On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 09:26, Peter Burgess wrote: > My vote is for narrowband EVERYWHERE connecting little local nodes. > Improve the local infrastructure, and don't focus just on the > international part of it. And my vote is for using technology to reduce > the cost and price of basic communication rather than to maximise > revenue for the technology producers by selling more and more complexity > that adds a lot to the visual experience but not very much at all to the > underlying messages being communicated.
This seems to assume that one size fits all. That narrowband will be adequate because it serves the needs of more people, the vast majority in fact. Or another way of saying it is they don't yet need bulk data. Maybe I am biased, not being part of the vast majority in my identity makeup, but I think that while moving the masses forward, you shouldn't lose sight of the possibility that real change sometimes starts from the ones who are few, so to speak. The best analogy I have is from Snow Crash, where the infocrats are described as feeding off 'biomass' just like whales feed off krill. Both parts are important for a successful, functioning 'system' IMHO. Putting narrowband everywhere and forgetting about broadband can stifle the growth of a small number of different, more modern, more innovative actors. Not everyone needs broadband, but don't forget those who do! I also agree that connectivity is not the whole issue. More the tip of the iceberg. Education, better health care and more capital (monetary, HR etc) are much, much more important. Connectivity should be reduced to the status of a tool that implements, or helps implement, a deeper, more fundamental strategy. Without a clear workable deep strategy, I don't think we should even start on solving connectivity. Put in yet another way, like Simon alluded to, we should work on connecting the people locally but without knowing or planning for what they are going to do with that connectivity is another matter. You can place as much broadband in a village as you please but when they don't know how to leverage this bandwidth, it just 'lowers the barriers' as the gentleman from Cisco mentioned - a roundabout means of saying that there are still some problems ... ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
