Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

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March 31, 2005

Sega!

I've been at a conference today so I haven't had a chance to come up for any new material for video blogging week 2005. So rather than not contribute any video today, I figured I'd find some footage I hadn't posted to my blog previously.

So, without further ado, here's a clip I recorded in Mauritius last July of a dance troupe performing the sega, a traditional creole dance that blends elements of dance from Mozambique and India. Enjoy.... -ac

click to play

Posted by acarvin at 05:13 PM | TrackBack

TakingITGlobal Documentary Now Online

Good news: the team at TakingITGlobal has managed to put its documentary, Local Voices, Global Visions, on the Internet, hosted at ourmedia.org. Click on the previous link; when you get to this page, click the play button on the video, and it will begin to download. It is a very large file - around 100 megs - but worth every byte. (You may recall I reviewed the video last week.)

Please set aside 45 minutes at some point to watch the video. It demonstrates the power of ICTs in the hands of youth, both in terms of the projects profiled and the making of the documentary itself.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 01:56 PM | TrackBack

March 29, 2005

SMS Text Messaging in the Gulf

Today's Wasthington Post includes a story by Steve Coll entitled In the Gulf, Dissidence Goes Digital. The article takes a look at the rise of SMS text messaging in Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and how texting is allowing people to spread their political opinions. Here's a snippet:

In this roiling political spring of protest and debate about democracy in repressive Arab countries, cell phone text messaging has become a powerful underground channel of free and often impolite speech, especially in the oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies, where mobile phones are common but candid public talk about politics is not.

Demonstrators use text messaging to mobilize followers, dodge authorities and swarm quickly to protest sites. Candidates organizing for the region's limited elections use text services to call supporters to the polls or slyly circulate candidate slates in countries that supposedly ban political groupings. And through it all, anonymous activists blast their adversaries with thousands of jokes, insults and political limericks.

I'm planning to head to Bahrain and Dubai in May; perhaps I'll be able to meet up with some local SMS gurus during my stay.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 11:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Thanksgiving in March

This morning, Susanne and I heard some squawking noises outside our apartment in Brookline, two blocks' west of Boston. At first I assumed it was Canadian geese, since we've been getting a lot of them flying through our neighborhood this week, but then I heard Susanne say, "Andy, come over hear quickly."

I walked into our office, and there outside our window was a family of four wild turkeys, absolutely enormous birds, strutting across our neighbor's lawn. Over the next few minutes they hopped across his fence, walked across the street (to get to the other side, of course), then hung out in the lawn of the Episcopal church until a Brookline animal control officer shooed them off, chasing them onto the church's roof and to the other side, where they could hopefully wander in peace along the forested Riverway.

I managed to catch a few seconds of video from my office window; I had to blow it up by 75% because they were far away at that point, so please excuse the graininess of the clip.

click to play

tag: videobloggingweek2005

Posted by acarvin at 09:47 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 28, 2005

Sri Lanka Tsunami Alert Called Off

The following note comes from Angelo Embuldeniya in Sri Lanka... -andy

Sri Lanka's meteorological department has withdrawn its tsunami warning and said it was safe for coastal residents to return to their homes despite a submarine earthquake near Indonesia.

Met chief P. M. Jayatilake said they decided to withdraw the tsunami warning as there were no reports of unusual wave activity anywhere in the neighbouring countries within the Indian Ocean. - this statement was released about 45 mins ago.

Posted by acarvin at 06:13 PM | TrackBack

USGS Raises Estimate to 8.7; Possible Tsunami Towards Mauritius, Rodrigues, Sri Lanka

CNN is reporting that the US Geological Survey has raised its estimate of the earthquake's strength to 8.7 on the Richter Scale. The article goes on to say that a small tsunami may be on its way towards Mauritius. "We think this event probably ruptured to the south, with the beam of energy probably propagated to the south toward Mauritius and the Rodrigues," said Robert Cessaro of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Additionally, the Sri Lankan government warns that a tsunami may reach the country's coastline around 3am local time Tuesday, approximately one hour from now... - andy

Posted by acarvin at 03:08 PM | TrackBack

Peter Tan Blogs the Quake in Real-Time

Malaysian blogger Jeff Ooi credits Peter Tan as the first blogger to capture the earthquake. "At the time of the quake, TV Smith, Daniel Tang and I were shooting the breeze at a coffee joint in TTDI," Jeff writes. "We went helter-skelter for our blogs when MackZul broke the news to us." But Peter beat them to their keyboards; his one-line post said, "My apartment is shaking now." -and

Posted by acarvin at 02:42 PM | TrackBack

Map of Tsunami Propogation Model

The DMA Earthquake Alert Tool has a variety of data related to today's earthquake. The site includes this model for the propogation of a tsunami, if it does indeed occur. - andy

Posted by acarvin at 01:54 PM | TrackBack

CNN Needs to Fix Its Priorities

I've spent the last 30 minutes alerting as many people through as many channels as possible about the earthquake and possible tsunami off the coast of Indonesia today. I then turned on CNN to see what I could learn from them. They're still covering the Terri Schiavo case. Shame on them!

Posted by acarvin at 12:48 PM | TrackBack

Malaysian Bloggers Capture Earthquake, Warn of Tsunami

Malaysian bloggers are mobilizing to cover today's earthquake. Zack Zulkifli was perhaps the first to write about it; Jeff Ooi is also actively involved. You can follow more of this on the Global Voices blog. I have also aggregated news on my tsunami-info.org website. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 12:45 PM | TrackBack

NEWS: Another Indonesian Earthquake; Tsunami Possible

CNN is reporting that another earthquake has occured along the same fault line off Indonesia that caused last December's tsunami. The earthquake registered over 8.2 on the Richter scale, apparently. Please alert colleagues and friends in South/Southeast Asia as soon as possible.

Posted by acarvin at 12:12 PM | TrackBack

Mike's Pastry, Take Two

A few people have had problems opening up the .avi video file I used to record crowds at Mike's Pastry in Boston's North End this weekend, so I'm posting it again as a compressed Quicktime file. This should mean it'll download a lot faster as well. -andy

click to play

tag: videobloggingweek2005

Posted by acarvin at 09:32 AM | TrackBack

Easter Baskets Video

A four-minute video of everything you wanted to know about what Andy and Susanne got in their Easter baskets yesterday. Now we just need to make a Purim video retelling the Book of Esther with hand puppets or something... -andy

click to play

tag: videobloggingweek2005

Posted by acarvin at 09:13 AM | TrackBack

March 27, 2005

Mike's Pastry

Susanne and I went to dinner at L'Osteria in Boston's North End last night. Since it was the night before Easter, the North End was overflowing with the local Italian community (not to mention a lot of Boston yuppies) scrambling to pick up last-minute treats for the holiday. To wit: here's a short video of the chaos at Mike's Pastry, which would be open til the wee hours of the morning satisfying customer's needs for lamb cakes and other Easter treats. Consider this a small, modest contribution to video blogging week 2005, which kicks off today. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 10:16 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 26, 2005

Digital Divide Network: 6,600 Members in 115 Countries

For a long time, whenever people ask me where DDN members were from, I've usually said we have members from around 80 different countries, based on counting different domain names to the email list. But thanks to the new DDN website, I'm able to sort the list of website members according to country. I tried it this afternoon and I was astounded to find out that we now have more than 6,600 members from 115 countries! So apparently I had been low-balling my estimate by at least 30 countries.

If you're interested in seeing who's from a particular country, simply go to www.digitaldivide.net and type in the name of a country in the search engine, in the top right corner of the homepage. The site will then generate a list of all DDN content related to that country, including members. Interestingly, while US members still comprise the largest group by far, they are no longer in the majority. There are approximately 2,880 members from the US, equaling 43.5% of the entire membership. That means 56.6% of members are outside the US.

Here are the countries represented by DDN members:

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chile, China, Congo/Brazzaville, Congo/Dem Rep, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liberia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, St. Lucia, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vatican City, Venezuela, Zambia and Zimbabwe

Posted by acarvin at 05:11 PM | TrackBack

March 25, 2005

Madison Square Podcast

I just finished having brunch with Paul Mondesire and Ellen Lenihan from WNET Channel 13, during which time I posted this podcast to demonstrate audio blogging from a mobile phone. Now I'm on the Amtrak back to Boston; should be home by 4pm.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 12:00 PM | TrackBack

Podcast: Andy's WSIS Speech at the National Model UN Conference

I've just posted the audio of my keynote speech at the National Model United Nations Conference's WSIS simulation. Approximately 500 college students from several dozen countries participated. As I wrote in my previous post, they were an extraordinary group of young people. I really had a lot of fun talking with them.

Here's the MP3 of the speech:

http://www.andycarvin.com/podcasts/nmun.mp3

There's also an open-source OGG format version of the recording: simply change the end of the URL from .mp3 to .ogg if you prefer that format. (I can't hyperlink to it or podcast users will have both versions automatically downloaded onto their computers.)

Meanwhile, here's a copy of my Powerpoint from the presentation. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 08:54 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 24, 2005

Podcasting from the National Model UN Conference

I've just posted a five-minute podcast from my mobile phone here at the National Model United Nations conference here in New York City. There are 3000 delegates from around the world holding a mock United Nations meeting here, including 500 of them involved in a mock World Summit on the Information Society. It's quite disturbing, in an amazing way, how it reminds me of the real thing. I got to address the delegation this afternoon, including a 40-minute speech and then 25 - count 'em - 25 questions from the audience. They were most well informed bunch I've met so far in all the meetings I've had about WSIS, and they asked tough, diverse questions ranging from the fight over free and open source vs. proprietary software, the connection between bridging the digital divide and reforming the World Bank and IMF, the effects of media cross-ownership on content diversity... I could go on and on but I'm too exhausted. :-)

I also ospent a lot of time talking about ways they can get involved in the WSIS youth caucus, other working groups, and using Meetups and blogging as tools to promote WSIS. (When I asked the group how many of them blogged, somewhere between 75 and 100 students raised their hands.) Even if only one percent of those in attendence get involved in WSIS because of this experience, I'll be absolutely thrilled. But from the conversations I had afterwards, I have a feeling a lot more than that will get involved.

I recorded my speech as well; I'll post that online a little later if I can get the bandwidth here to cooperate.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 06:59 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Movie Review: Local Voices, Global Visions

I'm riding on an Amtrak Acela train through snowbound Connecticut right now on my way to the National Model United Nations conference, where I'll be addressing a group of 500 youth delegates who are conducting a mock World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). To psych myself up for the talk, I brought along a DVD of TakingITGlobal's new documentary, Local Voices, Global Visions. I got the DVD in the mail just before I left for India a few weeks ago, so this was my first chance to see it.

If I could snap my fingers and burn 100,000 DVDs in a flash, I would send a copy of this documentary to every K-12 school in the United States, then snap my fingers some more until they turned raw so schools and youth groups around the world could have a copy as well. This 45-minute documentary, produced entirely by young people, does an astounding job at capturing what's at stake with WSIS, which will have its second summit this November in Tunisia. And it demonstrates the vital role that youth can play in policymaking, whether related to the digital divide or other important policy goals.

The video profiles groups of young people from around the world -- Sierra Leone, Nigeria, India, the Philippines, Canada and Tunisia -- as they organize national youth campaigns to mobilize young people into the WSIS policymaking process. The documentary is broken down into segments, each one profiling youth activists and their work in their home country. We get to know Andrew Benson Greene and his colleagues in IEARN Sierra Leone as they teach their peers to use digital technology and create music as part of their country's post-civil war healing process. In Nigeria, 'Gbenga Sesan leads a national campaign to educate youth about the importance of participating in digital divide policymaking. In India, we meet a young woman who has opened up her home to a local orphanage so she can teach children computer skills. And in Tunisia, we learn about Marouen Mrahi, Rim Nour and their fellow engineering students as they galvanize Tunisian youth to participate in the next WSIS summit, which will take place in their home town of Tunis.

The documentary reaches its climax in Geneva during the first WSIS summit in December 2003. The young people profiled in the video, along with hundreds of other youth activists, organize seminars, participate in summit plenaries, and demonstrate ICT projects to government ministers. The summit is the culmination of more than a year of activities around the world, but it's quite clear that these young people have no plans of wrapping up their activities once they go home. For one thing, they've got another WSIS summit ahead of them in November 2005, but beyond that, you get to see how these young people are laying the groundwork for long-term initiatives to bridge the digital divide in their home countries.

I've met many of the young people profiled in this documentary in person, so it's great getting to see them in the spotlight, but it's not just because I know them personally. (Full disclosure -- TakingITGlobal is a strategic partner of the Digital Divide Network, and I donated some photos from the Geneva summit for the documentary.) Watching them speak, organize local campaigns and take action, I couldn't help but think these young people are truly the leaders of tomorrow. In all seriousness, I wouldn't be at all shocked if one of them - or even more - end up becoming heads of state in their home countries. They have charisma, leadership skills, articulateness and a profound grasp of policy issues. Not only does this video document the role of youth in WSIS, it documents national leaders in the making.

Beyond the amazing people profiled in the video, there's the high production quality as well. TakingITGlobal produced it on a Mac laptop running Final Cut Pro editing software (I note with some pride, as these tools are my own documentary weapons of choice), with all the work done by young people. Twenty-one-year-old Jarra McGrath traveled the world shooting the film, with TakingITGlobal's Nick Moraitis collaborating as co-editor and as narrator. Even the music is produced by youth, most notably the songs recorded by IEARN Sierra Leone. The documentary is a perfect example of how young people can be producers of high-quality content, from video editing to interstitial animations to the Hollywood-quality DVD jewel box packaging.

I do have one complaint, though; the documentary is not available online. If you go to the video's website, there's a short clip, but otherwise only contact information for purchasing copies. That's a real shame -- it would be an enormous public service to make the documentary, or at least more clips, available for noncommercial and educational use.

Otherwise, I can't say enough about this documentary. I am so inspired. It's reinforcing the creative buzz I felt during my recent trip to India, where I produced two documentary shorts on my laptop. My mind is racing with ideas, locations, editing tricks: I'm just dying to get out in the field and make more documentaries now.

But my short-term goal may have backfired. I intended to watch this video to get psyched for my speech later today, yet I may have to scrap my entire presentation for the conference. I'm almost - almost - tempted to shut up and let this documentary do the talking. With Local Voices, Global Visions, the youth of TakingITGlobal articulate the importance of WSIS better than I ever could with just an old-fashioned speech.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 12:59 PM | TrackBack

Last Night's Boston Digital Divide Meetup

Last night at the Lenox Hotel City Bar in Boston, a group of 14 of us gathered for the official local meetup of the Digital Divide Network. DDN members traveled from as far away as Maine to participate in the informal gathering, which lasted just over 90 minutes.

After everyone introduced themselves, I gave a brief history of DDN, and talked about the potential goals of DDN meetups. I noted that different communities will have varying perspectives and priorities when it comes to bridging the digital divide, so there wouldn't be a specific formula or set of goals that would apply to all local meetups. Having said that, I also said that Boston's DDN meetup group could serve as a model for other groups to be formed around the country, so we should document what we're doing, what works and what doesn't.

