Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960514163827.7596E-100000@utkux4.utcc.utk.edu> Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 16:51:57 -0400 From: Chris Hodge <mailto:hodge@UTKUX.UTCC.UTK.EDU> Subject: Re: Re[2]: Computers to Africa To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
I've been following this thread with great interest, and I believe I can appreciate both views. I work for Network Services at a university in the US. When I go home at night, I go home to a pentium, a 28.8 baud modem and a subsidized SLIP account. I am aware of my privelged status. Rather than take a side, however, I would like to offer an observation.There is a great pressure here in the West to have the newest, the fastest, the most powerful. Word processing software that used to load on a single disk now require 16 disks -- no, they require a CD-ROM -- and they require more powerful, more expensive hardware to support this new software. Word 7.0 has more bells and whistles than my original WordStar, it is easier, and it does have some added features: but the quality of the work I do has not necessarily improved due to this technology. Perhaps it is colonialism to send old equipment to Africa, perhaps we are perpetuating the image -- the reality -- of backwardness that serves those of us in the West so well. But when we suggest shipping top of the line equipment, maybe we're also exporting the rampant consumerism that is literally consuming us here in the West. Perhaps that's more insidious.
My point is, I think we are moving away from viewing computers as tools, to be judged according to whether or not they do the job that needs to be done. (Wendell Berry has a nice checklist for technological advances, which I don't have handy right now, but I seem to remember it took into account the simplicity of the tool, and the effects it would have on the individual and community.)
Chris Hodge