Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.91.951214105043.15818E-100000@copper.ucs.indiana.edu> Date: Thu, 14 Dec 1995 11:05:31 -0500 From: The Big Glee Bopper <mailto:thom@INDIANA.EDU> Subject: Re: (IT vs. Poverty) = (Let Them Eat "IT") ?! To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
On Thu, 14 Dec 1995, Wendy B. Lowe wrote: >
> After seeing paper documents in the heart of the Sahel (Senegal, Mali,
> Niger) browning and illegible, dusty and brittle, awaiting the sirrocco
> to gather them up and bury them at the bottom of a dune ... or conversely
> documents in the same medium in the steaming Tropics (Congo, Guinea,
> Zaire, Sri Lanka - SW) wrinkled and blotched, clinging to everything they
> touch, I am not convinced that pulped, pressed and dried lignin is that
> great a "hardware"?
How many $2000 readers [ computers? ] have you seen at the bottom of the dunes? How old was the _wrinkled, blotched pulped, pressed and dried lignin_ clinging to everything? Do you think the _lingin_ was used? Do you think it was effective at its given task? How useful do you think a computer is without a pulped, pressed and dried lignin manual? Most of the rice farmers in central Java work knee deep in water all day, maybe have a single 20 watt light bulb in their homes if the crop was good that year, usually can't read, and actually don't need a computer. What they need is information communicated in a form they can understand and which makes sense in terms of their fields over which _they_ are the expert, not the policy analyst sitting in Jakarta playing with the latest expert system software -- usually reading a couple of those pulped, pressed and dried lignin manual -- trying to figure out how to predict the future when in reality they actually can't predict now!
Computers are useful if they are applied appropriately. Possible the most appropriate thing you can do with a computer in a context such as Central Java is to use it to produce good Newsletter/Newspaper information which can be passed around or tacked up to the wall of the village center.
--Thom