Re: [DDN] A Littl' More On Bridging the Digital Divide in the US
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I struggle with this $100 dollar initiative because I know that in many
countries, onehundred US dollars is a LOT of money. There were some initiatives
that were a locational resource that served whole villages through UNESCO......
{snipped here - PSL}
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/1000-village.htm
You must read on to learn about the technology bits. Bonnie
bbracey at aol com
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Hola Hermana Bonnie and All Fellow Bridge Builders ~ In the urban Inner Third
World where I live in Sacramento, California $100 dollars can still be a LOT of
money and endless innovative imagination is priceless!
I found the websource, after a link and got the whole page ~ with some bits and
bytes herein...
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If the world were a village of 1,000 people ...
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Dona Meadows
If the world were a village of 1,000 people, it would include:
· 584 Asians
· 124 Africans
· 95 East and West Europeans
· 84 Latin Americans
· 55 Soviets (including for the moment Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and
other national groups)
· 52 North Americans
· 6 Australians and New Zealanders
The people of the village have considerable difficulty in communicating:
· 165 people speak Mandarin
· 86 English
· 83 Hindi/Urdu
· 64 Spanish
· 58 Russian
· 37 Arabic
That list accounts for the mother tongues of only half the villagers. The other
half speak (in descending order of frequency) Bengali, Portuguese, Indonesian,
Japanese, German, French and 200 other languages.
In this village of 1,000 there are:
· 329 Christians (among them 187 Catholics, 84 Protestants, 31 Orthodox)
· 178 Moslems
· 167 "non-religious"
· l32 Hindus
· 60 Buddhists
· 45 atheists
· 3 Jews
· 86 all other religions
One-third (330) of the 1,000 people in the world village are children and only
60 are over the age of 65. Half the children are immunized against preventable
infectious diseases such as measles and polio.
Just under half of the married women in the village have access to and use
modern contraceptives.
This year 28 babies will be born. Ten people will die, 3 of them for lack of
food, 1 from cancer, 2 of the deaths are of babies born within the year. One
person of the 1,000 is infected with the HIV virus; that person most likely has
not yet developed a full-blown case of AIDS.
With the 28 births and 10 deaths, the population of the village next year will
be 1,018.
In this 1,000-person community, 200 people receive 75 percent of the income;
another 200 receive only 2 percent of the income.
Only 70 people of the 1,000 own an automobile (although some of the 70 own more
than one automobile).
About one-third have access to clean, safe drinking water.
Of the 670 adults in the village, half are illiterate.
The village has six acres of land per person, 6,000 acres in all, of which
· 700 acres are cropland
· 1,400 acres pasture
· 1,900 acres woodland
· 2,000 acres desert, tundra, pavement and other wasteland
· The woodland is declining rapidly; the wasteland is increasing. The other
land categories are roughly stable.
The village allocates 83 percent of its fertilizer to 40 percent of its
cropland - that owned by the richest and best-fed 270 people. Excess fertilizer
running off this land causes pollution in lakes and wells. The remaining 60
percent of the land, with its 17 percent of the fertilizer, produces 28 percent
of the food grains and feeds 73 percent of the people. The average grain yield
on that land is one-third the harvest achieved by the richer villagers.
In the village of 1,000 people, there are:
· 5 soldiers
· 7 teachers
· 1 doctor
· 3 refugees driven from home by war or drought
The village has a total budget each year, public and private, of over $3
million - $3,000 per person if it is distributed evenly (which, we have already
seen, it isn't).
Of the total $3 million:
· $181,000 goes to weapons and warfare
· $159,000 for education
· $l32,000 for health care
The village has buried beneath it enough explosive power in nuclear weapons to
blow itself to smithereens many times over. These weapons are under the control
of just 100 of the people. The other 900 people are watching them with deep
anxiety, wondering whether they can learn to get along together; and if they
do, whether they might set off the weapons anyway through inattention or
technical bungling; and, if they ever decide to dismantle the weapons, where in
the world village they would dispose of the radioactive materials of which the
weapons are made.
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Donella (Dana) Meadows (1941-2001) has written a regular bi-weekly column
called "The Global Citizen" that are equally thought provoking
Related Links ~
http://www.sustainer.org/meadows/
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/insights.html
Comment: If we see Mother Earth as a world village and human beings as an
endangered species then we can see we have our hard work cut out for us on many
levels in different ways. Indeed, faint hearts never win decisive battles, so
we must gather our courage, keep our heartbeat strong and press onward in this
New Millennium!
To echo, the problem of the high tech digital divide is a part of a far larger
whole spectrum of vital global issues. Our partial experience is not always
universal truth nor does our limited range of vision always see the overall big
picture. Great challenges call for great movements galvanized by an ocean of
great people who ultimately come to know that we are all one people, one
bloodline and one heart.
Above all, we must always factor into our critical analyses that the common
basics of human survival forever remain the basics: food, clothing, shelter,
medical care and quality education. We organize and unite the people based upon
our common desires and needs.
African proverb: When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion. Let us be good
at spinning strong webs! Mitakuye Oyasin!
http://www.dreamkeepers.net/popups/dreamkeepers/video/mitakuye.html
Help Build Bridges, Not Borders!
Peter S. Lopez ~Field Coordinator
Sacramento, Califas, USA
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HumaneRightsAgenda/
http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/sacranative
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