The group then discussed what it would like to get out of the experience. Some participants expressed interest in being able to profile local initiatives; others hoped to discuss national and international issues, such as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Rebecca MacKinnon talked about issues such as Internet governance, free expression and online civic journalism, while I discussed using DDN meetups so local communities could host their own digital divide forums during the WSIS summit next November. There also seemed to be a strong overarching interest in building local social networks of individuals and groups working to bridge the digital divide.

I suggested that we try to create a meeting format in which we would begin each meeting with introductions and announcements, then a brief discussion about what's going on online with DDN. This would be followed by a time slot in which a participant would be invited to present a project or facilitate a discussion on a topic of interest. Meetings would close with final thoughts, action items and any next steps for planning future meetups. Some participants also suggested that in between monthly gatherings, individuals could organize special interest group gatherings that might be of interest to a subset of the group.

Wrapping up the meetup, I asked participants to brainstorm potential topics for future meetings, as well as ways to reach out to others in the greater Boston area. We also plan to compile a list of potential meeting sites, either for a regular meetup location or a rotating schedule. Members hoped that locations would have free wifi, though the group was divided as to whether access to beer was a requirement or not. :-)

All in all, I think it was a very successful first meetup. I was only expecting seven or eight people, so the fact we got 14 people was a very positive sign. Hopefully others who attended will share their thoughts about the meeting as well.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 12:50 PM | TrackBack

March 22, 2005

Local Languages, RSS and the Digital Divide

Susan Mernit recently posted a blog entry about the issue of RSS and its ability to display non-Latinate languages. Susan's blog was in turn inspired by postings on Rebecca MacKinnon's blog about diversity in the blogosphere. Both blogs include a quote from Richard Sambrook of the BBC:

I was speaking to one of our BBC World Service software engineers yesterday who made a point I hadn't appreciated but which potentially has a hugely negative effect on diversity: The issue is RSS does not have a way to display right to left languages correctly and is not very compatible with non Latin languages. I believe it just was not thought about deeply by the people and development effort behind RSS.

This slows down the growth of non Latin RSS adoption. We need to develop multiple language RSS and hopefully redefine standards and approaches.

I've spent a lot of time in the last few years noting the importance of producing local-language content on the Internet. According to various surveys, it's believed that around two-thirds of all Internet content is produced in English, even though English speakers make up less than 10% of the world's population. Some languages, such as Spanish and Chinese, are finally beginning to blossom online, though they still trail behind English, the lingua franca of online discourse.

Unfortunately, there haven't been many global surveys regarding language and Internet content. One important study came from the Barcelona media company Vilaweb in 2001, which found around 68% percent of all websites to be in English. When the study came out, I decided to make a quick chart that compared the number of Web pages found in a given language with the number of people worldwide who spoke that language. Here's what I found. (Again, please not that this data is several years old, so take it with a grain of salt...)

Web Pages and Languages, ranked by the number of speakers per web page:

Language	Web Pages	% of all sites	# of speakers	% of humans	people/web ratio
English	214,250,996	68.39	322,000,000	5.34%	1.5 people/page
Icelandic	136,788	0.04	250,000	.004%	1.83 people/page
Sweden	2,929,241	0.93	9,000,000	.14%	3.07 people/page
Danish	1,374,886	0.44	5,292,000	.085%	3.85 people/page
Norwegian	1,259,189	0.40	5,000,000	.08%	3.86 people/page
Finnish	1,198,956	0.38	6,000,000	.095%	5.00 people/page
German	18,069,744	5.77	98,000,000	1.57%	5.4 people/page
Dutch	3,161,844	1.01	20,000,000	.32%	6.3 people/page
Estonian	173,265	0.06	1,100,000	.018%	6.36 people/page
Japanese	18,335,739	5.85	125,000,000	2.01%	6.8 people/page
Italian	4,883,497	1.56	37,000,000	.59%	7.58 people/page
French	9,262,663	2.96	72,000,000	1.16%	7.77 people/page
Catalan	443,301	0.14	4,353,000	.07%	9.8 people/page
Czech	991,075	0.32	12,000,000	.19%	12.1 people/page
Basque	36,321	0.01	588,000	.0094%	16.19 people/page
Slovenian	134,454	0.04	2,218,000	.036%	16.5 people/page
Korean	4,046,530	1.29	75,000,000	1.21%	18.5 people/page
Latvian	60,959	0.02	1,550,000	.025%	25.4 people/page
Russian	5,900,956	1.88	170,000,000	2.73%	28.8 people/page
Hungarian	498,625	0.16	14,500,000	.23%	29.1 people/page
Portuguese	4,291,237	1.37	170,000,000	2.73%	39.6 people/page
Greek	287,980	0.09	12,000,000	.19%	41.67 people/page
Spanish	7,573,064	2.42	332,000,000	5.34%	43.8 people/page
Lithuanian	82,829	0.03	4,000,000	.064%	48.29 people/page
Polish	848,672	0.27	44,000,000	.71%	51.8 people/page
Hebrew	198,030	0.06	12,000,000	.19%	60.6 people/page
Chinese	12,113,803	3.87	885,000,000	14.2%	73.1 people/page
Turkish	430,996	0.14	59,000,000	.95%	136.9 people/page
Bulgarian	51,336	0.02	9,000,000	.14%	175.3 people/page
Romanian	141,587	0.05	26,000,000	.42%	183.6 people/page
Arabic	127,565	0.04	202,000,000	3.25%	1583.5 people/page

As you can see here, there were about one and a half English speakers for every Web page in English. Interestingly, the next highest ranking came from Iceland; while they're aren't many Icelandic speakers, they've produced a lot of online content, so the ratio of speakers to Web pages is close as well. But compare this to Arabic-language content: there were so few Web pages in Arabic at the time compared to the large population of Arabic speakers, you end up with more than 1,500 people per Arabic Web page. Of course, this data is a few years old, and I'd love to update this chart, but so far I haven't seen a recent study that tabulates the number of pages for each of these languages.

So how of all of this relate to RSS? Well, RSS has become the de-facto way to syndicate content on the Internet. Blogs and news services rely on RSS, as do a growing number of blog consumers. But like the recent Pew study demonstrated, the average blogger is white, well-educated, well-off and English speaking. There's no way we can seriously bridge the digital divide as long as people can't create or access knowledge in their native language. If somehow we managed to bring Internet access to every village in the developing world, it won't mean much if those villagers are stuck using the Net only in English.

Fortunately, the UNICODE project has helped bring local languages to the Internet by providing a universal scheme for displaying tens of thousands of non-Latin characters. This means that I can go to an Israeli newspaper and read it in Hebrew, or an Iranian blog in Farsi. Slowly but surely, language is becoming democratized online, even if the amount of content or readers for a particular language leaves much to be desired.

But what if RSS isn't capable of handling all of these UNICODE languages? Will a Gujarati family in New Jersey be able to read news feeds coming from Gujarati bloggers in India? Honestly, I'm not sure. Technically, it should work: if you take a look at Hoder's blog, written in Farsi (Persian), you can subscribe to his Farsi RSS feed. I don't speak Farsi, but when I tried to subscribe to his feed using Mozilla Thunderbird, I received tons of blog entries, all of which were indeed written in Farsi. So in this particular case, the system apparently works.

But does this apply to all languages supported by UNICODE? Frankly, I have no idea, so I'm hoping some UNICODE techie will jump in and set the record straight. But I certainly hope it can work for all UNICODE-supported languages. Otherwise, we'll see a new facet of the linguistic digital divide. For languages with RSS support, knowledge gets produced and disseminated at a rapid pace, allowing more online knowledge to be produced, and an expanding community of people able to talk about this knowledge and contribute even further to it. But for languages that can't be transmitted via RSS, they'll be stuck sharing content at a much slower pace, to smaller, less-connected audience. Internet users shouldn't be penalized just because their language isn't on a global top 10 list. So let's make sure that people can blog and publish in the language of their choice -- and that their RSS feeds will support them, 100 percent. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 02:29 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Chirac Declares War on Google Library Project

CIO Today has an interesting article that outlines a cultural "counter-offensive" planned by French President Jacques Chirac to rally against Anglo-Saxon Internet culture. When I first read the headline, I imagined Chirac dressed as a medievel crusader charging against hordes of Vikings and British toy soldiers, but in fact, his fight is with Google's library digitization project.

Google, as you may know, is working with libraries across the US to digitize more than 15 million books so they can be made available on the Internet. Some of us see this as important step to ensuring equitable access to intellectual and cultural resources over the Internet. But to the French government, apparently, this project is the beginning of the end of French culture.

The concern, according to France's chief librarian Jean-Noel Jeanneney, is that the creation of an immense database of content from the United States will taint future generation's interpretation of history and culture, as more people rely on the Internet to learn about the world. If online libraries are dominated by "Anglo-Saxon" cultural content, the French cultural perspective could become buried and lost.

Jean-Noel Jeanneney writes in Le Monde:

The real issue is elsewhere. And it is immense. It is confirmation of the risk of a crushing American domination in the definition of how future generations conceive the world.

The libraries that are taking part in this enterprise are of course themselves generously open to the civilizations and works of other countries ... but still, their criteria for selection will be profoundly marked by the Anglo-Saxon outlook.

...It would have meant The Scarlet Pimpernel triumphing over Ninety-three (Victor Hugo's eulogistic account of the revolution); valiant British aristocrats triumphant over bloody Jacobins; the guillotine concealing the rights of man and the shining ideas of the Convention...

I find it very, very sad that French government officials are viewing the Google library project as part of a cultural war that needs to be fought against America or the English language in general. While too much of the Internet is English-only and society needs to make much greater investments in ensuring other languages and other cultures can prosper online, this doesn't mean that you should go after libraries just because they want to put their collections online.

There is no such thing as scarcity when it comes to how much information you can put online. It's not like there are only 100 terabytes of available space on the Internet that will eventually run out, preventing others from publishing content. This isn't Deadwood, the Yukon or the Comstock, folks; the gold in them thair hills ain't runnin' out. As long as companies keep building bigger and cheaper hard drives, there will always be more room for more content to be posted online.

So President Chirac, please go ahead and encourage Francophone libraries to put their collections online. But don't stop there. Encourage individuals and their communities to become content creators and citizen journalists as well. Encourage French universities to adopt open courseware initiatives, and fund French nonprofits to create community media portals like the new Ourmedia project. Bankroll Francophone nations in Africa to make sure their enormous wealth of cultural content can go online, as can their people, with the skills to become content creators in their own right. Please, go ahead and do all of those things. But don't frame this as a cultural war or counter-offensive against "Anglo-Saxon" Internet culture; giving all cultures the opportunity to share their knowledge, wisdom, literature and history via the Internet will benefit everyone, whether they speak English, French, Arabic, Vietnamese or Wolof.

The war shouldn't be against English-language domination. It should be against ignorance, illiteracy and attempts to control who has access to knowledge. By that standard, the Google library project is hardly an enemy; rather, it's one of the best allies we have. Bon chance, Monsieur Président. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 10:40 AM | TrackBack

March 21, 2005

Ourmedia Goes Live, Podcasters and Vloggers Rejoice

Today is the official launch of Ourmedia.org, which I checked out over the weekend prior to the official launch. I can't remember the last time a new website launch has had me so excited. The idea behind Ourmedia is really simple: it's a community where anyone who creates online media - video blogs, podcasts, photos, you name it - can have a place where they can publish it and share it with others.

This may not seem like a big deal, but it really is an important step forward in the world of online citizen journalism. Now, you don't need your own Web host to store that killer 50 meg video file you've just produced. Just become a member of Ourmedia, use their upload tool, and presto, your file is now hosted by the Internet Archive with its own Creative Commons license.

Yesterday, I tried to upload a file to see how it worked. I decided to use my podcast, Anatomy of a CNN Interview, just because it wasn't as large as some of the video files I've produced recently. As of this afternoon, my podcast was the most downloaded file on Ourmedia. I sincerely doubt this honor will last for very long, as lots of people will be uploading tons of stuff in the coming days, but it's still pretty cool if you ask me. :-)

Anyway, congratulations to J.D. Lasica and his colleagues for getting the project online. I am very, very excited about Ourmedia; perhaps the Digital Divide Network might be able to explore ways of using the site to host podcasts and videos for DDN members. Can't wait to play around some more and explore all of its capabilities....

ac

Posted by acarvin at 02:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 20, 2005

Boston Digital Divide Meetup this Wednesday

This Wednesday, I'll host a meetup for people interested in the digital divide in Boston. The meeting is officially a gathering of members of the Digital Divide Network, but we're not picky - anyone who's interested in the digital divide is more than welcome to attend. We'll meet at the Lenox Hotel City Bar at 5pm on Wednesday, March 23; the bar is located at the corner of Boylston and Exeter, right by Copley Place. If you'd like to join us, please RSVP on our Meetup page. Hope to see you Wednesday! -andy

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March 15, 2005

Technology Review's Special Issue on World Changing Ideas

The latest issue of MIT Technology Review magazine focuses on world changing ideas -- innovative approaches to ICTs, R&D;, and high tech in general from different parts of the world.

They profile tech trends in around half a dozen countries. Amongst the most interesting are the articles on Brazil, which includes information CDI's telecentre work and other digital divide projects, and South Africa, which covers R&D;, local language content and open source.

Meanwhile, the issue includes a series of world maps that identify each country as high, medium or low in a range of metrics related to ICTs and the digital divide. Here are the maps:

Since the maps don't have a text version, I've taken the liberty of typing up the top five rankings of the most relevant maps.

Top R&D; spending as a percentage of GDP
1. Israel
2. Sweden
3. Finland
4. Japan
5. Iceland

Top ICT spending per capita
1. US
2. Switzerland
3. Mexico
4. Denmark
5. Sweden

Most Mobile Phone Users per 1000 People
1. Luxembourg
2. Israel
3. Italy
4. Iceland
5. Sweden

Internet Use Per 1000 people
1. Sweden
2. South Korea
3. US
4. Canada
5. Denmark

Highest Cost of Internet Access
1. Central African Republic
2. Sudan
3. Haiti
4. Gabon
5. Republic of the Congo

Personally, I wish the maps weren't divided into rather vague rankings (how "high" is high? What does "low" mean?), but they still make for interesting representations on the relative state of ICTs around the world.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 01:56 PM | TrackBack

March 14, 2005

Telecommuting Challenges

I'm very lucky in the sense that I get to telecommute on a regular basis. Having said that, there are times where working at home becomes difficult because of various obstacles to accessing my laptop. A case in point:

Nothing like having a 20-pound feline deciding that your keyboard is more comfortable than that nice wicker bed we bought just for him. He must have really liked the vibrations from the Chemical Brothers playing in iTunes. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 02:37 PM | TrackBack

Video: Baramati Bus Stop

This weekend I completed a short Web documentary on my visit to a mobile computing lab in Baramati, India last week. The video, called Baramati Bus Stop, is about six and a half minutes long. It explores the mobile computing lab, which features two dozen thin-client computers installed on a bus. I also show my visit to a rural primary school classroom, and meeting some of the local village children who aren't enrolled in school -- and thus have no access to the technology.

