Hi, This is going to be a bit of an off-topic angry rant, but I'll add my two cents here:
I'm really sick of going to tech events and watching panels of fly-in's from the World Bank, established corporations, or whatever, tell us we need to "think bigger" or that we should look at Silicon Valley as some kind of model to emulate. In my opinion this notion is ridiculous, primarily because the technology we have access to today is fundamentally different than what Silicon Valley had in its heyday. It's functionality has been crippled to benefit incumbents and prevent disruptive technology: 1) Nobody has a public IP address. While we've bypassed the desktop revolution and jumped straight to smart-phones, Internet access is now sold by mobile operators who NAT everyone's connection. This prevents phones from receiving incoming connections from the outside world. This makes peer-to-peer networking nearly impossible and severely limits the potential functionality of mobile applications. As a result, application developers typically must purchase "cloud" services in order to relay data between their users. Control over the network has become centralized and established service providers have become gatekeepers. 2) Data-caps. Silicon Valley exploded when users moved from AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, and other services -- which sold walled-garden access by the "minute" -- to flat-rate Internet plans sold by speed (e.g. dial-up, DSL, cable). Users did not have to make a cost decision every time they wanted to try out new (often higher bandwidth) services like multi-player gaming, Napster, Shoutcast, YouTube, MySpace, or whatever. Thus, new services frequently emerged, many exploded in popularity, and networks had a huge incentive to reinvest in their networks. In the wondrous desktop-skipping mobile revolution of today, access is sold almost exclusively via data-capped bundles. Users need to make a cost decision every time they do anything on the Internet. Disruptive, often high-bandwidth services like YouTube are now an impossible proposition because users can't afford to use the service. Service providers no longer have as much incentive to reinvest in their networks. Application developers shuffle around small amounts of data between users and nothing more. In summary, expecting East Africa (or anywhere today) to emulate Silicon Valley is ridiculous. We can't be the same thing; we don't have the same tools. Regards, Kyle Spencer On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 12:05 PM, Otandeka Simon Peter <[email protected]>wrote: > > Food for thought.. > > > http://www.iddsalim.com/blog/2013/07/08/3-reasons-why-silicon-semenya-kenya-will-never-match-silicon-valley-us/ > > P. > > _______________________________________________ > The Uganda Linux User Group: http://linux.or.ug > > Send messages to this mailing list by addressing e-mails to: > [email protected] > Mailing list archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ > Mailing list settings: http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/lug > To unsubscribe: http://kym.net/mailman/options/lug > > The Uganda LUG mailing list is generously hosted by INFOCOM: > http://www.infocom.co.ug/ > > The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including > attachments if any). The mailing list host is not responsible for them in > any way. >
_______________________________________________ The Uganda Linux User Group: http://linux.or.ug Send messages to this mailing list by addressing e-mails to: [email protected] Mailing list archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Mailing list settings: http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/lug To unsubscribe: http://kym.net/mailman/options/lug The Uganda LUG mailing list is generously hosted by INFOCOM: http://www.infocom.co.ug/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The mailing list host is not responsible for them in any way.
