UgoTrade

Boing Boing picked up the “China’s Most Incredible Holdout,” photo and story today (see my post Saturday).

Photo by kehinde_Cela

Glen Moody writes in his blog Open: “As Second Life - or its successor - moves closer to the center of online activity, the issue of bringing in developing nations and their related identities is one that will become ever more pressing if we are to avoid exacerbating the digital divide.”

There are already some interesting groups developing in SL, e.g., Indian Educators. But, still, as Moody notes, while SL allows people “to assume any identity they want, most of these turn out to be Caucasian (with a smattering of furries).” But, Second Life is on the move and groups, islands, and sims are emerging with many new identities.

Second Life is growing so fast that the strains of keeping up with its popularity have created some interesting challenges for “the real-world technology foundations of the make-believe world, and developer Linden Labs to stay on top of growth.” For a very interesting look at this, see the report, “Inside Second Life’s Data Centers,” in Information Week.

But, though Second Life is still in its infancy, it is clear that virtual worlds are a communications revolution not just an upgrade. Logging back into the Web after a session on Second Life always feels like I’m returning to a place where everyone is struggling with a communications challenge, i.e., forced to stand around with a sandwich board round their necks handing out leaflets in an effort to connect with other people. (Not that I don’t love doing this blog and maintaining a presence in other social networks. I even keep a My Space, despite the fact it has become like a giant user-generated audio visual list since friend adders came along. And, it would take a small staff to maintain it properly. But, hey, I like all that cool and uncool music that the people who show up everyday send me!)

But, Second Life offers a new opportunity to achieve what no government has managed to do, to bring peace and prosperity, through communication and trade on a digital continent without borders. And, as an added bonus, the user interface even has sharing and generosity built into it.

While millions of $ and Linden$ transactions are occurring in virtual space every week (SL website says US$ Spent Last 24h: $1,757,474), all newbies will eventually be delighted when someone passes them, with a single click, a vast inventory of goodies. I have been given countless items, clothing, bling, and scripts - including a “poofer” that allows your avatar to emit particles so you can announce your arrival with style with an expanding cloud of audio visual animations/business cards or whatever. You can also learn to make a poofer at Mystery Cove in a free class, and people do resell them. But, have care, unscrupulous people may resell things they have been given!

Moo Cards are now offering a new way to “take Second Life into your first life” with MiniCards featuring your avatar, crib or hangout, or, I will add, your favorite new sim for positive global development! See 3pointD for an example of a nice new set of SL Moo Cards.

The need for investment in education to alleviate the digital divide has been well publicized, thanks, in part, to celebrity activism. But, the call to support investment in Second Life in developing nations is relatively new. The advocacy for virtual worlds and positive global development in general, and Second Life in particular, by Mutumwa Mawere - a regular contributor to the virtual world in his column in Zim Daily puts a new perspective on crossing digital divides in Africa.

Mawere is also a member and advocate for myzimspace, myafrispace and myjozi. He writes: “there are many networking sites in the virtual space and it is not too late for Africans to invest in their own.”

And, he argues:

“Many have observed that the African American economy in the US is probably bigger than even South Africa, a country recognized as the engine of Africa with 47 million people and yet there is no visible connection between this economy and the rest of Africa.

Imagine everyone of us who are privileged to be connected could use our contacts and share them with our virtual friends in this Second Life and all of us can know each other through other people, how long will it take for us to create a social networking virtual space that we can collectively use to negotiate a better life for us and those connected to us.”

This photo featured recently in Apple Hot News is from the Build African Schools project pioneered by Retired tech executive Patrick O’Sullivan. 400 students attend the solar powered new school, in the Masai village of Oloolaimutia where they can work on the three new laptops.

I found this great picture and a translation of the story behind it, by taking a tip from Virtual China today. I became a member of the chinesecontent space at Wikispaces. While this is a space mainly for a translators, there are many connections to a community of “bridge bloggers.” For example, Rebecca Mackinnon’s blog has a great list of some of the most famous Chinese-English “bridge bloggers,” bringing articles, blog posts, conversations, and debates from the Chinese-language Internet to the attention of the English-speaking world, particularly stuff that might “help the English-speaking world to understand China better.” They include LfC, Danwei, Interlocals, the China Media Project, and China Digital Times for starters.

