A NY Times article last month points out a crisis of planetary proportions whose implications are staggering. Highlights are mine.
A lack of infrastructure is the biggest problem. In many countries, communications networks were destroyed during years of civil conflict, and continuing political instability deters governments or companies from investing in new systems. E-mail messages and phone calls sent from some African countries have to be routed through Britain, or even the United States, increasing expenses and delivery times. About 75 percent of African Internet traffic is routed this way and costs African countries billions of extra dollars each year that they would not incur if their infrastructure was up to speed.“Most African governments haven’t paid much attention to their infrastructure,” said Vincent Oria, an associate professor of computer science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a native of the Ivory Coast. “In places where hunger, AIDS and poverty are rampant, they didn’t see it as critical until now.”
Africa’s only connection to the network of computers and fiber optic cables that are the Internet’s backbone is a $600 million undersea cable running from Portugal down the west coast of Africa. Built in 2002, the cable was supposed to provide cheaper and faster Web access, but so far that has not happened.
Prices remain high because the national telecommunications linked to the cable maintain a monopoly over access, squeezing out potential competitors. And plans for a fiber optic cable along the East African coast have stalled over similar access issues. Most countries in Eastern Africa, like Rwanda, depend on slower satellite technology for Internet service.
The result is that Africa remains the least connected region in the world, and the digital gap between it and the developed world is widening rapidly. “Unless you can offer Internet access that is the same as the rest of the world, Africa can’t be part of the global economy or academic environment,” said Lawrence H. Landweber, professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who was also part of an early effort to bring the Web to Africa in the mid-1990s. “The benefits of the Internet age will bypass the continent.”
Can the planet afford to have an entire continent left out of the meshverse? Considering that it’s the birthplace of humanity and still home to vast human and material resources leaving it out would be like leaving out a major organ. Making significant progress in addressing this crisis could have tremendous upside. While it is not inherently a technological problem, innovative uses of technology could make a big difference.
… filed under William Gibson quotes: “the street finds it’s own uses for things” …
Welcome to the Beach of the Future, where high tide meets high-tech.
If this southern New Jersey city’s plans come to fruition next summer, Ocean City would be a place where an electronic wristband can pay for access to the beach, food, drinks and parking, and can even send a text message to a mother’s cell phone if a child strays too far away from her beach chair.
It would be a place where the garbage cans could e-mail the Public Works Department to come empty them, and lifeboats that float away could send signals to help the city track them down.
And people wouldn’t even think about trying to sneak onto the beach without paying: Beach checkers would be able to scan the sands with hand-held devices and instantly know who among that group of 15 people sprawled out on towels and under umbrellas didn’t pay to get onto the beach.
These are among the features of a citywide wireless network Ocean City is planning for next summer that would offer residents free Internet access. Tourists would pay about $6 a day, helping pay for the network.
Beach badges, those plastic or cloth scourges of the Jersey Shore could become a thing of the past if this catches on.
“This is the future,” said Karen Kinloch, a summer resident. “It’s where we’re at right now. It’s probably overdue. It’s kind of antiquated to take a piece of plastic and pin it to your swimsuit.”
APP.COM – Beach tags to give way to wireless wristbands | Asbury Park Press Online
The Guardian has an excellent article that is very relevant to the Mesh Belief posts:
We take our young children to science museums, then as they get older we stop. In spite of threats like global warming and avian flu, most adults have very little understanding of how the world works. So, 50 years on from CP Snow’s famous ‘Two Cultures’ essay, is the old divide between arts and sciences deeper than ever?
via reBang who fingers two key quotes
Ordinary people have to keep up. In the world we live in, the new economy, you have to become scientifically literate or you will fall quickly from view.
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We no longer make and mend, so we no longer know how anything works.
I would note too that this isn’t just about money – science plays key roles in health, global warming and art too. We don’t have to have an age of ignorance but to stop this trend we need to focus more on people(yet another reason to use the term meshverse) and lots of good simulations and visualizations aimed at making complex phenomena more comprehensible to non-experts. The emphasis is because this cuts both ways – the scientifically literate need to be literate in the arts as well. A number of posts here in the MJ deal with education and there are many examples in Croquet.
Though we don’t yet have an interplanetary internet, NASA TV provides some very nice coverage of live events such as the Space Shuttle Atlantis docking with the International Space Station. Some pictures I took of the people, places and things associated with this event follow. Also, if you’re fortunate, you may be able to catch a short glimpse of the Space Station & Shuttle in the evenings.
A year after Camp Darfur in Second Life, there’s a new initiative aimed at educating people on the continuing tragedy in the Sudan
The new initiative, called “Crisis in Darfur,” enables Google Earth users to visualize the details in the region, including the destruction of villages and the location of displaced persons in refugee camps. (Interactive: See how the new technology works)Elliot Schrage, Google’s vice president of global communications and public affairs, joined museum director Sara J. Bloomfield to make the official announcement about the new feature.
“At Google, we believe technology can be a catalyst for education and action,” Schrage said. ” ‘Crisis in Darfur’ will enable Google Earth users to visualize and learn about the destruction in Darfur as never before and join the museum’s efforts in responding to this continuing international catastrophe.”
We need all the awareness we can get.
3D in movies will become common place in the not too distant future as more and more theaters are being equipped with 3D using ReadD and Dolby is aiming to provide 3D capabilities for existing movie screens later this year.
Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of DreamWorks Animation SKG, is so gung-ho about 3-D that he has said his studio might start exclusively releasing movies in the format as early as 2009 with its “Monsters vs. Aliens” movie.
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These days, 3-D films are more than just a gimmick.
For theaters owners and studios, the technology could be a lifesaver, luring people back to multiplexes for an experience that cannot be matched by sophisticated home theater systems or stolen by pirates with hidden camcorders.
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“The momentum is gathering, and I think this is probably the most exciting thing from a filmmaking and filmgoing experience that has happened in my time in the business,” Katzenberg said. “There’s nothing more compelling than this.”
Looking existing trends with machinima, is there any doubt that the big screen will become part of the meshverse?
It’s an extension of the land mass of the Earth. As long as somebody wants land to build on, Second Life will make land.
Even though this is an old interview(SL only had 100K residents then) and his Synthetic Worlds book is even older, they are very worthwhile reads.