I've made two versions of the video, one without captioning and one with captioning.

Both versions of the movie are quite large - more than 45 megs. So you may want to let the video download for a brief time before trying to stream it. Better yet, download the whole thing first so you won't have to worry about it pausing due to bandwidth bottlenecks. The movie is released on a Creative Commons noncommercial/attribution/share-alike license, which means it may be viewed, disseminated and even edited for educational and noncommercial purposes.

For those of you who are interested in how I made the video, here are some quick tech specs. I shot the video on a Canon A60 digital camera, capturing about 15 minutes of footage, on location in Baramti, India. I uploaded this footage to my Mac G4 laptop and edited it using Final Cut Pro. Music was licensed from ProductionTrax.com; licenses for four songs cost approximately USD $30. For voiceover (narration) I used Final Cut Pro's voiceover tool, spoken through a LogiTech USB headset mic. Captioning was also done using Final Cut Pro. The total editing process, from uploading footage to exporting the movie as a Quicktime file, took approximately eight hours over the course of several days.

Anyway, please check it out when you get a chance and let me know what you think. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 12:34 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Tunisian Cyber Dissident Dies of Heart Attack

Sad news from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) this morning: Tunisian cyber dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui has died. Using the pseudonym "Ettounsi," which means "Tunisian" in Arabic, Yahyaoui founded the website tunezine.com, to document the poor state of free expression in Tunisia. Because of this online work, he was imprisoned by the Tunisian government for nearly 18 months, released just prior to the December 2003 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Tunisia will host the next WSIS summit this November.

"We offer our condolences to the family and friends of Zouhair," RSF said in a statement. "This young man was a courageous activist and resolute defender of free expression in his country. He always fought for the right to freely inform his fellow citizens. Even prison failed to silence him."

Zouhair Yahyaoui was 36 years old.

-andy

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Introducing DDN Friends

We've just added a new feature to the Digital Divide Network website called DDN Friends. The idea behind this feature is to allow DDN members to identify friends and colleagues on the network and list them on your personal profile page. For example, if you go to my personal profile page, you'll see a list of several friends I've added to my list. This list appears below my bio, in the right column below my list of favorite websites.

When you're logged into the website and click on anyone's personal profile, you'll now see a link at the top right of the page that says "Add as Friend." Click on that link, and the person will be added to your list of friends, which you can review and manage by going to your About Me page in the edit profile section of the site. If you want to list your friends on your public profile page, you'll have to go to the About Me edit page listed above and click the box that says "Public friends." This will make your list public.

In future upgrades to the site, we may add other features to this tool, but for now it's a simple, handy way to list friends and colleagues on your personal profile page and build your social network on DDN. If you're a DDN member, you can get started right now; if you're not, please join us. Give it a try and let me know what you think... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 09:03 AM | TrackBack

March 13, 2005

Quoted in AP Story on Creating a $100 Laptop

There's a new AP story called MIT team bringing $100 laptops to developing world in which I'm quoted. The article explores a new project by Nicholas Negroponte at the MIT Media Lab to create a $100 laptop for use in the developing world.

Andy Carvin, director of the Newton-based nonprofit Digital Divide Network, applauds the project's goals, calling an extremely low-cost, durable laptop "one of the holy grails of bridging the digital divide."

But he said increasingly sophisticated and versatile wireless handhelds like high-end "smart" cell phones and Blackberry devices may gain favor over laptops as the developing world's online tools of choice.

"That's not to suggest we should not have an inexpensive laptop," Carvin said. "They're parallel tracks, and it's probably a healthy competition to have both."

Anyway, check it out when you get a chance.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 07:30 PM | TrackBack

March 10, 2005

Podcast: Grilled by the Professor

While in Bombay last week, Rohit Gupta and I met an eccentric old professor who overheard us talking about Bombay's history. He then proceeded to join us and chat for about 20 minutes about all matter of subjects, from Jackie Kennedy to Bill Gates to the Baramati conference. I took out my iPod to record an interview with him, but as you'll see in this podcast, instead he swapped roles and decided to interview us instead. He was definitely one of the most interesting people I've met on the street in India.... -andy

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Open for Comments Again

It seems that the comment feature on my blog has finally been fixed; hopefully you'll be able to post comments to the site now. Please feel free to give it a whirl and say hello. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 03:55 PM | TrackBack

March 09, 2005

Podcast: M. S. Swaminathan's Speech at the Baramati Conference

I've just posted a podcast of Professor M. S. Swaminathan's speech this past weekend at the Baramati conference in India.

Prof. Swaminathan is one of the world's leading thinkers on the role of ICTs in global development, particularly in terms of poverty alleviation in rural, agricultural communities. The speech he gave this weekend is one of the best arguments I've heard to date on the importance of bridging the digital divide in the developing world.

Additionally, here are some pictures from Prof. Swaminathan's presentation. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 02:47 PM | TrackBack

A Review of Nightline's Blogging Episode

Last night, ABC's Nightline ran an episode on blogging which featured a recent meeting of the Harvard Berkman Bloggers group in which I participated. We had known the piece was going to run for a while, so it was pretty exciting to see it on the air. I got featured twice in the piece; I was the dude with the spastic arm movements in the blue sweatshirt with the number 81 on the front. They quoted me talking about the fact that only one-third of Americans read blogs, and also noting that even gossip columnists follow journalistic standards while we bloggers don't.

Also, I was very happy to see that they centered the episode around blogger Maura Keaney. During the Berkman meeting, I'd talked about how the media often portrayed bloggers as people hell-bent on tearing down others -- journalists, politicos, fellow bloggers -- rather than using the medium for positive social change, and that the real power of blogging is empowering a single mother to rally her community to fight local corruption, adopt new municipal legislation, etc.

After the meeting, reporter John Donvan talked to me about this issue, and asked if I could suggest any bloggers doing this kind of positive blogging in the DC area, so they could be profiled in the show. I reached out to members of the Digital Divide Network for suggestions, and soon I got an email from Maura Keaney, whom I put in touch with Nightline. So thanks to the members of DDN, Nightline ended up profiling a real person trying to use their blog to do local good.

Of course, I wouldn't be a responsible blogger if I didn't nit-pick at the program and critique it, so here are a few things I'd wish they'd done better:

Discussion of linking. The program made an attempt at explaining the importance of blogs linking to other sites, but it seemed to miss the point. They described linking like going to a bookstore, opening a book, and finding virtual connections to other books in the store. Close, but not exactly. It's not the connections between the content that's important, it's the connections between the people behind that content. Blog links don't simply point you to other sources; they connect you with people with differing opinions or particular ideas, creating an opportunity to interact directly with them. A lot of this interaction occurs in a blog's comment threads, but that wasn't mentioned either. Blogs are more then just vanity press; they provide context for social networks to interact and debate different issues.

Limited attribution. While bloggers may lack organized standards, they're usually pretty good about attributing their sources, and ABC didn't do that very well. As Steve Garfield writes on his blog, they featured a clip of his video blog from the Berkman meeting, despite the fact his blog uses a Creative Commons license that requires attribution when his content gets used by others. They showed his name for a moment on the screen, but only in passing, and they didn't make it clear the video came from him. Also, many of us who were quoted in the episode - Lisa Williams, Brendan Greeley, Taran Rampersad and myself - weren't identified, even though we were identified in Steve's aforementioned video blog. Personally, I'm not going to lose sleep that they didn't flash ANDY CARVIN, ANDYCARVIN.COM in giant neon letters on the screen when they quoted me; perhaps it's Nightline's policy to not use lower thirds (ie, captions that credit who's talking at a particular moment). But since they even talked about Lisa Williams explicitly, it's a shame they couldn't have mentioned her by name.

No info about who we really are. The show seemed to suggest that we bloggers are a bunch of enthusiasts who like to write about stuff, whether or not we have an expertise in a particular area. That may be true, but a lot of the folks they quoted in the piece actually are real, highly regarded experts. Dave Weinberger is one of the leading thinkers on Internet culture; Rebecca MacKinnon was CNN's former bureau chief in Beijing; Brendan Greeley is a podcasting expert and staff member of Public Radio Exchange. So if you didn't know any of us, you might have left with the impression that we're just a bunch of hobbyists rather than people who write about issues we deal with professionally.

Those issues aside, I still enjoyed the piece. It's easy for bloggers to tear into any attempt by the media to talk about them, like "These journalists don't get it." Some don't get it, others do, and given the number of pieces I've seen about blogging, I thought ABC did a decent job. I'd give 'em a 6.5 out of 10 -- not perfect, but far from totally missing the point either..... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 08:34 AM | TrackBack

March 08, 2005

Helping a Monkey Find His Muse

Today I received an absolutely hiliarous request to use one of my photos on another website. Gerard Heidgerken, who runs a pirate-themed website called BilgeMunky, wanted to use a photo of a monkey I took in Bali on his site. Here's what he wrote:

The mascot of this site is a cartoon purple monkey in a red pirate hat. A short while back I wrote a couple of parady romance novel chapters and illustrated them with photoshoped "live action" images of the mascot. I borrowed images from several sources in the process, including a monkey image from your Bali honeymoon page . As it was a clearly photoshopped joke on an obscure portion of my site, I didn't overly worry about requesting permission from the original owners at that time. However, I'm now experimenting with further versions of this image, one of which is a very dashing picture of him looking all noble in a frock-coat. I'd like to use this new image more prominently - perhaps even as the site's header sometime in the future. But I wouldn't wish to proceed without your permission to do so.

Intrigued, I went to the site to see what exactly he had done with the monkey I'd photographed in Bali. I nearly wet my pants laughing once I saw the site.

First, some context. Here's the original picture I took in Bali:

Now, here's the same monkey, morphed into the BilgeMunky mascot and frolicking with the delightful Keira Knightly:

Last but not least, here is is with the ever-popular Salma Hayek:

Meanwhile, Gerard has used the photos in two chapters from a parody romance novel he's writing about his website's mascot. In chapter three, we learn of the monkey's romance with Keira:

Bilgemunky crawled out of the ocean, waves crashing over his sinewy shoulders. He was exhausted from the battle, yet energized by his victory over the rebel pygmies. But it was the sight of his beloved Keira rushing towards him that truly quickened his blood. The outline of her delicate feminine figure was teasingly visible through the ghostly white layers of her gown as she scampered towards him, and Bilgemunky realized that it was times like this when it was good to be a man, or at least a primate of the male persuasion.

And in chapter five, our intrepid primate romances the "Contessa de Salma":

His once fine clothing was tattered and battle-worn, revealing a savoury view of the body beneath - a bruised and bloody, yet sensitive and masculine body that had been pushed to the limits of endurance, and found worthy in every respect. Yet despite the combat he'd endured, the endless heartache and pain, his face showed only crystal resolve. The Contessa de Salma immediately felt a weakness scurry into her knees like rats into a pantry, but in a sexy way. She knew at once, for she had of course heard the tales - and besides, the purple fur was a dead giveaway - this could only be Bilgemunky.

On days like this, I am grateful of the opportunity I've had to travel the world and capture photographs from countries near and far; otherwise, mascots like the BilgeMunky might have remained a figment of someone's imagination. Now, thanks to my keen photographer's eye, we can all enjoy the noble BilgeMunky as he romances celebrities in a way only a pirate can. So let's let out a big pirate "arrrrrrgh" for Gerard and the BilgeMunky; I can't think of a better way to use photos from my honeymoon.

Look sharp, ye salty lubbers; there be purple monkeys in these waters! -andy

Posted by acarvin at 04:51 PM | TrackBack

Possible Cameo on ABC's Nightline Tonight

Tonight's episode of ABC's Nightline program will focus on blogging, and there's a chance I might appear in the episode. I took part in a group discussion on blogging at Harvard last month that was filmed by the Nightline crew, and I also chatted with reporter John Donvan about blogging and the digital divide. I don't know if I made the final cut, but it should be an interesting show either way.

Nightline generally airs at 11:30pm ET; check your local listings for details... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 03:22 PM | TrackBack

Video: From Baramati to Bombay

While returning from the Baramati conference to Bombay this Sunday afternoon, I recorded a series of video clips on my digital camera. On the airplane home, I edited them together into a five-minute video blog called From Baramati to Bombay.

All of the clips were taken from our car as we made the six-hour trek between rural Baramati and urban Bombay, so the video captures the shift in population density and development as it progresses. I decided against mixing in any music, mostly because of copyright concerns, so for now the audio captures whatever ambient noise was going on at the time, including goat herds, bullock carts, auto rickshaws and traffic. (I'm also trying to get permission from the Rajasthani folk band Musafir to use some of their music in the video for a future version of it.)

The file is more than 30 megs, but I've optimized the video for online downloads, so hopefully you will be able to watch it as it downloads. The video was shot with a Canon A60 digital camera, then uploaded to my Mac G4 laptop and edited with Final Cut Pro HD 4.5. The video is available on my blog under a Creative Commons noncommercial/share-alike license, so please feel free to use the video in part or in full for other purposes, as long as it's noncommercial in nature, you cite me as the source, and you pass along the same rights to others.

Over the weekend I will try to edit together the footage I took at our visit to a rural cyber bus in a farming village outside Baramati. I managed to put the clips together but still have to write and record the narration. Stay tuned... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 01:52 PM | TrackBack

Podcast: Riding with Sammy Davis Jr.

Here's a podcast I recorded in Bombay last week riding in a taxi with a cabby who styled himself after Sammy Davis Junior. Bombay Sammy talks about swearing in Finnish, drug dealing, and a variety of other subjects that his namesake would probably not have approved of. (Hey folks, I just report this stuff...) -ac

Posted by acarvin at 10:08 AM | TrackBack

Milkshakecasting with Rohit and Dina in Bombay

Now that I'm back home, I've got the bandwidth to post some of the podcasts I made while in India this past week. The first one I'd like to post is a podcast recorded at the Mocha Cafe in Bombay with Rohit Gupta and Dina Mehta of WorldChanging.org. I got to know the two of them as a volunteer with the TsunamiHelp blog, so we decided to get together while I was in Bombay. And in the spirit of Greg Narain's beercasting, we recorded a milkshakecast, given it was 90 degrees outside and milkshakes sounded really good at the time, particularly in conjunction with a cherry-flavored water pipe. :-)

There's no specific formula to the conversation; we just chat about a variety of things for about 15 minutes, from the differences between Delhi and Bombay to technology. Enjoy... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 09:53 AM | TrackBack

March 07, 2005

Emus, Rest Stops and The Chocolate Debacle

I woke up unexpectedly at 6am Sunday when I received an unrequested wake-up call from the hotel asking me to get up, even though we wouldn't be leaving Baramati until 8am. I was already packed, so I certainly didn't need two hours to get ready. But once I was awake I couldn't fall asleep very well, but I did my best to get a little extra shut-eye, particularly since I didn't know when I'd get a chance to sleep again. Over the course of the day, we'd make our way to Mumbai, then I'd head to the airport in the evening for a 2am flight to Paris. I usually don't sleep well on flights, so I faced the prospect of pulling an all-nighter on the 10-hour flight, then waiting six hours for my connection, then another eight hours to arrive in Boston around 3pm Monday. Not exactly my idea of fun.

