Below is an article I just wrote, you might want to distribute to your
memebers

                    ADVERTISEMENT

        Bridging the digital divide — nontraditional alternatives
        Daoud Kuttab        THE RECENT news from the World Economic Forum held in Davos was
        encouraging. Computer giant Microsoft signed a $1 billion agreement
        with UNDP. This five-year plan aims at bridging the digital divide
        with the developing countries, starting with Egypt, Morocco and
        Mozambique.
        While long overdo, such corporate responsibility is highly welcome.
        Bridging the digital divide between developed and developing
        countries is highly desirable, but in order to be effective much
        more is needed than setting up computer centres in remote areas.
        Simply setting up ICT centres will require high capital costs and
        will have insignificant long-term effects. Costs include real estate
        purchase or rental, equipment purchase and recurring administrative
        costs for technical and administrative staff. There is little proof
        that such centres can lead to a significant rise in computer or
        Internet literacy or that they can ever become sustainable. Instead,
        a major annual cost will have to be borne by the host countries long
        after UNDP and Gate's company leave town.
        While in some cases ICT centres might be the answer, a more
        interesting idea would be to spend the money to create Internet
        literacy on a much wider scale. Inexpensive and accessible Internet
        caf»s can today be found in every corner of the world. In one street
        alone in Irbid, 130 caf»s exist, a world record. These well attended
        Internet caf»s, often created by young entrepreneurs, can be more
        cost-effective than the traditional system of creating ICT centres.
        Their private nature lends them to longer hours and the public at
        large will be less worried about governmental supervision than they
        would in government-run computer centres. As indigenous parts of
        their own communities, these Internet caf»s can easily adapt to the
        local and cultural needs of their own society.
        In order to attain widespread Internet literacy and pave the way
        towards e-government, developing countries need to have many more
        Internet users than the present. This increase need not be
        quantitative only but also qualitative. Women, farmers and
        individuals with physical needs should be included in any Internet
        literacy drive.
        To accomplish such an idea, a voucher system can be used.
        Individuals will use authorised vouchers to redeem time at Internet
        caf»s nearest to their homes. Such a voucher system could be
        sponsored by local and international companies and agencies and will
        drive prices at Internet caf»s even lower than they are today. They
        will also encourage even more Internet caf» owners to establish or
        expand existing centres. Except for the cost of the vouchers, this
        idea can be carried out without any long term costs to local or
        national governments or international agencies. The idea of vouchers
        will be only as a primer or catalyst. A simple on-line tutorial can
        be made available to train newcomers on the basics of Internet use.
        Once Internet literate, most people will continue to use the
        Internet on their own.
        Obviously creating such a voucher system will need monitoring and
        control. Distributing vouchers without regulation or control could
        mean that some of the same young people using the Internet caf»s
        would chat, follow the scores of their favourite sports team or view
        indecent web sites. Instead, these vouchers could be given to NGOs
        to distribute among their members on the basis of clear guidelines
        and criteria. Again, this would encourage and empower NGOs and use
        them in this important computer/Internet literacy battle.
        In almost every town, village or district, one can find a woman's
        NGO, a farming cooperative, a sports club or a labour union that
        would happily agree to be involved in such a distribution plan of
        vouchers for Internet caf»s.
        Finally, bridging the digital divide can never happen unless local
        and international institutions, both governmental and non-
        governmental, spend more time and money into creating content on the
        Internet.
        As the most recent UN Human Development report shows, the knowledge
        deficit in the Arab region is at a dangerously low standing. While
        filling this knowledge vacuum with print material will take much
        time and resources, a much faster way to do that could be through
        electronic publishing. Again, there is much to be done in this area.
        While widely available in English, something as simple as e-book
        conversion software for Arabic text is still unavailable. In a
        region that still witnesses traditional book censors, this seems
        like the simplest idea to bypass authorities that are still trying
        to control idea and thoughts. A tiny fraction of Microsoft's
        billions of dollars can do wonders in creating a real information
        revolution in the Arab region by posting important and useful
        content in Arabic and other non-English languages on the net.
        Bridging the digital divide can be done in many ways and forms.
        Hopefully those interested in this important venture will consider
        alternatives and complementary ideas to the traditional form of
        creating ICT centres. This can be done by a more effective use of
        resources and much more emphasis on content than on hardware.
        Friday-Saturday, February 13-14, 2004

----- Original Message -----
From: "Geert Lovink" <gee-*at*xs4all.nl>;
To: <collabo-*at*topica.com>;
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 12:59 PM
Subject: [freecooperation] Doug Engelbart's collective IQ concept> http://www.bootstrap.org/chronicle/chronicle.html
>
> "Concepts such as augmenting human intellect, improvement
infrastructure,
> co-evolution of artifacts with social-cultural language-practices, and
> bootstrapping evolved directly from Doug Engelbart's work, as did the
> following twenty years of applied co-evolution. Motivating that
framework
> were, and still are the assumptions that complexity and urgency are
> increasing exponentially and that the combination of these two will soon
> challenge our organizations, be they private or public, to henceforth do
> their changing by effective, continuing strategic principles rather than
in
> incremental steps. Therefore, in addition to aspiring to be increasingly
> faster and smarter at their core missions (whether creating better
widgets,
> or solving societal problems), organizations will need to get
increasingly
> faster and smarter at how they keep improving. Engelbart saw both
> organizational missions as relying heavily on a common set of core
> capabilities, which he encapsulated in the term human intellect. Later,
he
> began using the term knowledge work after reading a '68 Peter Drucker
> publication, and later still, more purposefully, switched to the larger,
> centrally significant concept of collective IQ.
> Engelbart's thinking prompted assessment of the infrastructure of
> capabilities that support the operation of organizations of collectively
> purposeful humans, capabilities developed atop their genetically endowed
> capabilities to provide their personal and collective operational
> effectiveness. A myriad of technical and non-technical elements came
into
> play, such as tools, media, language, customs, knowledge, skills,
> procedures, and so on. He perceived that these elements had co-evolved
> slowly over centuries, but that with the explosive emergence of digital
> technology, the technical elements would shoot way ahead of the
> non-technical and cause a trend toward automating rather than to
augmenting
> peoples' activities. It would be necessary, therefore, to gain a grip on
the
> elements of that ever accelerating co-evolutionary process, which means
> purposefully focusing in on the infrastructures of society's activities,
> those that serve to improve our collective capabilities.
>
> >From this emerged the basic concept of bootstrapping. Purposefully
investing
> in improving organizational collective IQ through intelligent
improvement
> strategies promises to yield compound returns. In simple words, the
better
> we get at our collective IQ, the better we'd get at improving our
collective
> IQ.
>
> (...)
>
> In recent years, Engelbart has been heartened by the movements in total
> quality, business process re-engineering, reinventing organizations,
> concurrent engineering, groupware, hypermedia, the World Wide Web, and
all
> the impressive networks of improvement activities sprouting up all over
the
> world. He hopes that enough synergy can be generated among these
activities
> to ignite a serious, thriving bootstrapping activity -- a collaborative
> improvement community aimed at spawning those vast improvements in our
> organizations that will boost mankind's collective IQ to unforeseen
> heights."
>
> ------------------------------
> http://freecooperation.org