Re:Geek Corps (a'la Peace Corps) (Score 1)

Thanks for the mention. My name is Ethan Zuckerman and I stepped down as VP of R&D for tripod.com a few months back to start Geekcorps.

Geekcorps is trying to help companies throughout the developing world take advantage of the 'net. We believe that the best way for less-developed nations to address development issues (healthcare, clean water, nutrition, education) is to improve their economies as a whole. As we've all seen over the last few years, the net has the potential to create powerful new busineses out of thin air in a short time. We're betting that some companies in the developing world could become major players in their economies - and create a large number of well-paying jobs - by taking advantage of the Internet.

Geekcorps is recruiting volunteers to go overseas for three-month stays to work with companies to build better websites, networks, ecommerce systems, etc. We'll be sending our first six geeks to Ghana late this fall, and should be expanding to other countries in 2001. If you're interested in volunteering, or just want to find out more, drop a line to [e-mail]. (We've got a site at www.geekcorps.org, but there's very, very little there at the moment.)

Just to respond to some of the threads going around: the term "developing world" is amazingly broad. The term includes countries like Mozambique, which has a far bigger troubles right now than underdeveloped internet infrastructure, and areas of India like Bangalore, which give Silicon Valley a run for its money in terms of 'net startups per square foot. I think it's worth remembering that, just in the same way that there are highly wired corners of the US, Canada and Europe, there are more and less wired corners of the developing world. I was in Ghana for several weeks in January, a country that meets almost anyone's definition of "developing nation". Despite the poverty and lack of development that pervades the country, there are five national ISPs and over a dozen cybercafes in operation. The net's on the move, in every corner of the world.

For hard data on the international digital divide, I highly recommend the United Nations Human Development Program's 1999 Human Development report, available online at http://www.undp.org/hdro/ There are some thought-provoking stats in there - what does it mean for the culture of the Internet that 1 of 3 Americans are online while 1 of 1000 sub-Saharan Africans, or 1 of 2500 South Asians are online?