Rather than driving directly back to Mumbai, the group would make two stops: one to a milk processing plant, another to an emu farm that also had a wireless Internet kiosk. I could understand why we were stopping at the emu farm, because it provided Internet access to the surrounding farms, but I didn't really understand the milk processing plant. Perhaps I'd find out when we got there.

We had been invited to have breakfast at the milk plant, but during M S Swaminathan's closing speech at the conference the previous night, he noted the problem that India's milk farms have when it comes to keeping their products salmonella-free. That sapped the appetite out of some of us, so we grabbed a quick bite at the hotel prior to leaving Baramati: a simple breakfast consisting of fried eggs, toast and a spicy potato pancake that someone aptly described as a Maharashtra latke.

It took us an extra 40 minutes before we left the hotel, as the group had to split up into a convoy of Toyota 4X4s that would take some of us to the farms and at least one person directly to the Pune airport. Eventually we settled into our cars and began what would be a nine-hour journey.

Our first stop was the milk processing plant. Initially I'd expected to see an idyllic Indian farm with dairy cows joyfully giving milk, while a variety of funky technologies would be used to process and package it. Instead, I only got to see the latter; the processing plant was an industrial complex with nary a bovine in sight. We were led into the plant's headquarters, where we were invited to have breakfast. It was a little awkward because most of us had eaten breakfast, but we did our best to accept modest portions and nosh on their food. Breakfast consisted of couscous and a very salty omelet, accompanied by the only fresh toast I ate in India. We were also served copious amounts of Tropicana orange juice; I politely declined my own carton's worth because I had been suffering from heartburn since leaving Paris, and orange juice would have burned terribly. The waiter took the carton away from my placemat with a dejected look on his face.

After breakfast, we were silently led to a conference room, where a man walked over to a TV plugged in a video tape. For the next 15 minutes we watched the TV, learning that the milk processing plant was one of the largest in India, certified to meeting a long list of ISO standards that meant absolutely nothing to me. We also learned the plant is the exclusive supplier of processed cheese slices for McDonalds (though it was unclear that exclusivity pertained to India, the region or the entire planet), and served as the producer and packager of products ranging from Tropicana orange juices (oops!) and Lipton Iced Tea. The question regarding the scope of their McDonalds cheese monopoly lingered in my mind as the video ended, so when the man returned to eject the video tape, he led us back to our cars without saying a word. No questions, no tour, no cheese. I looked at my watch and wondered if this little excursion would cost me the chance to go into downtown Mumbai later this afternoon.

Our second stop, however, was much more interesting and enjoyable. We drove for some time into the outskirts of Baramati, passing through hundreds of acres of pomegranate orchards and grape vineyards. Baramati, it turns out, is one of India's leading agricultural areas for table grapes. We'd previously seen row upon row of women selling enormous bushels of white grapes on dusty rugs along the roadside, while men generally seemed to sell the grapes from little carts. I wasn't sure how they ever made money of the grapes, since the market seemed saturated with them, yet without any buyers. (Colin Maclay of Harvard's Berkman Center later quipped that they weren't selling the grapes but were waiting for them to turn into raisins.)

Now, though, we arrived at the farm; a pair of women with several young children pumped water from the farm's well. We were greeted by the farmer, who invited us to walk with him to the emu pens. Passing the main house, we found ourselves in front of several large pens. In the first pen, dozens of young emus, no more than two feet tall, frolicked around with boundless energy, emitting a surprisingly relaxing coo noise reminiscent of doves. The emus darted in between each other, some moving in groups, others on their own. I saw one of the emus collapse to the ground and start rolling in the dirt; I cringed in horror thinking it was injured. It then kicked up the dirt, made a playful noise, then darted into another part of the flock. I then realized that emus throughout the pen were going through the same motions, dropping to the ground, rubbing into the dirt, then darting away. Either the dirt was an emu bird bath or part of an unspoken emu game.

Beyond the main pen, there was another large pen, but this one was home to a sole adult emu. While not as large as an ostrich, the emu was enormous. I've heard stories of ostriches being able to kill a person by kicking them; this one, while perhaps not being able to make you meet your maker, it could certainly end your dancing career if it was so inclined. In between the two large pens was a smaller holding pen containing a large cage. Inside, several dozen baby emus, only a few days old, picked at some feed while making that same cute cooing noise.

The farmer then began explaining the history of the farm. He had previously been a chicken farmer, and was invited to host a computer kiosk utilizing wireless local loop technology to connect to the Internet. That way, he and his surrounding farmers could have up-to-date access to agricultural market prices and techniques. Not long after this, he was searching the Internet searching for a local source to buy chickens. He struck up an email correspondence with another farmer who'd started raising emus. He asked the other farmer why he'd want to raise such an unusual bird rather than a more typical farm animal, and he replied that five-star hotels across India were serving emu burgers, emu steaks and other flightless delicacies. Emus, apparently, were as hot as, well, ostrich meat. So the farmer ordered a few emus to give it a whirl. Soon, he was making 10 times more money he could have ever made as a chicken farmer.

Participants from the Baramati conference had visited the farm two years ago, and back then they had a few dozen emus. Now, there were literally hundreds. Besides the emus we met in the outdoor pen, there was an indoor pen with at least another 100 week-old emus running around. We were invited to enter that pen and take a look around; the emus never got too close, but it was pretty strange being surrounded by so many of these cute little birds. Meanwhile, another room contained a high-tech incubator that served as the temporary home to dozens of two-day-old emus, and another incubator reminiscent of a giant rotisserie oven that was used to keep hundreds of enormous black emu eggs warm and cozy until hatching.

As fascinating as the visit was, the experience got a lot of us talking about vegetarianism. "Every time I go on an agricultural site visit, I become a vegan for at least six months," one of the group said. Fortunately, this farm was just the place where they raised the emus, but I couldn't help thinking about their ultimate fate. Too bad the little ones grew up to be enormous animals; otherwise they'd make an adorable pet.

It took us a while to get organized and leave the farm. At first I couldn't figure out what the delay was all about, but we soon learned that the person who'd left the hotel prior to us to go directly to the Pune airport had managed to have his bag stuck in one of our cars. This meant that all three cars would have to make a side-trip to Pune rather drive around the metropolis and proceed directly to Mumbai, adding at least an hour to our drive. I wasn't particularly happy about the situation, but there wasn't much we could do.

Back in the car, we headed off for Pune, only 100 kilometers away, but more than two hours' drive due to the poor conditions of the roads. The roads actually weren't as bad as I would have expected, but we found ourselves having to stop to allow goat herds and the occasional gaggle of buffalo to cross our path. I was sitting in the front passenger seat, so I kept leaning out the window to shoot photos and video clips.

About two-thirds of the way to Pune, we reached a medium-sized village. As we drove through town along a boulevard lined with peepul trees, we passed two bullock carts carrying a group of pilgrims. The bulls and the pilgrims were all covered in reddish-pink dye.

"Are they preparing for Holi?" I asked my colleague Archana, who lived in Mumbai.

"No, Holi is still a few weeks away," she said. "There's a community festival dedicated to one of the local gods, and they making their way to the festival."

The driver offered to pull over the car so we could get out and watch the carts overtake us. I walked back down the road to meet the carts halfway and shot a short video, along with some photos. The pilgrims seemed to be evenly divided among those who wanted to wave and mug for the camera, those who were indifferent and those who didn't want the attention, so I kept the video short to avoid causing offense. But they let me walk alongside the cart for a few moments as they caught up with our car, heading on their way.

Within the hour we arrived in Pune; a city with more than a million inhabitants, it's still considered small and pleasant when compared to India's megacities. Many affluent Indians actually choose to live in Pune, with its lack of humidity and rapidly-growing suburbs, and commute three hours by train into Mumbai. Pune was a bustling town, but didn't seem to be saturated with people in the same way Mumbai is. Rolling down the window, I noticed how dry it was outside; the forecast for the day was to hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but the heat wasn't extreme at all thanks to the constant dryness.

Eventually we arrived at the Taj Blue Diamond hotel. For some reason we didn't park in the lot; instead we drove in and out, then park along a busy road, all three 4X4s lined in a row. We then stood around for about 30 minutes, trying to figure out what exactly was going on. Two or three times we were informed that the missing bag in question had been found, but then told it was a false alarm. In the meantime, a poor woman dressed in rags carrying a dirty, malnourished child went from car to car, banging loudly on each window, chanting the sad mantra, "five rupee, 10 rupee." Meanwhile, several of us got out of the car, just to make sure that our bag wasn't accidentally sent to the Pune airport.

Somehow the confusion got sorted out, so we were ready to hit the road. One car's worth of people wanted to stay in Pune for lunch, while the rest of us wanted to make up for lost time and head for the Pune-Mumbai expressway. My bag was in the car that was staying for lunch, but it didn't seem to matter, as all three cars would rendezvous at the Kohinoor Hotel near Mumbai's airport well before 6pm, giving us plenty of time to be reunited with our luggage.

We started our drive out of Pune, passing through the army base of the Bombay Sappers, India's mine and ordinance division. On one side of the road I saw signs for the Sapper's boys school, the other side their high explosives depot. On the outskirts of the town we reached the Pune-Mumbai expressway, the only modern highway in India. Six lanes wide and only a few years' old, the highway was a pleasure to drive, not unlike an American highway. Archana explained that the Indian government was in the process of creating similar highways throughout India, as part of a plan first initiated by former prime minister Vajpayee.

Somewhere between Pune and Mumbai, we stopped at a highway rest stop. Like American rest stops, this place had a selection of restaurants. But thankfully there weren't any McDonalds or Pizza Huts or Arby's; instead, we found a courtyard of kiosks each selling regional cuisines from all over India. Whether you were looking for a snack from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Tamil Nadu or Bengal, you'd find whatever your stomach desired. Archana explained how it worked. First, you went to a central kiosk to pay for your meal. They'd ring it up for you and give you a receipt, which you would bring to the appropriate kiosks. If you ordered everything from one kiosk, you'd be squared away; otherwise, they would rip of part of the receipt representing what you'd just picked up there, then you would go to the next kiosk and pick up more food.

Our group scattered throughout the courtyard. Colin Maclay and I went straight for the Maharashtran kiosk and ordered two potato patties, each placed in a hamburger bun and drizzled with a sweet sauce. They put several chilis on the side as well; I spared my stomach and skipped them but Colin showed no such restrain. Meanwhile, the patties were spicy as hell anyway, so after eating them I went to a small pastry kiosk to buy a selections of sweets to share with the group and negate the burn on my tongue. Colin, still hungry, ordered a bal puri chaat, a spicy snack mix that was custom mixed for him.

We hung out for a little while in the packed courtyard, finishing our lunches and sampling the sweets I'd purchased. The best of the lot was a shredded wheat square that melted in your mouth like cotton candy. My next favorite was a diamond-shaped cookie made of cashew paste, coated with silver leaf on one side; Susanne and I had tried them in Rajasthan two years ago. My least favorite turned out to be an orange ball of semolina couscous, pressed and soaked in a sugary syrup that had no discernable flavor. Meanwhile, Archana showed up with a scorching hot plate of jalabi, an orange syrup dough shaped like pretzels, fried in oil, and served fresh. I'd seen jalabi on every trip to India but had never tasted them before. They were truly sinful, the crunch of the dough contrasting with a squirt of syrup and oil. One jalabi was more than enough.

Back on the road to Mumbai, Archana offered to have us over for tea at her suburban flat. As we approached the city, we veered off the highway towards an enclave of apartments and shopping complexes, all of which had been built in the last few years. The site was an enormous construction project, with most of the buildings still being completed. Eventually, hundreds of thousands of middle-class Mumbaikars would call this place home.

We pulled into Archana's apartment complex, much to the surprise of the other two cars, who had no idea why we'd left the highway and gone here. A quick explanation sorted out their confusion, and we went upstairs to her flat, where we were greeted by her mother, younger sister and two little dogs. We relaxed in the apartment as her mother made masala chai and one of the dogs nipped at me, with MTV India running in the background. It was one of the few times I've been invited into an Indian home, so I was honored to spend part of the afternoon there drinking tea and chatting.

Once we had polished off our cups of chai, we returned to the cars and continued towards Mumbai, crossing a small mountain range that separated the humid megacity with the more comfortable suburbs, then following a long causeway that brought us to the islands of Mumbai. Traffic -- human, vehicular and otherwise -- picked up significantly as we entered the city, slowing down our rate of transit. It took us another 90 minutes to get the hotel, which wasn't bad since we were driving on a Sunday rather than a weekday. Otherwise the drive could have been an hour longer. I recognized much of the last 30 minutes of the drive into the northern enclave of Andheri, home to our hotel, but that didn't stop us from taking a right at the last light rather than a left, delaying our arrival to the hotel by another 10 minutes.

Finally, we pulled into the hotel just after 5pm. In the car we'd talked about going into Mumbai for a few hours before heading to the airport, but as staggered into the hotel lobby, I decided I was in no condition to commute yet another 90 minutes into the city and out just for a couple hours of sightseeing in the dark. Others in our group hadn't spent any time in Mumbai at all, while I had a great day with Rohit and Dina earlier in the week. So while Archana led a small contingent of people back into the city, I commandeered one of the hotel rooms for a few hours, which would give me time to shower and relax before heading for the airport at 11pm.

After settling into our rooms, several people went down to the bar for some tea or beer, depending on how healthy they were feeling. In the meantime, I opened my laptop bag and discovered in horror that the two bars of chocolate I'd bought in Paris and forgotten about had melted some time that afternoon, probably at the rest stop. So rather than joining the group downstairs, I spent the next 30 minutes emptying out my backpack, scraping out as much chocolate as possible, and sopping up the rest with toilet paper and a couple of handtowels that turned black as oil rags. Eventually, I left the backpack directly under the air conditioner, hoping it would harden the remaining chocolate, then went downstairs to join Colin, Tom and Chris. Colin enjoyed his small pitcher of beer while Tom and Chris, who were sick and sicker personified, drank masala chair. I joined them for a cup, then returned to the room to excavate more chocolate from my bag and watch Meet The Parents on Indian cable TV.

At 11pm, Raul, Jen and I shared a ride to the airport. I was able to jump to the front of the line because of my frequent flier status, but my luck apparently stopped there, where I was unable to get a complimentary upgrade to business class. It was a 10-hour flight to Paris, and we wouldn't take up til 2:30am or later, so coach class was probably going to be hellish. I still had a couple of hours before boarding, so Jen and I joined Paul Moritz, a retired Microsoft exec who managed the rollout of Windows. We relaxed in the lounge and compared purchased we'd made over the years on our business trips, from miniature paintings to marble table tops.

