> I understand that Don. But you can't be *sure* that will happen. > Early adopters don't always make effective helpers; in my many > years working in community technology settings, I have seen that > over and over
Hi Steve, True enough, although we can never be 'sure' of the success of any initiative. Structured training also fails or there would be no university drop-outs; no illiterate kids leaving our schools. It's a matter of advantage outweighing disadvantage. My years of experience in communal technology have taught that community's entering technology adoption are the very community's with cultural strengths and applicability most suited to the creation of self-developing support networks. They succeed in this because they do not share all the elements of individual isolations so prevalent in developed (technically literate) communities. Supportive networks already exist in these communities; it's just a matter of a few people grasping the technology and bringing this knowledge to existing networks. I have seen this happen time and again. The question (so far un-asked here) of whether or not the type of technical adoption promoted by Negroponte's proposal will lead some communities to cultural and social fragmentation/destruction is of a higher level - much will depend on the communities themselves - IMO this is a question no less worthy of debate and analysis before giving overly serious consideration to Negroponte's proposal. Cheers, Don _______________________________________________ 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.
