Comment Everything You Know About Africa is Wrong (Score 1) 42
I can't bring myself to agree with a lot of the posting here, the wringing of hands and concern that before we set up Pentiums and WANs we should feed Africa, work on infrastructure, stabilize political scenes, defeat AIDS, etc. I think all those things need to be actively tackled, and are actively being addressed by those with the know-how, but some people are endowed with gifts to intuitively understand and enjoy TCP/IP and OOP instead of the engineering behind irrigation systems. For a group to forego the cushy material benefits of the Western world to share their joy...hey, let 'em rip.
Tangentially: I hadn't heard of Geekhalla before, but for the past week, I've been wondering whether volunteer projects like that existed or not. My own bent is toward medical care, and how computers make critical drug inventories and access to patient records so much more efficient. Maybe not the e-commerce stuff so much. I know first-hand that hospitals in the US don't have the slickest IT in the world due to budget constraints, so I have doubts that international volunteer groups have much at all in that department. Last night, I did a search on Freshmeat for "humanitarian", thinking I'd look into any open-source projects that might be cooking, but alas came up with zero records returned. The time isn't there for me to start my own project right now, but I'm wondering if I might clear some clutter and obligations in my life and start something. I've been reading about organization like Doctors Without Borders, wondering what people with the wiggle to understand complex information systems could do for trans-continental organizations like that, using lingua franca technology like Linux and FreeBSD. Just in the little probing I've done, it looks like there's an enormous impact computer gurus could make, and considering the level of commitment other highly skilled professionals like surgeons and physicians can make, why not IT folks?