After Paul and Jen left for their flight to Amsterdam, I wandered through the duty free shops before settling at the gate, where I joined a group of French students watching a bad Bollywood musical that appeared to focus on a gang of middle-aged Mumbai thugs who dressed like the characters in Michael Jackson's Beat It video. Amazingly, my stars fell into alignment when my name was called a few minutes before boarding. A Delta agent handed me a new boarding pass marked Seat 1B: business class. Walking on a pillow of imaginary clouds, I smiled the whole way down the jetway, settling into my seat next to a Keralan man living in North Carolina, traveling the world as a representative for Ruby Tuesday's restaurants. We chatted and swapped business travel stories until the flight took off just after 3am; I then put on my eye shades, leaned back as far as I could, and drifted into sleep.

Posted by acarvin at 05:08 PM | TrackBack

Orwell Comes to Nagpur: All Cameras, All the Time

Saturday's edition of the Times of India had a rather disturbing story about a school in Nagpur in which the principal has installed 180 webcams throughout the school to monitor students and teachers. The school, featured in the new documentary The Great Indian School Show, was wired by principal D. K. Bajaj, who felt the webcams would help enforce strict discipline.

Meanwhile, some parents and educators have begun to complain. "We do not need such Spartan discipline at school, especially in day school," said Uma Sharatchandra, another local principal. "They are just learning to become good human beings. They make mistakes, they learn from it."

School counselor Sadanand Ghaskadvi worries that parents won't understand the implications of the webcam practice. "In the last several decades I've seen several such attempts to enforce extreme discipline." Sanjyot Despande, another counselor, added, "It will come in the way of their personality development. It is especially wrong for teenage students, who will feel seriously offended by the cameras."

After viewing the documentary, a fourth grader was asked who the bad guy was in the film. "The villain is the one who wears all those gold rings and sits in his dark room, watching all the children on his TV, isn't it?" he said. "I don't ever want to go to his school."

Posted by acarvin at 05:07 PM | TrackBack

An Evening of Drama

At the conclusion of the Baramati conference sessions Saturday evening, the organizers of the conference treated us to a viewing of the movie Shwaas, which was perhaps the most depressing movie I've seen since Schindler's List. The plot: A village boy from Maharashtra and his grandfather travel to The Big City at the urging of their local doctor. They have an appointment with an "Onco Specialist," which doesn't mean anything to them; they just know he is a good doctor and he will know how to treat the boy's failing eyesight.

The grandfather soon learns that the boy has bilateral retinal blastoma, an aggressive eye cancer that will kill him if they don't operate in a matter of days. The problem is that the operation would require removing both of the eight-year-old's eyes. The first half of the movie deals with the grandfather, doctor and social worker agonizing over who is going to break the bad news to the boy, and the second half the audience gets to agonize over the grandfather's indecision as to whether to allow the surgery and take away the boy's eyesight or allow him to die with his vision intact.

The movie had its moments; there were well-done flashback scenes to life in their village, a lush ocean-side paradise where everyone is happy, the coconuts are plump, and the cows' udders overflow with delicious milk. Also, the film did an excellent job at capturing the fear and frustration of an uneducated, illiterate grandfather having to deal with modern healthcare for the first time, including hospital paperwork, strict appointment schedules, and doctors who always seem like they'd rather be doing something else than curing your grandson. However, watching the movie unfold and the struggle the grandfather and the boy go through, including their eventual decision, was quite difficult. There is nothing more unpleasant to watch than a young boy screaming and fighting as he's given MRI scans, hypodermic injections and other procedures. And in the end, you just can't avoid the fact that a decision has to be made. There are several moments in the film that were quite poignant, but still, it was emotionally exhausting to watch, particularly when you can hear a sizable minority within the audience sobbing their eyes out. (Sorry, no pun intended.)

When the movie ended, everyone walked out in silence. Meanwhile, those participants who skipped the movie were lounging under the stars, enjoying their Indian buffet and desserts with a perfect breeze keeping them cool. I came out to the buffet and had a few spoonfuls of banana soufflé and half a piece of naan. For some reason I lost my appetite. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 05:01 PM | TrackBack

March 06, 2005

Almost Time to Go Home

It's 7pm in Mumbai and I'm chilling for a few hours at the Kohinoor Hotel prior to going to the airport. We had a crazy day today, leaving Baramati for breakfast at a milk factory, then touring an emu farm with a wireless kiosk for local farmers. We then made our way to Mumbai for the next six hours, stopping at an enormous rest stop for lunch and snacks. One of our Indian colleagues had us over for tea, where we got to me her family and two dogs. Eventually, we reached the Kohinoor, where some people quickly left for the airport, others left for the bar, still others left for the city -- and I spent about 30 minutes cleaning up melted duty-free French chocolate that I'd forgotten about in my computer bag.

Since the hotel has broadband, I'm catching up on email one last time before having a quick drink downstairs, perhaps a shower, then off to the airport. So the next time I'm online will either be during my six-hour layover in Paris or in Boston... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 08:26 AM | TrackBack

March 04, 2005

Touring a Rural Indian Cybervan

I've just returned from a wonderful visit to a cyber van touring the Maharashtra countryside near Baramati, India. We spent an hour visiting with the students and teachers as they used the cybervan to learn MS Paint, and toured a classroom that was also teaching basic computer graphics to 5th graders. Meanwhile, across the road I met another group of village kids who never got to use the cybervan, so the contrast was quite striking.

I conducted interviews with several students and shot lots of video, so I plan to edit it into a video blog at some point. More later... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 11:02 PM | TrackBack

What Makes Educational Content Educational?

In the last session earlier we saw a series of presentations on examples of educational content development here in India. Unfortunately I didn't see anything that seemed to be breaking new ground. One project developed a series of educational CD-ROMs that converted textbook curricula into multimedia modules that you could play, rewind, fast forward and stop like a video recorder. We saw a clip from an anatomy module in which there was an animation of a skeleton flexing its knee joint. Meanwhile, a voiceover explained how the joint worked. Once you were done viewing the clip, though, your only options were to replay it or to move on to the next clip. What does a student do if they don't understand the voiceover explanation? The module offers no ability for the student to manipulate the stimulation, ask rudimentary questions or demonstrate that they've gained any knowledge from viewing it.

It seems the problem here isn't a matter of programming skills; the animations were quite well done, and the interface was simple to use. But the curricular model simply takes the content once contained in a text book, and animate it with accompanying narration. The same teaching method could have been seen in the 1970s with film strips I saw when I was in school.

I don't want to belittle the enthusiasm seen here regarding the development of educational content, particularly in local languages. But it's such a shame that the multimedia content we've seen so far doesn't demonstrate any interactivity, real or imagined, nor does it give students the tools to demonstrate what they're learning or how it applies to the real world. In one case we did see how students were being asked to create Powerpoint presentations after surfing the Net for information on a particular task such as "Learn something about Russia," but again, all this demonstrates is a student's ability to search the Web and do a book report presentation with the Powerpoint substituting what might otherwise be a handwritten report.

The next session, though, seemed to offer some more compelling models. Ana Maria Raad of CDI Chile gave a presentation on charter school-like information technology citizenship schools in Chile that use community-centric authentic assessment to teach students. Their education model, inspired by the "social education" work of Paulo Friere, is based on the notion that every child can be a social actor within their community, and that they have the responsibility to transform the world around them into a better place.

"We understand that technology should only be a mean to do something and not a goal in itself," she said. "We use computers while discussing issues of particular interest to each community."

When students learn to use Excel, for example, they do it in the context of debating human rights, so their spreadsheets become a tool for engaging their classmates on what rights they believe they have and which ones they don't. And when they use Powerpoint or a desktop publishing program, it's in the context of communicating to the class certain policy goals they'd like to see advocated in their community. To date, more than half a million students have learned to use computers in the context of discussing social justice, citizens rights and civic engagement at nearly 1,000 citizenship schools across South America. These schools, she said, are giving students learning opportunities to liberate them and become civic actors in their community rather than restricting them to a limited, old-fashioned curriculum that doesn't educate students in a socially-relevant context.

Next, Shilpa Uttam of Enabling Dimensions conducted a demo of an Indian CD-ROM called SpellWell. The program, designed for the visually impaired, is a tool for improving English spelling proficiency. Because the blind experience greater problems with homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently, like sight and cite) and face other spelling proficiency challenge, the software is designed to teach visually impaired people better spelling and the ability to type. It's also seen as a tool for improving the job prospects of the blind, who statistically are more likely to face significant employment challenges. The interface is designed so that it can be used by people who cannot see a screen at all, as well as for individuals who have enough visual capacity to make out large words with strong screen contrast. The game features well-produced audio recordings with hip music and entertaining voice-overs, helping younger people with visual impairments stay interested in the software.

The CD-ROM is also trying to redefine pricing models for educational software, with a target price of less than 300 rupees (less than $8) per unit. The disc is distributed through educational institutions for the blind, advocacy organizations and other NGOs that work with the disabled. The packaging also incorporates Braille, so a visually impaired user can take it out of the box and find usable instructions on how to begin the software exercises. Interestingly, the developers of the software see non-impaired users as a target audience -- the audio content is compelling and the user interface simple, allowing anyone who is interested in approving their spelling ability to benefit from the software. They've even created an online community, EnableAll.org, to offer tech support with experts specialized in assistive technologies, as well as provide an online community for users to discuss their learning experiences and create new word lists.

The next challenge, she said, was making the software work with speech-recognition software. Not only would this open it up to a broader disabled audience, but to illiterate audiences as well.... - andy

Posted by acarvin at 07:18 AM | TrackBack

Pondering a Quote for the World Bank

I just saw this quote in the report book distributed here at the Baramati conference:

"We must work towards the day when through the Internet, through distance learning, through cellular phones and wind-up radios, the village elder or the aspiring student will have access to the same information as the finance minister. Communications technology gives us the tool for true participation. This is leveling the playing field. This is real equity."

-World Bank President James Wolfensohn, Prague Annual Meetings, September 2000

I wonder if the Reuters reporter who produced the story last week saying that the World Bank believes the digital divide is being bridged "rapidly" and that we shouldn't worry about the issue so much would reconsider his story based on this statement. Because if this situation hasn't been realized, then the digital divide is nowhere close to being bridged. -ac

Posted by acarvin at 07:16 AM | TrackBack

Facts Facts on India Education

Some stats from the last panel at the conference:

• 35 million Indian kids under 16 are out of school
  
• one-third of fifth graders cannot read or write

The challenges here are staggering.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 05:02 AM | TrackBack

Baramati Lunch Break

It's now 1pm in Baramati, India, and the group is wrapping up an informal lunch in an adjacent building. My lips are still burning from the chili I accidentally bit into, but otherwise lunch was a fine affair, with an assortment of curries, fresh tandoori breads and banana pudding for dessert.

Just prior to lunch, we had an engaging interactive session in which the audience got to ask questions of the CEO of Microsoft India and several other guests. The group was quite animating, speaking passionately on a range of topics, particularly the importance of creating computer software in local Indian languages, and the debate over whether children younger than six years old should be exposed to computers, whether for educational or entertainment purposes. Microsoft's Ravi Venkatesan assured one member of the audience that MS was working hard on releasing MS office in many Indian languages, including the local Marathi language, and that it would be priced at 25 to 30% less than the English-language version, as well as discounts for educational use.

There are several panel sessions this afternoon, though I don't have the program in front of me. I'll be speaking early tomorrow morning on US federal edtech initiatives, particularly the E-Rate. More from Baramati later.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 02:36 AM | TrackBack

Achieving Sustainable Edtech Initiatives

During today's morning keynote at the Baramati conference in India, Microsoft India CEO Ravi Venkatesan offered his company's latest thinking on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education.

India graduates two million students each year, he said, yet 60 million children don't even go to school, and overall literacy is below 60%. "Sixty million is roughly the entire enrollment of the US school system," he noted. There are also about 400 students per computer in Indian schools. "Only a small fraction of educators have basic ICT literacy," he added, noting there are approximately 250,000 trained teachers amongst a total of five million teachers. In the general popualation, there are also around 10 PCs per thousand people overall.

"I find this interesting because there's a remarkable thing in India going on today," he continued. "Middle class Indians now believe we can be an educated, developed nation." Indians are starting to view their nation's one billion people not as an obstacle, but as an asset, he said.

"It's the shortage of skilled teachers, high student to teacher ratios, teacher absenteeism, student absenteeism" that are among India's greatest educational challenges, he continued. However, there are ways ICT can combat these challenges. For example, Venkatesan admitted that despite his personal successes in business, he is illiterate in his own native tongue, Tamil, yet he has been amazed how much of the basics he was able to pick up by using multimedia training tools at an ICT kiosk he recently visited.

Beyond formal schooling, ICTs can help village women achieve financial independence.
"You take women from self-help groups and give them basic ICT skills, and you dramatically increase their opportunities," he said. In partnership with an NGO working with agricultural workers, ICT access helped women increase their salary from 500 rupees (USD $11.50) a month to 2000 rupees (USD$ 45) a month.

Unfortunately, no major breakthrough has been achieved on a large, replicable scale, he said. "I don't think anybody really knows; there is a remarkable lack of information on what drives success and sustainability."

"When you look across all these projects, there is always a visionary, passionate, committed leader," he continued. "Our problem is that we then become over-reliant on this small group of leaders." There is no substitute for this type of leadership, he said; how do we identify more people to fill these roles?

It's quite common for a project's funding to dry up before it reaches critical mass for sustainability, he pointed out. There are many well-intentioned efforts, some led by the government, some by NGOs or the private sector, but they're not coordinated. "I'm constantly surprised" when you look at the projects of major IT companies, running project that have very similar goals, in the same communities, "but we don't come together, so there is a tremendous missed opportunity."

When developing an ICT project, he said, very often you get consumed by a particular goal, like wiring every village, or putting a kiosk in all of them. But unless you put in all the building blocks, "things fall apart." He then identified some of these building blocks, including local connectivity and affordability. "It's the affordability of everything: hardware, software, the cost of connectivity," he said. "I don't think any one company can solve the issue," he added; Consortiums organized by government are a positive step in the right direction.

Language and illiteracy is also a major challenge, particularly when content isn't available in the local language. "It's incredibly important for us to make sure that the user interface is in the local languages." Microsoft is working to put its software into 14 Indian languages by the end of the year, he said, "but it's not enough.... because of the 40% of people who are illiterate."

A lack of content also stifles well-meaning initiatives. "There is a tremendous diversity in the kind of information needs that people have; it even varies from district to district." So just because you offer access doesn't mean you're given access to the local crop information that would be vital for a village's farmers.

He then noted the need for education and training. "It's training, training, training - it's the single biggest differentiator between success and failure." When looking at the success of kiosks, the most important factor is having kiosk managers who are well trained and able to train others. "We are very conscious of the fact that we are just beginning to scratch the surface."

"All of these building blocks must be in place if we are to have sustainability," he concluded.

