Infolocity

Interesting stats from the NTIA on US broadband penetration in 2007:

Summary: US Internet Highs and Lows from eMarketer
Report: Networked Nation: Broadband in America 2007

On February 15, 2008 Oakland will host its first Digital Inclusion Summit (ODIS). The Summit aspires to gather community stakeholders and animate city policymakers into developing a strategy for citywide Internet access.

If you are familiar with municipal broadband, you are likely smirking at this point as you reflect on the past failures of many similarly well-meaning efforts. Cynicism is not necessarily a bad characteristic. But inaction, in this case, is seriously detrimental.

Municipal broadband efforts have sprung forth with great acclaim and died with just as much gusto in cities from Philadelphia to San Francisco. What caused the early demise of these initiatives? Are there any success stories in municipal broadband? Is there any hope in providing affordable, reliable Internet access to underserved communities much as rural electric associations did for rural communities in the 1930s and 40s. These are the types of questions that will undoubtedly arise during the one-day Summit.

The organizers of the ODIS, however, aim for a much higher goal than municipal broadband. The Summit organizers (myself among them) have their sites set on a more holistic vision of “digital inclusion.” I have traditionally focused my writing on the “digital divide,” and I am quite pleased to shift my language to a more positive, action-oriented terminology. So what is digital inclusion?

Digital inclusion includes universal access to information and communication technologies. However, access is only the beginning. Digital inclusion strategies promote affordable, reliable, and relevant technologies. This means that everyone should be able to access those technologies without concern for cost, geographic barriers, physical disabilities, technical abilities, or language. People should be able to interact with digital technologies – not merely absorbing the information, but creating and sharing information.

Many of you may wonder why I am waxing so poetically on such a simple, fundamental, and popular idea. The problem is that while the language is there, the substance is not. Communities across the United States, the broadband capital of the world (by this reading it may have already been overtaken by China in number of Internet surfers), are not reaping the benefits of digital inclusion. Policymakers in alliance with community organizations, individuals, and businesses must collaborate in promoting and executing digital inclusion strategies. This can start at the municipal level.

I encourage you to spend some time at the Summit on February 15th at Laney College in Oakland. Urge Oakland policymakers to create and carry out a strategy for digital inclusion across Oakland, especially in the city’s underserved communities. Or just come check out some of the cool things Oakland organizations are doing to promote digital inclusion within their communities. It’ll be a day full of local entertainment, advocatin’, sleeves-rolled-up policymakin’, neighborly-socializin’, and even free food! Check out the ODIS blog at digii.wordpress.com. Hope to see you there!

Around this time yesterday, I found myself standing in a circle of some of the most accomplished social entrepreneurs looking out over a gorgeous view of Boston Harbor at the top of one of the tallest buildings in Beantown.

I was a guest at the Principal Voices roundtable, hosted by CNN, Time, Fortune, and Shell. Kristin Peterson, co-founder and CDO of Inveneo, was a guest panelist at the roundtable, along with Fabio Rosa of the Institute for the Development of Natural Energy and Sustainability (IDEAAS), Neil Gershenfeld of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, and Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia. Check out Inveneo’s clip:

I was very excited to also see Iqbal Quadir and Randy Zadra at the event (see below). While introducing myself to Mr. Quadir, I also met Neil Gershenfeld, whose energy and drive around his amazing work is infectious. I also had the opportunity to meet Jimmy Wales, whose involvement in access to information in developing regions is very encouraging. Finally, I was able to introduce myself to Fabio Rosa after the event and learn more about what he is doing in energy and ICT in rural Brazil.

Neil Gershenfeld is the director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, whose Fab Labs program is breaking the boundaries of fabrication as we know it. Neil described the Fab Lab as a “means for invention,” stating that the inventors and the knowledge is out there, and now this program can allow inventors in the developing world to produce their product without the need of expensive and slow traditional processes of fabrication.

