RE: [ga] Agenda for GA meeting in Santiago, Chile

[Srikanth Narra <snarra@talus.net>]

Antony

I agree with you too - that it should be online. BUT....

(speaking from the prespective of someone coming from the 'third' world).

For overwhelming majority of world population bandwidth and even basic
connectivity to net is a huge issue and yet they have stake in the internet.


I know of quite a few firms / people in my country and other countries who
have sites put up on there behalf by third parties / friends residing
overseas and they don't have even access to see there own site. 

email to their addresses is printed and faxed or hand delivered over to
them. This email delivery service by hand, fax or phone is in some countries
provided by a division of the postal department.

While email and limited browsing is ok. Audio and realtime chat, etc is
lets..say challenging and expensive (because of initial machine cost and
dollar conversion rate). Much easier and cheaper for people in this
countries to go to a location within their own countries. 

To get a genuine broad international participation. The ideal thing to do
would be to have meetings strictly online by email and when real time
meetings are required have it online but with allocated locations
(universities / computer trade exhibitions) in most third world countries
where people in this countries could go to and participate online from. 

Ideally leverage some computer industry sponsership - where vendors can
advertise and provide free connectivity for the meet in return for getting a
chance to display there wares. Should cost much to do it. 

(But then of course the whole process needs to have earned some credibiliy
for industry to sponser it. )

Sri 

*** can ignore the rest of message ***

Culturally (a side note - since you seem to be interested in non-west view
point - some background information to relate to).

Unlike in West where internet is at fingertip reach 24 hours 365 days. For
quite a few of us in India its more like a movie going experence. Going to a
cafe and check email / download / browse, etc once a week or so. Or if
staying a small town - once a month head to the city and the internet cafe
to reply or browse. Have net connection to people thru emails - read over
phone / faxed or delivered. 

In my on state (Andhra Pradesh) the governement is now putting up internet
access at all major bus stations and rail stations for access to citizens -
as much to enable them pay utility bills and interact with govt. as for
browsing.  

To interact with some departments of the government online interaction is
the about to become permitted only way (cuts oppertunity for corruption or
chance of red tape). Add to that 24 official languages (with different
scripts and grammer) and different regional cultural interface. 

Most of programmers are expected to learn by heart the software manuals,
visualize and rehearse it in their heads a thousand times - before they even
lay fingers (or in some cases eyes) on the real systems on which they are to
program - because computer time is valuable. 

Typically in a school the kids submit programs on written on paper (much
like rest of homework) and teacher corrects in with ink. Couple of times in
a school year they get access to the machines to try and see the programs in
action. The kids pick the best one they wrote and go for it - in the tiny
time slot they have - mostly in teams of 2's or 3's.

Its a whole new culturenet  - not same as your internet. :)

Third Take on ICANN (streaching it):- 

Steer disbelief at what's happening and proposed (ICANN don't seem to have
any idea how many in the world are watching them or any sense of how their
actions being recorded on net today will be viewed in history). Hope still
exists that the process can make a turn for the better and worth
participating. 

The more ICANN screws up the less they will invest in domain names endling
in .com / .net / .org and move to their own ccTLD. At some point this whole
thing will either end up in US court or the USG will have to intervene to
protect their citizens 401k plans. 


-----Original Message-----
From: Antony Van Couvering
To: ga@dnso.org
Sent: 8/18/99 9:08 AM
Subject: RE: [ga] Agenda for GA meeting in Santiago, Chile

Siegfried Langenbach wrote,

>
>I guess the bigest problem is the same with email + chat :
>
>some people, not seeing the face of others tend to become rude.
>siegfried
>

You speak the truth, yet we must do this online.

Antony