Venkatesan then described a visit President Clinton paid to a village in Rajasthan that was using VSAT technology for Internet access. Many months later, journalists returned to see how they were maintaining the program. "It was quite sad," he said; the VSAT terminal wasn't working, no one else was trained. The project had collapsed.

To move forward, he said teachers and students must be at the center stage of ICT initiatives. "Putting them center stage and using ICT to solve real problems rather than perceived problems is an important step." Venkatesan also noted the importance of state government being involved, particularly since the majority of schools in India are state-run. You also must get the community involved. He described an experience working for a diesel company in the US during the 1980s. They worked there for three years, but as soon as they pulled out, the project collapsed. "We hadn't involved the workforce, they hadn't taken ownership," he said. "It's exactly the same as that village in Rajasthan; we really, really need to have local ownership of initiatives."

"I'm personally, passionately convinced that the reason people remain poor is because they lack information access," he said. So Microsoft India hopes to achieve the goal that all Indians have access to information though ICTs by 2010.

Quoting Margaret Mead, he closed his presentation: "Never doubt the ability of a small group of committed people to change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has."

Posted by acarvin at 12:59 AM | TrackBack

Universal Literacy, Universal ICTs

Shri Suresh Dada Jain, Mararashtra's Higher Education Minister, spoke during the morning session of the Baramati conference. He talked about the need for spreading literacy "to the total masses of society."

However, literacy is only part of the process of achieving greater development. "Literacy [alone] will not solve the problem," he said. "The problem of poverty can only be transformed through technology use in day-to-day life."

"We are thinking that we will have entire network of education through universities, colleges, right to the primary education level, right to the village level. To have computer education in every primary school, starting in the first standard going all the way up to the seventh standard. [They are] the future citizens of this country, so this is the right place to tackle [the issue]."

"The government of Maharashtra would be happy to use more technology for education... which will ultimately enlighten farmers, help generate income with agriculture, knowledge about agriculture.... We believe all of this through the technology will certainly add value to their lives, and to poverty alleviation in this country."

Posted by acarvin at 12:46 AM | TrackBack

Using ICTs to Reach Human Development Goals

The first full day of the fifth Baramati Conference in Baramati, India opened this morning with a speech delivered by India's ICT minister, Shri Dayanidhi Maran.

"ICT as a catalyst for development is a focus of my ministry," Minister Maran explained. "I firmly believe ICT can deliver on the promise of bringing education to all.... The role of ICT for education and development is now widely accepted worldwide... including as a tool for reaching the Millennium Development Goals.... ICT is expected to play an important role in achieving these targets."

"Technologies such as ICT can help people reach their full potential," he continued. "There are hundreds of millions of people not in a position to benefit from these tools... How can we use ICT to help the poor? It is my very earnest desire that the benefits of ICT percolate down to the poor... using ICT to reach human development goals."

"Nations are placing great emphasis on developing their human capital," he continued. So the question, he said, is how can ICTs be used to raise the opportunities available to the underprivileged.

"The use of ICT to help people gain access to the information they require to improve their lives.... It is our way of escaping from our closed society. Female education is recognized as one of the key factors for promoting social development. It is often said that when you educate a woman, you educate a whole family." He went on to describe the success of the Grameen Phone program for giving new economic opportunities to illiterate women.

"We should prepare our children for an increasingly digital world" by providing universal access to ICTs, he explained. ICTs will help children gain new skills and build confidence.

"It is our vision to make India a major player in the ICT arena," Minister Maran concluded.

Posted by acarvin at 12:43 AM | TrackBack

March 03, 2005

A Day in Mumbai: The Professor and Sammy Davis Jr.

A woman looks out over the harbor in Mumbai, India

Thanks to the multiple delays of my Delta flight from Paris, I finally arrived in Mumbai some time after 2am on Tuesday. Immigration procedures were very quick; there were enough agents so I didn't have to wait in line, and he processed my passport and visa quickly. My baggage pickup wasn't so efficient, though; it took about 30 minutes for the bags to arrive on the proper carousel, so by the time I found my ride to the hotel it was well past 3am. At least the hotel was only a 10 minute drive from the airport.

Even though I was exhausted from the flight, I was too wired to fall asleep. I tossed and turned for a while; the last time I remember glancing at the clock it was a few minutes before 5am. Nonetheless, I still requested a wake-up call for 9am; masochistic it may have been, but this would be my only free day in India, so I wanted to make the most of it.

I dragged myself downstairs to breakfast just before 9:30am, feasting on a chili and cilantro omelet and a generous bowl of sliced papaya. The coffee was scorching hot -- so hot that I only got to have a few sips of it before going back upstairs to prepare for the day.

I didn't have a detailed plan for the day, apart from contacting Rohit Gupta and Dina Mehta, hopefully getting together with them at one point or another. Both of them are contributors to the Worldchanging.org blog, but I got to know them while volunteering as a contributor to the TsunamiHelp blog, since they were integrally involved in the effort in the days and weeks after the tsunami. I called Dina first; she had clients in from the US, but she would probably be able to get together for coffee after 2pm. Rohit, meanwhile, was free all day, so we decided to rendezvous at the hotel later that morning, then head into Mumbai and play it by ear.

Once Rohit got to the hotel, we caught an autorickshaw to the local commuter train station. Being on the north side of the city, it could take as long as two hours to get into Mumbai by car, but taking a train would cut that time in half or less. The autorickshaw weaved through the traffic, honking constantly while evading other autoricks, pedestrians, bicycles, street children, street dogs, and the occasional cow. I was a long, long away from the orderly streets of Paris and Geneva, and I loved every moment of it.

We eventually arrived at the Andheri train station, which was jammed with commuters coming and going from Mumbai. Rohit bought a small book of ticket stubs, then stamped them in a machine; we then walked briskly across the station in search of the next train. On one platform, crowds of men jammed themselves into a train car. Rohit paused for a moment, looked around, then motioned for me to follow him. "Yeah, this is an express; let's go," he said. We quickly jumped onto the train and squeezed our way in. At first it seemed horribly crowded, but as we worked our way into the train, I realized it was just the usual bottleneck of people crammed around the doors.

As the train took us south to Mumbai, we talked about blogging and podcasting. I pulled out my iPod and demonstrated its iTalk recorder; several men on the train stared at me for the entire ride. It didn't seem to have anything to do with the iPod, since they'd been staring at me since the moment I'd gotten on the train. I'd forgotten what it was like to have people staring at me with such determination. I was the only person in the train car who wasn't Indian, and even though Mumbai is a very cosmopolitan city, I seemed to draw a lot of attention.

We arrived in downtown Mumbai about 30 minutes later. Rohit suggested that we get lunch with his publisher, whose shop was just a few blocks away. It was a hot, humid day -- par for the course in Mumbai, but since I'd just arrived from frigid Paris and snowy Geneva, the heat was a shock to my system. I polished off my first bottle of water as we walked to the shop; I immediately began wondering when I should pick up another bottle or two.

As we walked through the crowded streets, dodging autorickshaws and bicycles, I began to notice random landmarks and buildings that looked familiar. I'd only been to Mumbai once before, but it was only for an afternoon, and my camera batteries had died, so I didn't manage to take many photos to preserve the memories. Nonetheless, I sensed I was in familiar surroundings, somewhere in the southern part of the city. Hopefully I'd get my bearings at some time during the day.

Soon we arrived at the book shop; Rohit and his publisher gave each other a big hug, then suggested we go to a Gujarati restaurant around the corner. We hiked down the street past street vendors selling roasted nuts and plates of biryani rice, once again hugging the sidewalk to avoid getting squashed by an autorickshaw. At the restaurant, we each ordered a vegetarian thali platter featuring a selection of around half a dozen Gujarati curries, accompanied by chappati bread, rice, salted buttermilk and half a ball of gulab jamun for dessert.

After lunch, Rohit's colleague returned to work; meanwhile, he and I began walking to the Mocha Coffee shop, where we planned to meet Dina Mehta. After walking several blocks, I saw a Victorian-era building that looked familiar; across the street was a long grassy maidan, or mall, full of people picnicking and playing cricket. Suddenly, I recognized exactly where I was -- we were next to the Eros Theatre, an art deco movie theatre.

"I've been here!," I said proudly. "Susanne and I saw the movie Lagaan here."

"Are you a cricket fan?" Rohit asked.

"Would you believe that everything I know about cricket I learned from that movie? Pretty sad, isn't it."

Dina Mehta and Rohit Gupta exchange info on their mobile phones at Mocha in Mumbai.

We walked west towards Back Bay and the Arabian Sea, passing airline offices and Orange mobile phone stores. Soon we arrived at Mocha, a hip café packed with young Mumbaikars talking on their cell phones and smoking shisha water pipes. Rohit and I grabbed an outside table, waiting for Dina to arrive. She got to the café a few minutes later, and soon we were ordering raspberry milkshakes and chatting about blogging, Mumbai, Delhi and other common topics of interest. Dina hadn't eaten lunch yet, so she ordered a panini, while I gave into temptation and ordered a cherry-flavored shisha.

"You should bring a shisha home with you," Rohit suggested. "They're very cheap here."

"Yeah, but if I did that, I'd be tempted to use it," I said, "and it's better if I save it for special occasions -- particularly when I'm traveling overseas."

Meanwhile, I pulled out my iPod so we could record a podcast. We didn't have any particular agenda in mind; instead, we just wanted to record some of our conversation. I recorded about 15 minutes of chatting, mindful of the fact that the Internet connection at the hotel might not be fast enough to post such a large file very easily.

Eventually, Dina had to return to her clients, so we parted ways. Rohit and I walked back towards the maidan, following it towards Colaba, the historic heart of Mumbai. Rohit told the story of the founding of Bombay, in which a Portuguese Jewish botanist was working in Goa, south of Bombay, when the Catholic church there decided it was time to bring the Inquisition to Goa. The botanist, who had hid his religion from the authorities, feared he would be found out, so he requested permission to relocate his research to the island of Bombay, so he could study hemp. With that, Mumbai's history as a settled community began.

"So you're telling me that Bombay was founded by a Jewish botanist pretending to be Catholic who leased a piece of land to get away from the Church and focus on studying pot?" I asked.

"Yes, that's pretty much it," Rohit replied, laughing.

Since then, of course, Mumbai has grown into megacity of the first degree, a juggernaut of a metropolis. But walking the streets of Colaba I got a distinctly different impression of the modern city I'd seen so far. Colaba was green, relatively quiet, with old colonial buildings stretching down each street. Small groups of tourists rode by in horse carriages. There was something almost New Orleans-like to Colaba -- the last thing I expected to find here in Mumbai.

We continued our walk towards the Colaba waterfront as Rohit told stories about Mumbai. Along with being a blogger and published short story author, Rohit has worked as a professional storyteller, focusing on the fringe history of Mumbai. He talked about the founding of the Taj Mahal Hotel, the most famous hotel in the city. The founder of the Tata industrial empire was denied entry to one of the city's most prestigious hotels because he was Indian, not British. In response to the insult, he decide to become a hotel entrepreneur, building the most posh hotel the city had ever seen, and one that would not turn away Indian guests. The hotel that dissed Mr. Tata is long gone, but his Taj Mahal still reigns as the grand dame of Mumbai hotels.

The Gateway of India

Walking by the hotel, we crossed the street to visit the Gateway of India monument, an early 20th century arch built on the waterfront to commemorate a visit by the king of England. The Gateway is now one of India's most famous landmarks, and tourists from across India and around the world flock to visit it and sit in its shade by the harbor. For the first time since I arrived in Mumbai, hustlers started to accost me, trying to get me to buy dolls, balloons, postcards, hash. Fortunately I had Rohit with me so they generally left me alone after we both ignored them for a while. On several occasions we had a number of children follow us, begging for money, but they weren't particularly persistent. There were plenty of other marks they could target here on the waterfront. They could even get in line to talk with the pair of hippies sitting on a bench, who were hearing a pitch from an Indian man as to why they should be extras in a Bollywood film the next day.

Rohit and I walked clockwise around the Gateway, as the sun began to set over the island. Indian families were now picnicking in the small garden adjacent to the Gateway. "I went to a Greenpeace protest here recently," Rohit said. "It was really cool."

We departed the Gateway and walked northwest to Wellington Circle, then hugged the road north towards Horniman Circle. Along the way we passed some of Mumbai's most important cultural institutions, including the modern art museum and the Asiatic Society library. "This area has some of the oldest buildings in Mumbai, dating to the early 1700s," Rohit explained.

"So there's nothing here from the Portuguese period?"

"No, what you see is from the East India Company onward."

We talked a while about the East India Company, and how they rose from a merchant company to being the de facto rulers of India until the British Crown reasserted its authority. Soon, we reached the old customs house. Rohit started to describe the neighborhood's history when suddenly an elderly Indian gentleman in a tie and dusty dress shirt came running over to us.

"You are talking about history? Let us talk about history!" the man said. He introduced himself as a retired law professor, and he immediately began enquiring into who we were, what we were doing there, and why we were interested in history.

"So where are you from, my friend?" he asked me.

"The USA, I live in Boston," I replied.

"Now that is a city with history, my friend!" he exclaimed. "Tea party, seventeen hundred and seventy six.... a city with history! And let us not forget the Kennedys. I adore the Kennedys... but what a curse they have upon them. One brother, two brother, three brother dead, fourth brother not get White House because he crash and women drowns..."

"At Chappaquiddick," I said.

"Yes, that is it, but I cannot pronounce such silly words," he replied. "Chappa chappa chappa chappa...."

"...Quiddick," I finished for him.

"Yes, it is a silly word that cannot be pronounced....

We spent the next several minutes discussing the Kennedys; he blamed the family curse on old Joe Kennedy's bootlegging. "That man was a corrupt, corrupt bastard, corrupt I tell you," he said, emphasizing each word. "His children pay the price for his bad deeds. And Jackie, too - she pay the price. Such an elegant woman, most beloved by India... So why you in India?"

"I'm here for a conference."

"Conference? Whose conference?"

"It's organized by the Grameen Foundation," I replied.

"Grameen? Grameen? Never heard of them. I hope they are not one of these big, bad companies."

"No, quite the opposite, they do very important work."

"So they organize your conference?"

"Yes, and Microsoft, I believe," I started to say, before recalling his previous comment about big businesses?

"Microsoft!" he retorted. "Oh, they are okay in my book."

Rohit and I could hardly contain ourselves; we had somehow stumbled upon perhaps the most interesting man in all of Mumbai. Knowing I couldn't let any other of his quips go to waste, I took out my iPod and started recording his stories, just as he began telling an Internet joke, as he called it: A woman goes to a curtain store and says, I need to buy curtains for my computer. Curtains? The man at the store asks. Why do you need curtains? It is a computer, ma'am. Because it has windows, she replies.

Yes, it was a terrible joke, but our new friend had us in hysterics. We hung around with him for another six or so minutes, appreciating his unique wisdom and capturing it on my iPod. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy the audience.

