> >Yes, I am familar with that plan. Of course, $US3/min is more than the
> monthly income of many Vietnamese villagers. So they're not going to be
> making a whole lot of calls.
And as a result, there will be little exploration. It is only by
exploration, that better and cheaper things are found. Exploration on the
basis of CONTENT, leading to the forming of NEW relationships and
cooperation between individuals and groups that would have never found
each other.
One thing in favor of de-leveling of income, is that those with more
money find the better things and better ways, then pass them down to those
who can not afford to do the initial searching. This is exactly what most
communist organizations are dead set on preventing -- the rise of
intellectual power. Indeed, it is the intelligensia that they deported to
Siberia -- anyone with any education or leadership ability ended up in
Gulags, and re-education camps. My grand-uncle the professor and his
family died in Sibera. My parents escaped by the skin of their teeth.
> Shopping at Eddie Bauer is also a bit of a silly example. Most likely, it'll
> be used for buying agricultural tools, seeds, medical supplies, etc., things
> they really need to really improve their lives. If they do their shopping
Yes. But only AFTER someone else they know has done it. The
mentality of these peasants is not the same as ours, not by a LONG shot!
We are near the peak of Masilow's Hierarchy of Human Needs -- existential,
outgoing, exploratory. Peasants are on the bottom, clinging with hardened
claws to the tried and true just to stay alive, and resentful of those who
are better than they are.
Remember how your parents or your relatives decried some of your
teen-age exploration, your spending money on things that did not work,
etc.? (Especially if they did not have exceptional incomes.) Tell me,
how many software packages did you buy and never install, or discarded in
short order? What would have happened if you had said after the first
package or two, "they are all trash," and not bought more? Peasants are
like that and worse! It is because they are barely able to make ends
meet, because the cost of exploration is far too high, that they became
that way. They are like that relative of yours who still does not have a
computer because he can't see why he needs one.
Remember that old joke about the Russian, Frenchman, and some kind of
industrialist who find a genie and are granted one wish each? The Russian
peasant says his neighbor has a cow, and he hasn't one. He uses his wish
to kill the neighbor's cow, whereas the industrialist wishes for some way
to make something others need or want, thus improving everyone's lives.
That really is the way poor peasants become when they have learned that
NOTHING they do will do them any good.
> offline with a laptop and a CD, and then use some sort of automated logon to
> send the order, then it'd be a few seconds of connect time.
Now that is a good idea! Yes, like a catalog, but only AFTER the
phone became more common. Without the ability to ask questions, which you
wouldn't have done from the pay phone in the local General Store...
(Particularly there, since their high profit margins, and hence their
respect and control over the community, were destroyed by Sears and
Roebuck's inexpensive goods and thinner profit margins.) And so, it is
likely that only after a neighbor or other aquantance gets "one of them",
and finds it good, that others order.
> Which means there's future in e-commerce sites for sustainable agricultural
> tools, etc., all the things that a village needs. A sort of online Whole
> Earth Catalog.
Not for a long time! Not till the kids get hooked on the internet.
> Vietnam is indeed a bad example. Burma maybe yet worse. I think the main
> target is China and India with millions of unconnected villages.
China is still dominated by the local "authority" figures who
discourage any exploration.
One man alone, is nothing; but a group of like minded people can
change the world. If you want to blow China open, you need to air-drop
satellite based cell-phone or cell-notebooks from low earth orbit --
things the government can not jam or regulate. When the population finds
an unregulated, uncensored way to find people with similar feelings, THEN
like minded groups begin to support each other, building a sense of
community, and the will for self determination. Something most
governments fear!
(I laugh, because it was said in the immigrant community that the way
to overthrow communism, was to air-drop Sears catalogs behind the Iron
Curtain to let their citizens know what we Americans can get, and how
cheaply!)
This sense of community and unity is what had happened on the USENET
news groups before rampant spamming and e-mail address harvesting
destroyed many of the smaller topical communities. We had a lot of
minority religions finally take off with intelligent conversations on what
this world and Whatever created it are like. It was a beautiful
intellectual flowering! You probably don't know what it is like to hold a
belief closed in your heart since childhood, knowing no one else would
understand, (at least on anyone living today;) then to find others who
share your inner faith, and are willing to discuss the implications of
those beliefs. I learned the art of writing for the net on those forums,
debating religion as a form of human opinion. (We all worship the same
Great Creatorial Agency. It is only our opinions of what that Agency is
like, that differ; something lost on most fundamentalist sects who can
only control their members by saying that any deity other than theirs,
is The Devil.)
Then the spammers came and just killed it far more effectively than
any government censorship ever could! That is why I hate spammers with a
passion! Yes, the influx of clueless and often argumentative newbies
hurt; but they had some heart and curiosity. You could reach out to them,
see what they believed, and discuss things semi-rationally with most of
them. Even some of the fundamentalists frothing at the mouth that we were
going to hell if we did not worship their god their way, could be reached
by intelligent writing stressing the commonalities of religious belief.
Can't do that with hit and run spammers who flood your mailbox every time
you post!
Telephones are not much good, as one can only reach people one knows,
not people based upon the nature of their opinions. And sparse telephone
distributions are even worse, allowing government censors to easily
identify those with "deviant" beliefs. Telephones are one-to-one. That is
why organizations start telephone trees. (And why one of the first things
the telephone hackers did, was find ways of creating multi-caller "party
lines".) The internet is one-to-many and many-to-one, content as well as
individual addressable, and time independent. It is this content
addressability that creates the real power of the net.
(Too tired to really edit this right. Anyone else want to continue the
gist of this?)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------- Every mouse click, a Vote ---------------
------ Do they vote For, or Against your pages? -------
-------------------------------------------------------
Hit and Link Analysis: http://www.mall-net.com/webcons/
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-------------------------------------------------------
Web Imagineering -- Analysis, Architecture, Automation,
Advanced CGI-BIN Programming, and Content Development.
<A HREF="http://www.mall-net.com"> www.Mall-Net.com</A>
* Anti-Spam FAQ: http://www.mall-net.com/spamfaq.html
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
