Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Connectivity Is Not The Right Word
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
Re:[GKD-DOTCOM] Connectivity Is Not The Right Word
Dear Colleagues, Broadband is a real enemy of development. One of my staff summed up the situation in the underdeveloped SOUTH way back in the 1970s when he said that "Every year that goes by they get another 10 years behind". And broadband is the sort of technology initiative that helps make this a sad reality. There is nothing wrong with broadband as a step forward from other connectivity, but making broadband the standard before any other form of connectivity is universal (not to mention a lot of other basic needs) is a humanitarian disaster. Once again we have an obscene allocation of scarce development resources. We need to systemicly optimise value adding in development and end value destruction through development and foreign direct investment. I agree with Simon Woodside that connectivity is not the right focus. Export driven development has failed largely because when everyone is exporting to drive development, the supply booms and nothing happens with demand .. d .. the prices go down terms of trade tank. Development is about the quality of life in a community getting improved, and that is about value adding in the community. Having the ability to communicate LOCALLY is enormously valuable, and should be done better than yesterday, but it need not be done using broadband! Simon has described the importance of the nodes. Absolutely yes. And the key nodes in quality of life are those that relate to the living that goes on in the community. 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. Sincerely Peter Burgess Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Fax: 707 371 7805 [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages Simon Woodside wrote: > I was paying attention when the internet was first developing in the > west, here in Canada in particular. I think that the history of the > internet is largely ignored by those who are developing connectivity for > the developing world. But ignored, at the risk of going off in the > completely wrong direction. > > The internet is all about "nodes". A node is a knot between strands, a > place where many lines come together. In a computer network, it's a > point of interconnection, where two data lines cross. What happens in > the node, is that the data intermingles and doubles. Data that enters a > node can exit in any direction, or in all directions at once. ..snip... > So ... connectivity is not the right goal. The goal should be, what are > you doing to build the LOCAL internet. Not just to connect people but to > interconnect them by creating internet nodes? 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