Eventually, we parted ways, as we crossed into Horniman Circle. The circle reminded me of Dupont Circle in DC, yet tropical: lush green plants, scores of people reading newspapers or snoozing, it was quite a community hub. Soon, though, Rohit got a call from his friend Matti, a Finnish PhD student who was studying in Mumbai and making a documentary with another Finn on globalization. We made arrangements to meet at a bar for drinks. "We'll see you at the sports bar," Rohit said over the phone.

We jumped into taxi and soon arrived at The Sports Bar. It turns out that was the name of the place, not a general description. Indeed, The Sports Bar was a sports bar; once you got inside past the guard, there was a row of booths on the left side of the room, each with its own flat-panel TV set into the wall. To the right, a long, diner-like bar sported mushroom-like stools and giant TV screens, all showing cricket. To the back, there was a basketball cage in which you could shoot hoops.

Matti and his friend were already there, sucking down two-for-one Kingfishers. We joined them for the evening, talking about documentaries and globalization and psychogeographic mapping and beer, in no particular order. Eventually, Matti's girlfriend joined us, as did an Indian friend whom I was introduced to as Mr. Fear, because he's doing his PhD dissertation on the study of fear. Apparently he spends his days reviewing crime scene reports and his nights visiting actual crime scenes with reporters. And some day he'd become Dr. Fear because of all of this hard work, but for now, he seemed pretty brain fried.

"Usually I try to make light of the basic crimes, just to keep some distance from it," he said. "But once you start getting into cases like Child rape and such, it's not very easy to make light of the situation." I wonder if it's too late to change thesis topics, I thought to myself.

We hung out at the bar for a few hours, enjoying the two-for-one beers and chatting about dissertations, real and imagined. Matti was a really fascinating guy, and his buddy seemed to be enjoying coming down to Mumbai from Finland to make his documentary. By 8pm, we were getting hungry, and I started thinking about when I'd need to head back to the hotel, since I'd have to get up early the next day for the six-hour drive to Baramati. But Rohit and friends were eager to hop to their next favorite joint, a place called Ghetto. Given my previous confusion over The Sports Bar, I didn't know if ghetto was the name or a description.

Ghetto was at least a 20 minute drive away, so we hailed a taxi outside of the bar. "Hop on in, man," an elderly taxi driver said to us, with an odd hipster American accent.

"Where you cats going?" he asked us. Rohit gave him directions while I pondered his accent. The man was clearly Indian, but he'd picked up some unusual speech patterns in his time as a cabby, apparently.

"What is your good name, sir?" Rohit asked him.

"You already know my name, because I've driven you before, but you've forgotten it," he replied.

"No, sir, I don't think you told me the last time you drove me," Rohit insisted.

"I will give you a hint -- my name is the name of an American artist with an eye patch."

"Andy, this one's for you," Rohit said, leaning from the front seat. "Who's an American artist with an eye patch?"

"Uh.... Dale Chilouly?" I replied, baffled by the question?

"Dale who???" the taxi driver replied, shocked I blew the question. "Not that muthafucka. A cool Daddy-O with class, with friends like Frank..."

"Uh... Sammy Davis Jr?" I replied, suddenly connecting the dots?

"You win, my man," he replied. "I look like him, I talk like him, I have the same glasses, I am Mr. Sammy Davis. So are you guys looking to by any hash?"

I nearly wet my pants laughing. Where on earth did this guy come from? Meanwhile, Sammy kept at it for the next 20 minutes, including demonstrating his ability to swear in Finnish, then explaining in dramatic detail as to why he was the best drug connection in Colaba.

Sammy's comedy act continued as we drove north to Ghetto, but then things took a turn for the worse when he decided to talk about politics.

"The US blames Bin Laden for 9/11, so they bomb Afghanistan even though Bin Laden is not in Afghanistan? And why are they doing it? For the Jews, that's why!"

All of us glanced at each other with that last remark. Sammy kept talking and talking, explaining why the war in Afghanistan and Iraq were both done at the behest of Israel. Rohit looked at me apologetically and rolled his eyes. I shrugged my shoulders and tried to brush it off. It seemed harmless.

But Sammy kept at it. Apparently he'd struck his own nerve, and he wouldn't stop talking until he'd had his fill of anti-Semitism. "And you know what about 9/11? No Jews died that day, because they were all warned. Every Jew in New York and Washington was warned by the Israeli consulate that morning so they wouldn't go to work."

"But what about me?" I jumped in. I'd had enough.

"What about you, man?"

"Why the hell wasn't I warned?" I demanded. "I mean, there I was in downtown DC, just blocks from the White House, and no Israeli consulate or anything sent me an email telling me to play sick that day.... So either that means you're totally full of it or somehow I got on Israel's Pay No Mind list! Whadya think of that, Sammy? Do you think they just forgot to leave me a voicemail or something? Why the hell didn't I get that memo?"

I kept at it for a while, stunning Sammy into a relative stutter compared to his previous confidence. Meanwhile, my cab mates were laughing wildly, egging me on to put this small-minded hep cat in his place.

"You know, I just remembered something. Let's not forget who else is Jewish - your main man, Sammy Davis Jr!"

"Yes, that's true, " Sammy replied, "but..."

"But what?" I continued. "Do you think he would have gotten the memo from the Israeli consulate, or do black Jews not count? This must weigh heavily on your conscience, I bet...."

Sammy finally shut the hell up.

---

A few minutes later, we arrived at Ghetto. I'd been thinking of just catching another cab and going back to the hotel, but my war of words with Sammy Davis had gotten me in a fighting mood, so I figured I needed to settle down with a beer and some food. Inside Ghetto, I found a dark, small bar with black lights illuminating the room; graffiti art of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix dominated the walls, while Jeff Beck and the Grateful Dead dominated the juke box. Rohit ordered a pitcher while the rest of us got some food; I requested a chicken quesadilla, which fascinated me simply because I found it on a menu in Mumbai.

We hung out for a while, eating our food and picking up the conversation where we'd left it off before Sammy came into the picture. Rohit then introduced me to another friend who makes TV commercials for car companies and other big players in the Indian ad market.

But by 10pm, I didn't think I'd be able to take it much longer. I still had some jetlag and I worried about how long it would take to drive back to the hotel; if traffic were bad, it could be two hours. So I bid goodbye to my new companions and grabbed a taxi, with Rohit explaining the directions. We drove for just over an hour; fortunately, the driver only got lost at the end of the trip, so we only went a few blocks out of the way. I returned to the hotel thoroughly exhausted. My mind flashed back to Ghetto; for a moment the Grateful Dead lyric "What a long, strange trip it's been" popped into my mind, but I quickly dismissed it. Too clichéd. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 10:37 PM | TrackBack

Arrival in Baramati

After a six hour ride from Mumbai, I arrived in Baramati with the other international participants around 3pm this afternoon. We rode in a large air-conditioned bus, which was very comfortable, though I regret not bringing dramamine with me.

It's now after 7pm, and we're at the VIIT institute, which is hosting the conference. I'm running late for dinner, but i wanted to post a quick hello. I don't know how often I'll be able to post, because wi-fi isn't working for me yet, and I'm not able to upload podcasts either. So that means any recordings I make here will have to be posted from Mumbai or from home early next week. Ah well.

Looking forward to the rest of the conference. Meanwhile, I'll post my journal from Mumbai as soon as I've finished it... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 08:51 AM | TrackBack

March 02, 2005

Podcast: The Story of the Taj Mahal Hotel

Rohit Gupta tells the story of the building of the Taj Mahal Hotel at the turn of the last century in Mumbai. The podcast was recorded as we were walking towards the hotel and the Gateway to India monument yesterday afternoon. Rohit offers a somewhat uncensored version of the story, so let the listener beware.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 10:07 PM | TrackBack

Quick Update from Mumbai

It's 8:15am here in Mumbai, and I'm packing my bags once again. In about 45 minutes I'm joining some of the other conference attendees downstairs, where we'll take a bus first to Pune, then to Baramati. I'm under the impression the trip will take the better part of the day, but I could be wrong. I'll find out soon.

I spent yesterday with video blogger Rohit Gupta, exploring Mumbai's long history while discussing blogging, online discourse, ICTs for development and a host of other topics. We also spent time with Dina Mehta; Rohit and Dina are contributors to Worldchanging and were heavily involved in the TsunamiHelp blog in the days and weeks following the tsunami.

It was a long, fun day, and I haven't had a chance to write it all down yet, so I post a blog about it later. I also recorded several podcasts, but it will be a while before I can upload all of them. The bandwidth at the hotel is rather slow, so I don't think I can get any of them online before I leave in 40 minutes. I'll do my best to get them posted from Baramati; otherwise, they'll have to wait until I get home.

Anyway, better finish packing. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 09:46 PM | TrackBack

Unicorns, Burgundy and the Code of Hammurabi

Even though the elevator made a lot of noise last night, I still managed to get a decent night's sleep. That didn't stop me from changing rooms the next morning. My second room at the hotel wasn't as nice as the first one, and the bathroom could have used a refurbishing, but there was no sign of the creaks, whizzes and hums of the elevator that had driven me batty.

My plan for the day was to do an east-west circuit along the left bank of the Seine, stopping at various museums and churches along the way. I didn't want to spend an enormous amount of time outside today; it seemed like it was getting colder. So the more time I could spend inside buildings, the better.

Leaving the hotel just after 9:30am, my first stop was the Musee de la Moyen Age, also known as the Cluny Museum. Occupying one of the best preserved 15th century mansions in Paris, as well as an 1800-year-old Roman cooling house, the museum was one of the best places in Europe to explore medieval history. I'd been to the museum once before but I'd always wanted to go back, and since it was located less than a five-minute walk from my hotel, it was an ideal place to start the day.

Inside the museum, I spent a couple of hours exploring its many exhibits. It had several rooms dedicated to 12th century stained glass, in which the glass was mounted on black walls with continuous light behind them, allowing you to inspect the details of the glass up-close. In one of the largest rooms of the mansion were the remains of the original statues that once adorned the front of Notre Dame. Most of them were severely damaged during the French Revolution, so they now reside inside the museum while copies occupy their places at the cathedral. Another room had a marvelous collection of gold work, some of which dated back to the time of the Visigoths.

But my favorite exhibit at the museum was by far The Lady and The Unicorn, the world-famous collection of late 15th-century tapestries featuring exquisite pictures of a young woman with a unicorn. Woven for the Le Viste family more than 500 years ago, they were largely forgotten until the author George Sand began writing about the at the turn of the last century. The tapestries are located in a special room designed to preserve them. Along with strict temperature and humidity controls, the room uses fiber optic light and specially focused lenses to illuminate the tapestries with the least amount of damage.

There are six tapestries in the collection, five of them representing the senses. In the first tapestry, Taste, the woman is seen with a lion on the left and a unicorn on the right. Throughout the tapestry are an assortment of other animals, including rabbits and dogs. The lady is tasting some kind of sweet; in the meantime, a monkey has grabbed a sweet as well and is about to eat it. The second tapestry, Hearing, features the unicorn, lion and most of the other animals; the woman is playing a small pipe organ sitting atop a table covered in a Turkish carpet. The third image, Sight, is perhaps the most touching. The unicorn has its front legs resting in the lady's lap, while the lady shows the unicorn its reflection in the mirror; meanwhile, the lions sits to the left, looking forward with a happy expression on its face. The fourth tapestry, Smell, shows the lady weaving a string of flowers. The curious monkey plays a lead role in this tapestry as well, as it can be seen sniffing a rose it's stolen from the flower basket. The fifth tapestry, touch, shows the lady holding a standard in her right hand, while her left hand gently grasps the horn of the unicorn, somewhat erotically.

The last tapestry in the collection is titled "A Mon Seul Desire," which translates as "To My Sole Desire." The tapestry features the entire cast of characters from the five previous images, including the lion, unicorn, the lady and her maidservant, the monkey and a host of playful rabbits. The lady is now standing inside a large tent, and she is removing a jewel-encrusted necklace, placing it in a box. (Until I looked at the tapestry, I hadn't realized that she had been wearing the necklace in all the others.) It's the biggest of the six tapestries, which makes sense since the weaver had to cram an ark's worth of animals into it.

I stayed in the room for a very long time, coming up with creative ways to take long exposures with my camera since I couldn't use a flash. There were several benches in the middle of the room, all with a flat surface, so it made it a lot easier to take exposures lasting as long as four or five seconds without blurring the image. The bigger challenge was taking pictures of the tapestries without getting any people in the way, though in some cases the blurry image of a person in the foreground with the tapestry in the background made for an interesting picture.

Just before noon I left the museum; I then walked west of Boulevard St. Germain, passing countless cafes and numerous boutiques. Several blocks into my walk I spotted the first Starbucks I'd seen in Paris. I stopped inside long enough to by a bottle of water, during which time I got to watch the staff argue with an elderly homeless woman smoking a cigar, demanding that she receive a free espresso. Eventually, she got the espresso, whereas I had to pay the requested 2.50 euros for my drink of choice.

A few blocks later, I arrived at St. Germain de Pres. Built in the 11th century on the remains of a 6th century abbey, the Romanesque church was the primary cathedral in Paris until Notre Dame was built. The church is named for Saint Germanus, the first Bishop of Paris, who was buried here. The church also served as the burying place for the Merovingian kings nearly 1500 years ago, but sadly their tombs were destroyed during the Revolution.

Inside, St. Germain de Pres was darker and more intimate than Notre Dame; still quite beautiful but more functional in design. In some ways, the church felt bigger than Notre Dame, but it was just an illusion caused by the sheer lack of tourists dominating its halls. There were perhaps another dozen tourists inside, none in groups larger than two people. Meanwhile, a small group of parishioners were seated in front of the altar, waiting for mid-day mass to commence. I sat in the back row for about 15 minutes, watching the priest and deacons make their way down the aisle and begin the service. It was very serene, particularly when thinking back to the chaos of Notre Dame.

When I had entered the church, I'd been listening to the Chemical Brothers on my iPod, which struck me as thoroughly inappropriate. But rather than shut off the iPod entirely, I switched to Arvo Part's Te Deum, a haunting work of choral and strings, written for the Latin prayer of the same name. As explored the church, Te Deum brought it to life, adding a whole new dimension to the experience that I can scarcely describe.

Leaving the church, I continued down St. Germain, past Café Deux Magots, one of the most famous fin-de-siecle cafes in all of Paris. I then veered northwest towards the Seine, hoping to arrive at the river near Musee D'Orsay. The museum, formerly a grand train station, was later converted into once of the best art museums in Europe. I was very excited about visiting it, since I hadn't been in many years, so you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered the museum was closed. It was Monday, and many Parisians museums are closed that day of the week, but I could have sworn that my guidebook had said otherwise about Musee D'Orsay.

There was no point getting upset about it, though I was mildly irritated that I had walked so far for no good reason. So I decided to salvage the situation by walking a few blocks east on the Seine and crossing to the right bank, for one of the greatest museums in the world was only 15 minutes away.

