Dear GKD colleagues, I'm very happy to learn of this discussion, and of the many people working on these issues. My name is Andrius Kulikauskas and in 1998 I founded Minciu Sodas <http://www.ms.lt> a private business, and open laboratory in Lithuania, that serves and organizes independent thinkers around the world. Our mission is to use low-bandwidth but high-customization technologies to link independent thinkers in efforts that benefit a wide range of people, including the difficult to reach, and are both economically and socially sustainable. Currently we have 50 active and 500 passive participants around the world. We work primarily through online discussion groups such as: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/minciu_sodas_en/> in English, but also in Lithuanian, Spanish and other languages.
Our projects build "social sustainability" by focusing on the individuals and encouraging meaningful relationships. For this reason, we drew up a vision to create software that might help us make effective use of the marginal Internet access that we already have. We described the functionality that we desire as a "Social Networking Kit (optimized for marginal connectivity) by which activists may be heard, found, informed, helped, integrated." (visit <http://www.no-hit.com/andrius/archives/000074.html>) We start by customizing, by serving individuals, and overcoming the obstacles facing the individuals, which might be training, tweaking, writing scripts or macros, whatever is needed for the particular thinker to participate in global society. Generally, we apply ideas from our paper "An Economy for Giving Everything Away" <http://www.ms.lt/en/workingopenly/givingaway.html> We assume, as in Lithuania, that many people may get access to a computer ($200) but have marginal access. We suggest creating a modeling language for web activity that manages "agents". It gives the user a universal interface and allows people to work offline -- contributing to a Wiki, or moderating a discussion group, or participating through a business networking site like Ryze. Then when they have a connection, their material is executed by a web service and some crude artificial intelligence. We propose that such a system might be offered by Internet Service Providers, or host services. One example of this kind of low bandwidth functionality that we're already working on is Common Channels, <http://www.commonchannels.com>, by which we're trying to let groups subscribe and contribute to information channels. Here's a sample letter for "including people with marginal Internet access": <http://www.commonchannels.com/cgi-bin/letter.py?channelID=16> These are the thoughts that bring me here. (And the sharp eye of Robin Good <www.masternewmedia.org>) I'm very glad to feel that I'm in the right place! I look forward to immersing myself in this discussion, considering and contributing new ideas, and finding partners. Peace, Andrius Andrius Kulikauskas Minciu Sodas http://www.ms.lt [EMAIL PROTECTED] +370 52645950 Vilnius, Lithuania ------------ 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