I found the story listed on ESWN, a great bridge blog with many translations and interesting stories. The translation of this story is in Peering.Into.The.Interior. PITI writes “钉子户 ＝ literally means ‘a slug house’ but it means someone who refuses to move out from their house. I have translated it as a ‘holdout,’ there might be a better translation but its all I could think of.” The whole story of “China’s Most Incredible Holdout,” is an interesting investigation of how this picture that first appeared on the web Feb 26th went viral, and how the original story was lost, elaborated on, and then pieced together and rediscovered by Chinese netizens. The original can be found here.

To check out “bridge blogs” from around the world go to Global Voices’ daily “Global Links” section. (”Bridge blogs” are blogs from a country or region that speak to a global audience).

Opera CTO, Håkon Wium Lie, demos OLPC at Wired, and gives a video tour.

The OLPC, often called the $100 laptop project (now $150), initiated by the MIT Media Lab under the leadership of Nicholas Negraponte is a project with tremendous implications for education, literacy, the digital divide, and economic growth across the globe (cheat sheet on OLPC). Also, see a comparison between Flexgo - the new payment system intended to make Windows affordable for the non-rich in developing countries, and OLPC , here.  There is also and interesting video from Brazil that I found on Neverwonderland comparing Classmate with OLPC.  Classmate is the $400 laptop made by Intel  - “for kindergarteners through high school students in emerging nations.”  Classmate will run under a version of Windows modified “to prevents kids from accessing Internet sites or adding programs that have been designated by parents or teachers as off-limits,”  and sold in conjunction with a pay-as-you-go system. (see my page comparing Flexgo. with OLPC for more on this).

I decided to take a break from blogging tonight. Instead, I took a busman’s holiday on Second Life. And, I got caught up trying to find out what had happened to Sandbox Island? I’m talking with a couple of scripters - a beautiful, pink, dancing robot with a big bust, and a taciturn scripter with a flatulent, but quite elegant, AV bot, and a lot of scripting power at his finger tips. I’m the one with the foxy face.

What did happen to Sandbox Island? A whole sim just vanished. Apparently that doesn’t happen very often on SL. I have scanned the SL blog and found no answers. But, the speculation on SL is that it is definitely not something the Lindens would have done (perhaps an errant architectural prim?). Sandbox Island was a wild and woolly place in its day.

I first went there to try out my newbie scripting skills and build a portable media player. Sandboxes are where you can try out your building skills, even if you don’t own land. Within minutes I was blasted onto another part of the grid by an enormous arsenal of heavy weapons, and my (not even working yet) media player vanished for good!

But, since then, I have learned to sit (if you sit on a prim you can’t be blasted off your location by any of the enormous inventory of weapons that are experimented with in some sand box locations). Also, it is wise (anywhere RL or SL) to save frequently a script you are working, so it can’t be sabotaged. Not all sandboxes are dominated by war games though. Some are very peaceful and fanciful like The Dreams. But, sometimes you find out the culture of a particular sand box the hard way!

Spiritual communities and peace projects are growing on SL. The Buddhist Shrine at Varosha is very beautiful, and a Buddhadharma Island is in beta. But, if you want to practice your building skills in a strange sandbox, and you don’t know how to build a protection dome, just sit tight on a prim when the Griefers come your way.

Anyway, when I came back to the RL blogosphere, I saw a number of posts about China’s latest spate of web site bans. But, fresh from the open source wilds of Second Life, I made a quick visit to Virtual China where Lyn Jeffrey and Jason Li have a very interesting post on, “ Ultimate Springboard 3D Virtual Community 终极跳板３D 虚拟社区, a new community site for Chinese virtual world residents and creators. Its slogan, written along both sides, is ‘Your world, your dream. Virtual community helps you grow up.’ The site has articles and tips on how to make money, how to create objects, and so on, mostly for Second Life. But there are also photos and the latest flash clip from the Chinese virtual world, HiPiHi.”

Then I visited the Great Wall of China discussion site where several ways to get around the firewall are posted. I couldn’t help feeling optimism.

