What was interesting about it was that the attempts to transmit knowledge, which included Web-based approaches, didn’t work as well as just saying “OK, these are the things we know and have access to, how do you want to use them”.

The reason the project was so effective was that the response was: “send some physicians over here to help” which meant getting an on-the-ground perspective of the issues. It wasn’t a technology issue, it was a people one.

What’s interesting is that of the physicians and others who WENT, the ones who were successful were the ones with the humility to say “I’m at your service” rather than “Here’s how it’s done” – the latter didn’t understand the cultural context and were generally ignored.

On this basis, I don’t see a difference between the developing world and the rest of it: there are people with knowledge or resources, and there are other people without it. It’s not much more complicated than that.

And like the rest of the world, the solution usually isn’t the application of technology because, well, because it’s there, but rather facilitating listening, because often the most intractable problems don’t have technology as their solution – often it’s something simple.

So my tendency is to agree with you: the idea that we take a backpack full of laptops and solar panels or whatever and like Johnny Appleseed dispense technology in our wake seems to me to be paternalistic and misguided.

Having said that, this doesn’t discount the desire to make a difference, whether it’s in the developing world or around the corner: You tell me know I could be useful to you, and I’ll respond with whatever I know and will try to bring whatever resources I may have at hand.

It’s likely we’ll both realize there were things we didn’t know we didn’t know, but those things are less about what “world” we come from, or how good our graphics cards are, and more about, as you say, just being people.

As for Philip’s rantings, I remain somewhat unimpressed. I’m one of the digitally excluded. I can’t build to save my life in Second Life and I can’t Photoshop. Do I now get a grant from Philip? I mean, seriously, that’s whack. Again, as countries develop, they lay all this on, it comes in time, just like any other medium.

The “right to innovate” strikes me as a strange, and not legally grammatical locution. People have the right to free expression, or the right to receive and impart information across frontiers. That’s all. If you start talking about “the right” to innovate, you imply states have to grant this in some positive way by payouts, or you imply non-state actors like companies can take it away or something. It’s just plain weird.

Then this idea that these fresh thirdworld minds are going to come at problems in some special innovative way that will be feted just because it’s “the third world”. I mean, Jesus, people are people. Do you think there’s a special Third World way to look at the problem of people shitting in their water supply? or burning up their fossil fuels and polluting their air? Either you believe science is universal, or you don’t. It’s not like there is some special magical perception conferred on people in undeveloped countries that will now be forced upon us, and everbody else has to make way.

I find this sort of fanciful talk about the third world to come from wealthy Americans who haven’t really spent much time *in* the third world, or they’d be less romantic, and “get it” better about why countries don’t develop.

from the BBC excerpt in the word’s of the eraserheaded hero of the metaverse:

“What does the future of the internet look like? It looks like a world map where even the furthest corners of the planet are able to get online because of the decentralisation of power generation.

What technology is getting me excited right now? Electricity.”

(shakes head)

Is it still possible to call a mulligan and call up Grace McDunnough?

I have no idea about M because he says so little to the community that it is impossible to judge what he’s doing. He appears to have done nothing to improve the FOAD style of LL’s customer relations. There are no real signs of improvements to the UI. The land panic does not speak well of his engagement with the customer base. His promise to talk with customers on the SL forum followed by his total silence was incomprehensible.

Did he intend to honour the forum promise and then forget?

There’s been speculation on the forum that LL is under financial stress, perhaps because of the increase in the price of short term money, and this has forced the increase in the renamed Openspace price and the invention of the new Narrowspace sim. When a company behaves this incomprehensibly, and offers a rationale this vacuous, it is reasonable to assume they have reasons that they cannot admit publicly admit. Every day of M’s continuing silence contributes to that fear.

The spin round the quarterly stats do not encourage confidence either. The statement that premium membership does not matter because LL pays out in stipend what it makes in premium payments is simply weird. That statement could be true only if premium memberships were not paid in RL cash and the stipend paid in LL play money.

So, M’s performance could be judged as good, but really badly communicated. Or it could be judged that his performance as CEO is of a par with his performance as communicator. Time will tell.

I don’t disagree. On the other hand, I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that the further away Philip is from the actual “running of the Grid” the better. Let him fantasize about cell panels on roofs or whatever.

(By the way, on that topic, one of the issues with this type of thing is that the technology is often stolen and salvaged for parts. There is difficulty putting communication infrastructure in many places because phone wires are stolen, stripped, and sold as scrap. Why he thinks that solar panels on roofs won’t face the same challenge I have no idea).

Let Philip gaze off in the distance. He’s no longer part of Second Life, as far as I’m concerned. He talked about getting his hands into innovation again, such as the viewer, and then they outsourced it. We are seven days shy of it being one year since Philip last blogged – and at the time, he promised to blog monthly.

He’s living in his own reality. If that isn’t true, I’d love to hear what he’s doing, how it impacts the Grid, why we should care.

All of which places the onus on M.

You ever hear the 100 Days theory of the Presidency? On the theory that you establish a tone, systems, focus, and deliver tangible results in your first 100 days in office. If you fail to do this, you’ve set a context for your subsequent work.

How do you think M did his first 100 days? He’s now at about 180 days “in office”. With Philip wandering off fantasizing about solar panels, it’s in his hands really.