Fabio Rosa is the founder and executive director of IDEAAS, an organization working to provide access to electricity through renewable energy in rural Brazil. He is an agronomical engineer who has been working to bring electricity to the Brazilian countryside for over 20 years. At the roundtable, Fabio commented on the role of government in innovation for change, stating that one way to encourage positive government participation is by selling the technology’s ability to improve the country’s economic standing. I was first introduced to Fabio Rosa through David Bornstein’s How to Change the World, a book that was given to me at the 2006 induction ceremony of that year’s North American cohort of Ashoka fellows. Reading about Fabio’s work in rural Brazil ignited my interest in the field of innovative technology for change in the rural developing world. It was a great honor to meet him in person.

Jimmy Wales discussed his organizations’ social initiatives in the developing world, expressing interest in expanding Wikipedia’s availability in lesser-known languages (the e-encyclopedia is currently available in more than 100 languages, including Afrikaans to Swedish).

Wales’ comments on Internet language barriers are very apropos. Many ICTD experts are beginning to move their attention from technologies to content and applications. Randy Zadra is the founding managing director of the Institute for the Connectivity of the Americas (ICA). He has over 15 years of experience in ICTD, both in entrepreneurial activities and in policy. I met with Randy at MIT on Tuesday. Randy is a fellow of the MIT Program in Developmental Entrepreneurship, a program designed to train aspiring social entrepreneurs in the developing world. Randy emphasized the use of existing infrastructure, such as cell phones, to scale access to information. He commented on the need for the ICTD field to begin building their efforts in content relevancy and local application. When I asked him for suggestions on “selling” the idea of emerging markets to potential partners or investors, he stated that the interest is still there. The issue is to produce appropriate solutions through more efficient allocation of resources. Rather than producing many failures at a slow pace, companies want to see immediate solutions.

MIT’s Developmental Entrepreneurship program is directed by Sandy Pentland and Iqbal Quadir. I had the pleasure of meeting both of these amazing individuals. Sandy Pentland is a former academic director of the MIT Media Lab and is a pioneer in wearable computing. He is also very involved in technology for developing countries. Iqbal Quadir is a social entrepreneur in the field of ICTD, founding the Gonofone cellular company in Bangladesh which evolved into GrameenPhone in 1997. GrameenPhone is the largest mobile phone company in Bangladesh, currently serving over 10 million customers. GrameenPhone’s Village Phone project has provided an income for more than 260,000 operators in over 50,000 villages in Bangladesh since 1997. Village Phones serve as a sort of “pay phone,” where rural poor, usually women, serve as owners and operators of the phone by “renting” it out to other villagers for phone calls. The operator usually will take a loan from GrameenBank to invest in the Village Phone. This model has begun to spread throughout the world, including Uganda and Rwanda. The Village Phone model is an important source of income for hundreds of thousands of rural individuals in South Asia and beyond. More recently, Iqbal has become involved in an energy venture called Emergence BioEnergy. I touched briefly on this project with him, and look forward to continuing the conversation.

One theme seemed to permeate the Principal Voices event: “bottom-up.” Many ICTD projects and technology projects in general seem to come from the brain of some guy in the United States or Europe which are then “gifted” to a “needy” community. Often such “experts” arrive in a community ready to set up before the community even knows of their presence. Such a process is referred to as “top-down.” “Bottom-up” simply means shaping a project around the needs of the community. Such projects are usually initiated by the community and outsiders are brought in to fill specific roles where their expertise is needed. Top-down projects are generally unsustainable, serving the needs of the outside experts and departing the community along with those experts. Bottom-up is more often sustainable as the community has a true stake in the project, in more ways than one. Some people even go to the point of labeling top-down initiatives as a form of neo-colonialism, or techno-imperialism.

