be forced to switch to proprietary software. This would be bad for the people who want to learn how to use the computer at the Telecentro, then use the same software in their homes. Most of them can not afford proprietary software, so they would have to pirate it, if proprietary software were used to instruct them. md -- Jon "maddog" Hall Executive Director Linux International(R) email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 80 Amherst St. Voice: +1.603.672.4557 Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A. WWW: http://www.li.org Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association (R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. (R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used pursuant to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of Linus Torvalds, owner of the Linux trademark on a worldwide basis (R)UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the USA and other countries. _______________________________________________ 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.
