[Foundation-l] MMORPG and Wikimedia

[Noein]

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Please stop any sarcasm. There are ideas worth the consideration, as
with any newly available technological tool.
We're aiming in this mailing list to shape the futur of the human
knowledge through the foundation, right? So it is right to talk about
the future, it's not an arrogance.
Of course, any affirmation about the future must be considered an
hypothesis, however convinced may seem his bearer, but also however
unconvinced we are. Listen and think. Then answer so that our
interlocutor listens and thinks too. Otherwise, all this mailing list is
sheer struggle of prestige, power or noise.


Now, one of the unsolved questions of the WMF is: how do we plan to
communicate with analphabets?

Even supposing we could bring them a (free) internet terminal, which is
far from done, we would still face the barrier of language and the
uselessness of writing.

A first answer comes to my mind: with the oral or gestural tradition,
using roleplay communicates an idea and interacts with the stranger.

Because we cannot send people to each ethnical community and leave them
as crucial interprets their whole life, this impossibility undermines
seriously the main objective of the WMF.: "Imagine a world in which
every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all
human knowledge."

If we cannot immediately alphabetize people, should we abandon them?
Can't we try alternate ways than text?

Is the computer completely useless or has it other uses?
Does it offer real options to communicate with indians or amerindians
tribes, without teaching them nor forcing them?

3d worlds could tell myths (our myths and theirs) way better than words
or scriptures. An itinerant wiki worker could interface those people
with his or her wiki-device (labtop, mobile, pda, portable
videoconference device, etc.) and show them things they would understand.
Without forcing, just proposing.
The wiki worker would teach the people to use the device to keep
interacting with the wikimedia net when he's gone.

Would they care to know something? Would they care to ask? Would they
care to say something? To answer something?

If we keep with this scenario, "Wikiask" mission would be to collect the
question of an ethny, translate it to everybody, collect the answers of
people who want to answer, and send back the various answers to the
ethny through understandable means: a 3d world, a theater piece played
by comedians, a film, a story in your language, an artisanal object,
art, whichever channel the ethny understands.


An example of communicative art:
Roleplay is a narrative technique that makes understand and live an
information (a situation). There are other techniques, but bear with
this one for a while and let's develop the idea.

There are humanitarians people and passionate ethnologues who know the
exact difficulties of communicating with non-occidenal communities and
who may even know some solutions. They may need funds, material,
technologies, internet, videos and 3d worlds to give (never sell!) free
access to knowledge.

Then again, maybe not. Discuss.

Note: I'm not necessarily fan of the 3d idea, but as Robert Honing said,
we should embrace new ideas and juggle with them. Voltaire have said: "I
do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death
your right to say it."
Don't lose the gigantisc scope of the goal. The roleplay idea and the 3d
idea are just hypothesis. The point is, what's at stake is so deep that
we should investigate any promising idea.)

My 2p.



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