Another important point arising from the event was the controversy of the impact ICT and other technologies have on communities. (Check out http://ebarioknowledgefair.org/ for a cool conference on the impact of ICTs on indigenous communities.) Many people use the example of television to highlight the detrimental effect technology can have on society. The panelists and audience however defending the introduction of technology into communities. Kristin Peterson and Neil Gershenfeld argued that people should have the choice to choose. Who are we to say who gets a telephone and who doesn’t for example? The panelists highlighted the fact that many of these isolated communities recognize the technology that is available and understand that it is there. The issue becomes one of inclusion versus exclusion. Lack of access to technologies is extremely detrimental to isolated communities, limiting access to education, access to income, and access to health to name a few.

Many other important points were given life at the Principal Voices event. A big kudos to CNN, Time, Fortune, and Shell for organizing the event, which was a terrific opportunity to showcase projects and network with interested parties. I had a terrific time on my first trip to Boston. The weather was beautiful (even the rain on Tuesday). Boston is a beautiful city with a colorful accent (yes – they really talk that way!). The MIT and Harvard campuses are truly inspiring. It was a pleasure to speak with the MIT community about ICTs and technology for development. Nevertheless, I am happy to be on my way back home to the Bay.

I am currently enjoying a recently published book by Royal D. Colle of Cornell University - “Advocacy and Interventions.” This book gathers development communication best practices and other lessons from the field in one convenient source. One of the sections that captured my attention in particular was an excerpt from Alfonso Gumucio Dagron’s “Prometheus Riding a Cadillac.”

Among other things, Mr. Dagron confronts the all-too-popular view of access as “bringing the light of knowledge to those who are desperately poor and excluded because they are ignorant,” asserting that “Nobody will deny the place of knowledge, but why is the assumption that knowledge comes from outside, graciously donated by the ‘intelligent’ and ‘cultivated’ people in the North, to the primitive and disoriented people in the South?”

A popular bit of controversy in the ICT for development field is the efficacy of telecenters and kiosks. Many experts, like Dagron, argue that telecenters and kiosks are very difficult to sustain without certain conditions (also see http://www.unido.org/file-storage/download/?file%5fid=24164), while others view the models more optimistically (also see http://ip.cals.cornell.edu/commdev/handbook.cfm). I invite you to post your thoughts and experiences on telecenters or kiosks - are they sustainable? In what conditions do they thrive or fail? Do you consider a particular ICT as more effective than telecenters or kiosks in connecting rural residents in the developing world or in improving communication among rural residents and external parties?

While not seeing ICTs as the cure-all, end-all to the world’s ills, most of us recognize that ICTs are prevalent in societies like the United States and that they play a significant role in many diverse fields, from education to health, around the world. One field where we often forget or take for granted the importance of ICTs is disaster relief. Hopefully you have heard or read about the destruction caused by the earthquake in Peru (to do something about it, visit http://www.consuladoperu.com/archivos/sismo/info_sf.htm). An important bit of news that has surfaced is the coverage of a team of volunteer telecommunication professionals from the French organization Telecoms sans Frontieres. Relief services are often paralyzed until telecommunications arrives in a devastated region. These people voluntarily fly to disaster zones around the world to set up basic communications so that help can arrive.

Another organization involved in flying volunteer engineers and technical experts around the world is Geekcorps. Geekcorps staff, consultants, and volunteers work with local organizations in the developing world to build the capacity of small and medium-sized businesses, local government and supporting organizations, using ICT while transferring their technical skills so that the host organization can achieve long-term stability. (Catch a preview of their work courtesy of CNN - you may need to install a plug-in to view the clip.)

But, as Dagron says, knowledge is not a thing unique to the Global North. In addition to organizations like Telecoms sans Frontieres and Geekcorps in the North, organizations like EsLaRed, FUNREDES, and Somos Telecentros in the South are also expressing their innovative side in addressing information access problems prevalent in their neck of the woods.

I’ll round off today’s post with a video clip that illustrates the fact that information in the hands of a determined person can overcome a mountain of challenges.