Is it the Great Firewall of China or The Emperor’s new clothes? But, the news from China has not been good. See Boing Boing where Cory Doctorow posts, China blocks LiveJournal, And, Wired for more:

“The Great Firewall is a filtering system that sits on the edge of China’s connection to the internet, and also in software installed at PCs at internet cafes. It looks for a wide range of sites that the government finds unsavory — a list that changes from month-to-month — and which includes everything from online pornography to sites holding discussions on democracy or Tibet.

Livejournal, with its diverse user base and highly personal voice, has plenty of content that might trouble Chinese censors. Xiao says the site’s block could be the result of a single blog with content that China’s Communist regime finds objectionable. ”

And, in another post Tuesday, from Xeni Jardin, No more Net Cafes , 113K is enough: “China’s state-controlled news agency Xinhua reported today that 14 government departments, including the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information Industry, have issued a notice decreeing ‘local governments must not sanction the opening of new Internet bars’ this year.”

There will be an opportunity to make a statement against Chinese Government actions and click and play in solidarity when Tibetan exiles protest Chinese rule via ‘net video, March 10:

“Tibetan exiles around the world and their supporters plan to use YouTube to commemorate ‘global uprising day’ this Saturday, March 10.”

Jardin writes, “Videos already uploaded include pilgrims, rap songs, statements from monks, rants from young Tibetan exiles in the United States, and words from ama-la (grandmas). Looks like the revolution(s) will be televised after all. Link. (Thanks, Nathan Freitas / Students For a Free Tibet)

Image below: at left, screengrab from a statement by a man identified as a Tibetan pilgrim. At right, Ama Adhe (Adhe Tapontsang), “one of Tibet’s longest-serving political prisoners. Here’s an Amazon link to her autobiography.”

Technorati Tags: SecondLife, Web3D, Virtual, China, HiPiHi

Internet dating in Iraq made the headlines today on Boing Boing with a snip from a Los Angeles Times piece about internet dating, and the online sociology of war zones.

Zavis (LAT) notes, “Such virtual relationships offer a refuge of sorts from numbing isolation and fear during a time of staggering violence. But all too often they are mirages — a seductive reminder of a life now tantalizingly out of reach for most. And, ‘They are like birds in a cage,’ says Anas Attar, 22, one of a growing number of businessmen cashing in on the demand by selling access to their satellite-based Internet connections.”

But, the internet and cell phones have become the main connection to family, friends and a normal life for Iraqis. There have been several interesting reports in recent months on how wildly popular cell phones have become in Iraq. USA Today writes on how people in Baghdad rely on cell phones to text-message traffic reports to friends or keep track of family members navigating dangerous streets.

Sign on San Diego reports on how, “Cell phones offer safety, sanity amid Iraq’s chaos.” A young Iraqi women tells the LA Times, through e-mail and instant messaging, she is able “to spend time, to make relationships with others, to feel that I am important.”

The Iraqi blogoshere has been developing as a forum for healing Iraq, despite the obstacles. The picture I have posted here comes from Healing Iraq, a blog by Zeyad.

Zeyad was forced to quit his dentistry job during the sectarian violence that followed the bombing of a shrine in Samarra. Currently, he is studying for a Master’s degree in journalism at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York. Zeyad writes about the Iraqi blogosphere. “Our collective voice and efforts are reaching wider audiences day by day, exposing them to the situation on the ground by people whose lives are involved and directly affected by it. We are intent on healing Iraq from decades of abuse and to make it through these difficult times into a new phase of democracy, freedom, and prosperity.”

Stay tuned for more posts on this topic, and let me know of anything interesting you find too. I will be following how ordinary people in Iraq are using the internet, cell phones, and connecting to the blogosphere to make the best out of a bad situation, and to heal their country.

And, please keep your eye out for the upcoming launch of Hometown Baghdad - a web series that will bring you closer to everyday life in Iraq than anything you’ve seen before.

A business model of “four cows and a computer,” (see Spiegel for the full story) has only become possible thanks to a new local Internet connection known as Cordect.

