Kent Pardon my slow response, I had to attend to the holiday. Thank you Dexter for your expose on the Thanksgiving holiday. Having graduated from the Plymouth-Carver H.S. in Plymouth, MA, I would agree that the Indian myth is perpetuated there. One of the many hypocrisies that I would like to see addressed in the future. The Atlantic Magazine gave a great account of Pre-Colonial North American tribes that went much further in suggesting a sophisticated society. My ancestors having arrived in North America after the Potato Famine, and themselves greatly oppressed, I take no responsibility in this atrocity and I respond to the cultural conventions of my upbringing, i.e. food and family.
A synopsis of my business proposal PROBLEM: modern society is on a track of accelerated technological advancement that is best represented by a power curve; whereas the learning curve to tech advance have been compared as arithmetic to geometric curves. CONCLUSION: we are not learning fast enough to keep up with tech advance and this leads to subsequent problems. The two that I would like to address are: 1) Informed consent: how can people make informed decisions about technological advancement if they do not understand the technology? 2) Applied solutions: how can people apply technology when they are unaware of the expanding body of technological knowledge available? This discussion ignores two, of many, problems involved in potential solutions. 1) Government self-interest: internal politics influence public policy decisions in ways that are obtuse to the understanding of the general public. 2) Business self-interest: many businesses will diverge from the public good in pursuit of profit. SOLUTION: apply graphics and animation to the learning process of the subject of technological advancement. Of course there is nothing new here. The Chinese proverb "a picture tells a thousand words" shows that this idea is ancient. I have discussed the "labor intensive" nature of this kind of solution with Dexter and we both agree that it would not be very profitable, but I do believe there is a niche market that could provide a living for a small engineering team of four to five people and other intangibles such as workplace flexibility and leadership recognition. This solution implementation has two components: 1) The non-profit component will center around philanthropy of public and private donors. Building a website with a target market of 15-20 year olds and using the Webster's definition of technology: the totality of the means employed to provide objects necessary for human sustenance and comfort. A debate can be established by posing the fundamental question "do you want more or less technology?" This debate, moderated intelligently, can lead to a better understanding of possible solutions. Depending on how this question is answered the website visitor will be introduced to two ends of the technological debate spectrum. At one end the site will use graphics and animation in a sci-fi game strategy and a humanities discussion of organic, sustainable, and environmentally friendly solutions on the other end. 2) The business component will center around informational advertising revenue from businesses. Added value is derived from software expertise developed and knowledge gathered in the process of building the non-profit. This revenue should be limited by ethical considerations, for example, not collecting unsolicited demographic data and not promoting obviously harmful products or services. There are many ethical topics that need to be addressed due to the target market, so please take this synopsis in its logically intended sense. For example: due to the polarizing nature of the debate the analogy "you get to steer the ship: you don't get to run it onto the rocks and you don't get to take it to a desert island" should be applied in understanding the spirit of this enterprise. Why is this business discussion in a Linux User Group environment? The democratic nature of open source software development relating to IT and the superior nature of the Linux OS in science / engineering endeavors lend synergy to this business and they mutually benefit. Brian A. Gallagher [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Eug-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