Now I know I wrote earlier this week that I would try to avoid the Louvre; its overwhelming collection and incomparable crowds can easily make a visit to the Louvre a very frustrating experience. On top of that, I'd been at least twice before, so it seemed prudent to invest my exploratory energy on other Parisian locales. But here I was, the Musee D'Orsay metaphorically flashing a giant "Non!" at me: nothing that a few hours that a visit to the largest palace museum in the world couldn't fix.

For a moment I began to regret my decision as I entered I.M Pei's glass pyramid to the museum's central underground courtyard. Literally thousands of people could be seen in every direction: Japanese tour groups, busloads of French students, aggravated American parents dragging along their sobbing children, an assortment of random characters on a Da Vinci Code wild goose chase. I even contemplated leaving and finding a café somewhere, but the thought of descending into the Louvre and walking away from it with nary an art-filled glance struck me as a little silly. So I plopped down my eight euros like everyone else and got my ticket for an afternoon of art and world history.

Of course, you can't just show up to the Louvre without a plan; its thousands of pieces were scattered in four enormous wings across an equal number of floors, throughout one of the largest palaces in Europe. Unless you had an inkling of a plan, chances are you'd wander aimlessly for hours, wondering whether the Mona Lisa was on tour in the US or if the Code of Hammurabi had been mistaken for a Da Vinci Code relic and put away for safe keeping. So rather than heading directly into one of the galleries, I grabbed a soda and a sandwich, sitting down with my guidebook and museum map to plot out Andy's Ideal Louvre Tour.

My primary goal, I decided, was to focus on the ancient near east, which would take me through their Assyrian collection and the Code of Hammurabi. Rather than go directly, though, I'd start in the ancient Greek collection, and perhaps make a mad dash to the Mona Lisa and back. From there, I'd reach the near east collection, then cut through the French sculpture gallery to explore Emperor Napoleon III's apartments, wrapping up my visit on the top floor in the Rubens collection. If all went well, I'd manage to explore about four millennia of exhibits in less than a hour per millennium. Seemed like a good plan to me.

Finishing my sandwich, I pulled out my ticket and entered the Denon Wing, to the south. On the bottom floor, I soon found the ancient Greek collection, an amazing exhibit of pre-classical pottery and figurines. My favorite piece there was the so-called Cycladic Idol, a eyeless, mouthless bust with a long, thin forehead and prominent nose. Not unlike a Modigliani piece or perhaps a Brancusi study, the idol reminded me of what Picasso said when he visited pre-historic cave paintings in southern France: "We have created nothing."

Upstairs on the next floor, I passed briefly through the Etruscan and Roman collections, staying long enough to marvel at a sarcophagus for two, featuring a life-size sculpture of a husband a wife, reclining arm-in-arm on top of it. Going up yet another floor, I arrived at the legendary Winged Victory of Samothrace, one of the most confident looking statues of the ancient world, even though it's missing its arms and head. A group of Italian teenagers were sitting on the steps across from the statue, flirting and smooching with each other like they were chilling on the Spanish Steps in Rome.

To the next floor, I found myself in the grand gallery of Italian art. Stretching the full length of the Denon Wing going west, the gallery is truly one of the great rooms of any museum in the world. The walls are simply packed with thousands of paintings, almost to the point that it's hard to appreciate any of them individually. Whenever I think of feeling overwhelmed at the Louvre, this is the room that comes to mind. Hundreds and hundreds of visitors occupied each gallery along the hall, some banging into to each other while listening to their audio guides, others following their tour guide dutifully like a flock to its shepard. I made a game of weaving through the crowds, trying to avoid making contact with anyone as I worked my way west.

At the far end of the gallery, a large crowd had gathered in a room pointing northward. It could have only meant one thing: I'd reached the Mona Lisa. Frankly, the best reason to visit the Mona Lisa is to people watch: invariably there is always a group of at least 100 people crowded around the Da Vinci painting, encased in bullet-proof glass. People shove and prod for the best angle, holding up their cameras to capture the moment as best as possible. And amidst the chaos, the most famous image in the world smiles back -- smiling ironically at the absurdity of the crowds jockeying for her attention and approval.

Now that I'd gotten that out of the way, I could concentrate on the Near Eastern collection. I backtracked through the grand gallery and exited the Denon Wing, pausing for a brief bathroom break before heading east into the Sully Wing. I spent the next hour or so slowly working through each room of the Near East collection, marveling at the diversity and enormity of the artifacts pillaged or purchased from that part of the world. In the Iranian antiquities collection, I had flashbacks to the Pergamon Museum in Berlin as I explored the giant blue bas reliefs of lions and other animals. A few rooms down, I found the Apadana Capital, the massive top of a column that once graced a hypostyle hall in an ancient Persian palace. Even though the column itself was gone, the capital was still probably 30 feet tall. At is base were four pairs of marble cylinders, then more column, then another four pairs of cylinders. Above them, two enormous statues of rams supported a giant wood beam, like a pair of Atlases holding up the world. The sheer size of the capital made it hard to fathom what it must have been like to have seen dozens of them atop giant columns. It truly must have been one of the wonders of the ancient world.

Further west, I arrived at the Mesopotamia and Anatolia collections, featuring stonework from ancient Iraq and Turkey. In perhaps the grandest room of the collection were the massive sphinx-like guardians from the palace of Assyrian king Sargon II. Each guardian, which must have been 20 feet high and 20 feet long, was a mythic creature with the body of a bull, a lion's tail, Pegasus-like wings, and the head of a bearded man with curly locks cascading down to its shoulders. The room featuring the guardians was a two-story arcade, giving the space a palatial feel; in one section, the guardians were paired next to each other and you could walk between them like you were entering the palace.

In the last room of the gallery I found the famed Code of Hammurabi. A black basalt stone carved like an elongated finger, the pillar was taller than a person, with a bas relief of King Hammurabi supplicating to the Gods at the top, and thousands of words in cuneiform text occupying the rest of the pillar. While Hammurabi's Code wasn't the first set of laws in history -- there are at least three Sumerian codes that are known to be older -- they were certainly the most comprehensive. The pillar is a laundry list of pronouncements by the king, hundreds of them, on a variety of legal subjects, ranging from the criminal to the administrative. The Old Testament's notions of an eye for an eye perhaps originated from the Code of Hammurabi, which spells out laws such as, "If you are a mason and the house you built falls down and kills the owner's son, the mason's son shall be killed." The code also outlines a woman's right to divorce; if she brings forth a proper claim saying she's unsatisfied with her husband or he has been cruel to her, she can return to her father's house and take her dowry with her. But if turns out she was "a flirt" and caused problems for the husband, she would be "thrown in the river" as punishment (though it doesn't make it clear whether this was a death sentence or merely a form of watery humiliation).

Beyond the Hammurabi gallery, I found a shortcut to the Richelieu Wing and the Cour Puget, an enormous glass-enclosed courtyard, with more than two stories of open space. The brightest, airiest, least claustrophobic room of the entire palace, the courtyard is home to a fine collection of neoclassical French sculptures from the 18th and 19th centuries. Many of the statues in the courtyard appeared to have formerly graced the palaces of various French kings, and they truly captured the over-the-top opulence of that by-gone era. At various points in the courtyard, art students sat beneath the statues, sketching them in their notebooks. A pair of women in their 40s sketched with pencil and graphite, while across the courtyard, several young art students captured the sculptures with pen and ink.

On the far side of the courtyard, I found a series of long escalators leading to the upper floors, where I would find the royal apartments and the Rubens collection. Unfortunately, one of the escalators was being repaired, so a group of us had to walk up the steps. It was only one flight of stairs, but since one floor of the Louvre represents probably two floors of a modern office building, it was a rather steep climb. It didn't help that there were giant bay windows to the south which were letting in huge quantities of sunlight, half-blinding you in the process.

On the next floor, I reached the entrance to Napoleon III's royal apartments. This mid-19th century addition to the palace is one of the few parts of the Louvre that captures the Versailles-like richness of imperial life. The apartments were all fully appointed with Second Empire furniture and artwork, reminiscent of some of the grand mansions of Newport, but with even more opulence. The rooms were not well lit to protect the carpets, wallpaper and artwork, but the light from the windows refracted off the giant chandeliers, adding a subtle discotheque atmosphere to what was otherwise very formal and conservative. Surely the emperor's uncle and namesake would have enjoyed himself here.

I, on the other hand, didn't linger for long in the apartments, as they were somewhat musty. I'd noticed several American sneezing on their way out of the apartments, and by the time I'd reached the last room, I was doing the same. Since the apartments were at the far end of the Richelieu wing, you couldn't just exit at the end; instead you backtracked through the apartments, exiting by the escalators. By the time I reached the end of my imperial visit, my eyes were watering from the dust and mold. I don't think I've ever welcomed the open space of a giant escalator so fondly.

The final gallery of my visit to the Louvre was the Rubens Hall, an immense room featuring some of the largest work ever produced by the Dutch master. The paintings were commissioned by the de Medicis, and they all told a sequential narrative -- a narrative I'd have to read about later, since there was no documentation in the room apart from the titles of each painting, and neither of the two tour guides working the room spoke English. (German and Japanese, in case you're wondering.) Nonetheless, my lack of comprehension of the story's details didn't stop me from marveling at the sheer genius of his work.

I departed the Louvre late in the afternoon, walking back to the Latin Quarter by way of Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris. The bridge is under renovation at the moment, so the sounds of jackhammers and other equipment discouraged me from lingering too long. Besides, I only had a short amount of time to catch up on email and get ready for my evening with Gregoire Japiot of the Omidyar Network, who'd invited me to dinner with his sister at her apartment near the Eiffel Tower.

Back at the hotel, I grabbed my laptop and went to the local McDonalds for about an hour, going through my email and chatting with Susanne over the Internet. I'd just introduced Susanne to Skype IP-telephony software, which allows you to make phone calls over the Internet. When you use Skype to connect to another computer rather than a telephone, the call is free, and usually the connection is excellent. So despite the typical chaos of a busy McDonalds on a Monday afternoon, I managed to chat with Susanne for about 40 minutes, using my headset microphone to avoid the distractions around me.

Just after 6pm, I changed clothes at the hotel and walked down Boulevard St. Michel to the local RER commuter train station, where I caught a train heading west along the left bank. The train was jammed with commuters, and several people got caught inside the train, unable to get out before the doors closed. Taking a cue from their error, I got out of my seat and waited by the exit so there would be no chance of me getting stuck on the train. When we reached the Eiffel Tower stop, I exited and went up to ground level. I was actually surprised how far I had to walk to reach the tower, but it provided me with a nice stroll along the Seine, watching the Eiffel Tower getting bigger and bigger as I approached.

I arrived at the tower at 6:45pm, 15 minutes prior to my rendezvous with Gregoire. It was getting bitterly cold outside, making me regret not bringing a sweater as an added layer of protection. I stood directly under the tower, watching the passenger cars moving up and down each of its long iron legs. Precisely at 7pm, suddenly the Eiffel Tower began to sparkle with thousands of strobe lights flickering on and off. I remembered that the tower did something similar in the minutes and hours past midnight on New Years 2000, which Susanne and I had spent here in Paris. I didn't realize that they were continuing the tradition.

A few moments later, I saw a young brunette man approaching me with a large smile on his face. I'd never actually met Gregoire in person, but we recognized each other immediately. He and I walked south along the Champs de Mars, pausing every few minutes so I could turn around and snap yet another photo of the still-flickering Tour Eiffel. We walked through a new peace monument at the end of the mall; the metal and glass structure had video screens set up along its inner passageway, some of which gave access to a website with messages of peace from people all over the world. I clicked the screen to go to the page that would let me add my own message, but then we realized that there was no keyboard for us to type. I half expected to see instructions on how to send an SMS text message, but no dice.

We took a left at the end of the mall, heading a couple of blocks to his sister's neighborhood, first to his car and then to the apartment. She gave me a warm hello when I entered the flat; she'd spent time living in the US so she had a great command of English. We spent the next four hours going through a culinary tour of their home town, Dijon, and Burgundy province in general. Gregoire has worked on and off in the winemaking industry, so I couldn't have met a better host for the experience. We started with an aperitif of Chablis, served with slices of a spicy dried sausage and salted cashews. For the main course, we switched to a classic Dijon meal of charcuterie and cheese. The meat was seasoned with parsley, chilled and sliced, reminiscent of a moist pastrami without the intense spices. There were four different cheeses, including a raw, soft cheese made by Burgundian monks; a stronger bleu cheese, a mild, semi-soft cheese and a flavorful chevre. On the side we also had a variety of fresh breads and a local salad reminiscent of watercress with a dash of balsamic vinegar.

Gregoire selected two red Burgundies for the main course, both pinot noirs. The first bottle, a Nuits St-George, was young and fresh, a very nice complement to the two mildest cheeses. I thought I was in heaven until I tasted the second pinot noir, which was several years older; I've never had a wine like it. It was rich, complex, a hint of smokiness, but still velvety smooth, and paired with the stronger cheeses it was pure perfection. As I told them that night, I'd never full appreciated the concept of pairing certain wines with certain foods; I'd grasped the basics but rarely ever paid attention to them. But tasting that second pinot noir with the pungent cheeses, it was a sensory paradise. I'll have to email him and get the exact name of the wine to see if I can track it down anywhere.

It was a wonderful, relaxing evening. Gregoire and I didn't really know each other very well; in many ways, we were just online professional acquaintances. But he and his sister welcomed me into their home like old friends, eating and drinking, chatting about politics, religion, family, world affairs, and of course, food and wine. Before I knew it, it was past 11pm; I still needed to pack in preparation for my 7:30am departure the next morning. On top of all his generosity that evening, Gregoire was kind enough to offer me a drive back to the hotel. We took his car across the Seine to the Right Bank, following the one-way road along the quay until crossing back to the Left Bank. I managed to get back to the hotel just after 11:30, giving me enough time to pack and get a good night's sleep. -ac

Posted by acarvin at 01:04 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 01, 2005

Article about the Baramati Conference

I just found an article about the conference I will be attending later this week. It looks like there will be some very distinguished Indian VIPs there. Meanwhile, here's the homepage of the conference. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 04:31 AM | TrackBack

Next Stop: Mumbai

Hi everyone,

Right now I'm at the airport in Paris waiting for my flight to India. Apparently the flight is running at least an hour late because it originated in New York, which is getting hammered by snow. This means I probably won't arrive in Mumbai until after 1am Wednesday - yikes! That's unfortunate because I really want to spend my one free day in Mumbai visiting some telecentres and several colleagues. Hopefully I won't be too much of a zombie to do this.

Had a wonderful evening last night with Grégoire Japiot of the Omidyar Network and his sister at her apartment near the Eiffel Tower. Grégoire brought several wines from Burgundy, including a tasty Chablis and two wonderful Pinot Noirs. He also brought a sampling of local cheeses to pair with the wines. We had a marvelous time. When I'm on my flight, I will write more about my last day in Paris, which included visits to the Louvre and the Cluny Museum of the Middle Ages. For now, though, I'm paying through the nose for wi-fi access, so I need to focus on email rather than writing my blog. Stay tuned... -andy

Posted by acarvin at 04:23 AM | TrackBack