“By European standards, this ‘Indianet’ is only a patchy and relatively slow provisional solution, a kind of digital dirt road leading to the information super-highway.  The basic technology is the same as that used in wireless phones — the only difference is that the base station isn’t next door, but several kilometers away. And since electricity shortages are common in the countryside, there is a battery to supply the Internet cafés for up to four hours in case of outages.”
“Cordect was developed by the Indian Institute of Technology and is developing into a veritable sales hit in the country’s backwaters.  Telecommunication corporations from other countries such as South Africa, Tunisia, Yemen and Kazakhstan are already betting on the new Internet technology. ”

Now the giants want in.  Microsoft announced last year they would invest “roughly $1.7 billion in order to cover the subcontinent with a network of 50,000 Internet Cafés during the next four years — a network that will not just connect the prosperous towns, but will deliberately designed to extend into the poor rural areas.  This means that there will probably be fierce competition between Microsoft and the local competitor Cordect, which has already provided 10,000 Indian villages with Internet access.”  And, “Microsoft spent two years conducting intensive market research that involved setting up 300 trial Internet Cafés, in order to get used to the specific features of the local market.” (Spiegel)

If you have any news for me how this story is playing out in different places, please keep me posted!

Ten African Countries will be home to a $10 million new cell phone project launched by the U.S. government, technology companies and health groups. The project will focus initially on HIV/AIDS. World Health Organization Assistant Director-General Howard Zucker stated: “The explosive spread of mobile phone networks across the developing world has created a unique opportunity to significantly transform how countries can tackle global health challenges.” (Reuters) Health workers will also be able to use the system to order medicine, send alerts, download treatment guidelines, training materials and access other appropriate information,” said Paul Meyer, chairman of Voxiva, the company that has designed the software that will be put onto the phones. “Managers at the regional and national level can access information in real-time via Web-based database.” (TechNewsWorld) It will be interesting to follow the “Phones-for-health” project. The long term vision of PFH is “that the scheme will be extended further into Africa and spread to Asia to address other infectious diseases, including malaria and tuberculosis,” the partners behind the launch said at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, the annual European event covering 2G and 3G technologies (Feb 12th -15th, 2007).

More than 60 percent of Africans now live in areas with mobile phone coverage and that figure is expected to rise to 85 percent by 2010 (Reuters).

For some interesting new projects designed to bridge the “digital divide” in Africa see Global Voices.

And, the Spiegel story, The Dirt Road to the Information Superhighway, maps out some interesting terrain with a look at how some of the ideas from the ivory tower are panning out on the ground. “The US economist C.K. Prahalad has long been a proponent of thinking of high technology as a form of development aid. In his book “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,” Prahalad speaks about the need to stop seeing the poor as victims or as a burden on society. To him, 4 billion poor are the key to the next stage of trade and prosperity.” And, as the Spiegel writers note, Prahalad’s business model has at least one prominent follower. According to Bill Gates, the professor is offering “an intriguing blueprint for how to fight poverty with profitability.” Microsoft’s new Flexgo computers follow this blueprint closely.

Jens Glüsing, Padma Rao and Hilmar Schmundt from Spiegel write,”business is going surprisingly well even in the world’s poorest regions. In Africa, for example, people often share mobile phones, or they sell phone minutes to neighbors and passers-by.”

“Sometimes new business ideas even come from the poor themselves. In countries such as Tanzania and Kenya, the mobile phone is set to revolutionize the bank sector. In Africa, mobile phones are already being used as an electronic wallet, as replacements for bank accounts — a model that has failed in Western countries like Germany despite repeated attempts to implement it.

The African solution is simple. All sorts of sums — in the form of phone credits — are sent back and forth by text message. If someone wants to buy potatoes, for example, they make the corresponding amount of their phone credit available to the dealer on the corner by sending him the access code, which functions like an electronic shadow currency.

Even poor land workers who don’t even own a bank account can transfer money this way. Sending money to their family in a distant village, for example, is no problem anymore.

Reaching poor customers requires an exact knowledge of the local conditions. In the best case, this kind of know-how allows some developing countries to make the transition from mere consumers to centers of innovation that can in some cases even overtake the wealthy North.” (Spiegel)