[Wikipedia-l] Re: Indian languages and grants (was Re: Combined effort)

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthere wrote:

> Guaka a écrit:
>
>> I think providing internet to small community centers in poor areas
>> under the condition they add something to Wikipedia - you can set up
>> contests to see if it could work, or to simply directly pay for every
>> article of sufficient size (give out a buck, so you'll have 10.000
>> articles at the end, if you'll forget about overhead costs...) is much
>> more cost-effective. Once there are a 1000 articles in a Wikipedia it
>> will easily advertise "itself". Sending out mails will be much more
>> effective than when there is nothing...
>
> I remember something someone told me once. He said :
>
> do not just bring computers to our villages. Bring computers with 
> ideas of how to use them, make them alive. Show us something that we 
> can transform ourselves from an education or economical point of view. 
> Please do not come with computers and a cd rom of wikipedia, which 
> will only tell us "we made this for you, now use it", rather bring 
> computers, plus a wiki installed, a system to post articles by mail 
> and a line good enough to send mails and download articles from time 
> to time.

I just put my hand on a collection of essays by Ivan Ilich, "Celebration 
of Awarenes", published in 1971.  I looked at one in particular: 
"Planned Poverty: The End Result of Technical Assistance."   Among other 
things that he says:  "the plough of the rich can do as much harm as 
their swords."  "As the mind of a society is progressively schooled, 
step by step their individuals lose their sense that it might be 
possible to live without being inferior to others."  "The 
counter-research on fundamental alternatives to current prepackaged 
solutions is the element most critically needed if poor nations are to 
have a liveable future."  "We must seek survival in a Third World in 
which human ingenuity can peacefully outwit machined might. The only way 
to reverse the disastrous trend to increasing underdevelopment, hard as 
it is, is to learn to laugh at accepted solutions in order to change the 
demands which make them necessary."

It makes me wonder whether the latest Blair/Bush declaration to 
eliminate the debt of impoverished countries is really just a palatable 
way of announcing a round of welfare payments to bail out the banks. :-)

You make a very strong point.  You don't bring progress to poor 
countries by bringing them truckloads of rice, but by encouraging them 
how to grow the rice.  ... not by selling them high tech goods, but by 
letting them have the opportunity to develop more advanced goods without 
the restrictions of the arcane intellectual property rules of the rich.  
You don't tell them that the recipes that have nourished them for 
centuries, and  crowned their feast and celebrations are not 
encyclopedic  You don't belittle their efforts by telling them that the 
only local high school which houses their future hopes is somehow not 
notable.

Sorry if this seemed a little rantish. ;-)

Ec