[wsfii-discuss] Economic Sustainability of Community Wireless

[Horst Krause]

hello marco + wsfii-discuss-list,

with great interest i follow this *sustainability*-thread.

> when we want to have an economical sustainability FOR THE PEOPLE, we
> will need tools designed for exceptionally this goal. these tools
> already exist. certain types cooperatives belong to these tools as I
> believe.

i think about the impact, 'development' has into a weakend society,
and the reasons and circumstances that drive self-declared developers.
because, i recognise a large gap in realisation/discussion between:
- high expectations in/for *III./IV.-world*-countries, and
- the low success to overcome digital-divide inside rich societies. 

many reports seem to me too positivly tinted, for example: opportunities,
capacity/comunity/democracy-building, potentials, synergy, ect.,
or the hardbreaking foo of those, planing to sell a chicken,
would be empowered to search the i-net to maximise cash flow ;-)

shure only a part benefits from this shifting, the social-divide will deepen,
and, first of all and ever, digital fences will be put up by this evolution.
so called development is much based on media-hyp, tech.-talk, nerdism-egos,
figures+numbers, progress-myth, futur-hopes, ect., to call some, only
little reflected missionairic, colonial, touristic, western vallues.

everbody's darlings like to talk about targets, forces, tasks, successes,
but it makes me supicius, that many of these so hailed solutions,
do NOT work fine, or got under critics; even under developed conditions,
or refer unconsciously and narrow-horizonted to nothing else but
- some akademic-sky-watcher-blub and their media-campaigners,
- the developments of the (soft-)develope(r,d) and
- their developing-world-successors: micro-telcos +  net-shop-owners,
- bruised IT-omnipotence-fantasy, now to be compensated in a
  once-again + far-away - attempt in africa/asia.

are there some critical, serios, competent field researches about 
social, cultural, environmental side-effekts of IT-connectivity?
but deeper than usual win-win-game of self-portrayals by embedded media.
please recall to me some links i read diagonal earlier @ this list.


bye, horst krause, berlin
offlinehorst at web.de




On Fri, 06 Apr 2007 18:38:24 +0200
marco <marco.pompe at web.de> wrote:

> jeff buderer wrote:
> > Marco,
> >
> > I think we need your perspective to bring this process forward at least
> > in Ghana so please do continue to engage those people you mentioned.
> >
> >   
> my general opinion is, that it is very possible to deal with even big
> companies, when have good idea of how to play the "game". we have to
> consider the arguments of vickram crishna very well, to get that kind of
> good idea about it ...
> 
> i do think, that we can create a space, where in we can set the rules to
> a certain extend. we have to have a look at how the market and its big
> player work, how ecomical, social and psychological processes are
> shaping the world in order to capital investment and profit maximising.
> if we understand what will stab in our back and what will benefit the
> community in the end, we have the basics to deal with corporations. also
> i want to point at the several ethical investment facilities we have in
> US and Europe ... the conditions are fantastic (compared to SERO). its a
> matter of collective WILL in my eyes ...
> 
> when we want to have an economical sustainability FOR THE PEOPLE, we
> will need tools designed for exceptionally this goal. these tools
> already exist. certain types cooperatives belong to these tools as I
> believe. NGOs can help as well. loose networks as well.
> my suggestion is to focus on the founding of a half global / half local
> hardware supply cooperative and a similar ISP-cooperative. i wonder if
> we should go in details ...
> 
> grts, marco pompe, berlin
> 
> 
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