[wsfii-discuss] ... take the lead - Date selection

Sat Jun 16 12:46:51 UTC 2007

--- Ian Howard <ihoward at netdotworking.com> wrote:

> Sometimes I also find that the way we in low context
> societies dialogue 
> on these lists might be awkward from people of
> higher context societies. 

Aside from context-levels, there is also the sheer
level of utility. I spent two months last year working
out of India in Amsterdam, where bandwidth was
plentiful, and it enabled me to work in a completely
different manner - quite aside from other lifestyle
issues shaped by living in a different kind of city
and country. 

To 'get' to people, for whom perhaps making a
telephone call can be a nuisance if not a major
effort, to have them suitably and sustainably engaged
in a dialogue about using networks for productivity
and empowerment, is just not straightforward. 

To my mind, this is the most difficult part of the
learning curve, when numbers of people in the world
start getting to make such networks useful tools for
themselves. This must be in the local context, and the
learnings or experiences that happen over the first
couple of years will go much farther to shape their
own opinions and capabilities or wishes to discuss
issues of free information infrastructures. 

The best we can expect to achieve by having such
meetings particularly in 'high-context' societies is
to try and do no harm. The worst we can do is to be a
bunch of unwanted foreigners talking irrelevancies.

Vickram

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