Now that I am fully re-acclimatized to the Bay Area (yeah right) I am once again proving myself useful, this time by conducting pro bono research at Inveneo, Inc. Inveneo is a San Francisco-based nonprofit that provides ICT solutions for rural organizations in the developing world. They are focusing on sub-Saharan Africa for the moment, but plan to expand into other regions over the next few years. Inveneo creates and sells products that meet the informational needs of rural organizations, taking into consideration the limitations that rural communities in the developing world often face. Their products are ultra low power to save on cost and greenhouse gases, wireless to connect a gridless community, with few moving parts that would get clogged up by dust or broken, and come with pre-installed Open Source operating systems and software to avoid the extra costs of access to the Gates legacy. Their latest product to go public is a solar-powered, fanless, driveless Computing Station with the computer mounted on the back of the LCD monitor, consuming around 18W at peak operation.

Organizations that promote products specifically designed for the developing world are getting a lot of publicity lately. Besides Inveneo, these include the Simputer, Negroponte’s One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project (also check out http://www.olpcnews.com), United Villages’ First Mile Solutions, Brazil’s Computador Popular and other low-cost computing devices, Intel’s Classmate PC, and the latest PC from Lenovo.

I’ve gotta say that it’s great to see so many organizations, including businesses, dedicating valuable resources to providing information access to people in isolated environments. Of course, the for-profit side of it can be a bit controversial. Some people argue that businesses who toot their “socially responsible” horn are really just painting over the ugly marks. Others respond by saying we need to utilize this flawed system to our advantage - grab the market by the horns, as a friend likes to say - and use the strength of business principles to empower those struggling in the developing world. In 2007, the UN joined Silicon Valley in combining their respective strengths in diplomacy and innovation to expand access to ICTs in rural regions of the developing world. This initiative, begun as early as 2002, was a major instigator in the current race (you can argue on the speed) to reach the “last mile.” But controversy still surrounds the motives of the parties involved and the best way to go about providing affordable, accessible ICTs for users in the developing world.

Whenever a person wants to talk about ICT access in Latin America, the name Carlos Slim eventually appears. Mr. Slim presents an interesting spin on the argument of corporate social responsibility. While owning all the hotels on Boardwalk, Park Place, and just about every other space on the Latin American telecommunications board, Mr. Slim represents a new generation of Latin American philanthropists. Mr. Slim’s view of philanthropy is that “you don’t need to teach a man how to fish, as the Chinese used to say. Instead of giving him the fish, instead of teaching him how to fish, you have to teach him how to sell the fish so that he eats something else beside a fish.” (Also see http://philanthropy.com/news/philanthropytoday/2452/worlds-second-richest-man-questions-value-of-philanthropy).

To get back to the seeming proliferation of affordable ICTs on the developing world market, I say up the ante! Is it such a radical idea to imagine a farmer in rural Venezuela being able to choose which computer or phone she or he wants to use? Most of the organizations mentioned above are targeting a specific market or need. The point being that different communities have different needs that require different ICTs.

There’s your serving of controversy. I look forward to hearing what you have to say. I’ll top it all off with a serving of Colbert:

It feels good to be back home. I am already swept up in this hectic California lifestyle where every second is valuable (so expect a honk if you pause at a green light). I already miss much of Nicaragua - the lush tropical vegetation, the bus rides (really!), the music, the language. But I still smile every time I drive through the Caldecott Tunnel to be greeted on the western side with a stunning view of the Bay and the city of San Francisco. I’m glad to be home.

I am very happy to announce that I have completed my Final Report of the work I did in San Ramon. You can find this report at sanramonict.pbwiki.com.

I am currently interning at Inveneo, a San Francisco nonprofit that provides ICT solutions to rural organizations in the developing world. It’s really gratifying work, and I love to tell people all about it. My free time is taken up with preparing for grad school and researching people and organizations involved in ICT4D in Latin America.

Thanks so much for your interest in my work over the past couple of months. I hope that what you’ve read has sparked an interest within you to learn more about ICT4D and to become involved in this initiative. If you want to know more, feel free to send me an email. Time to get back to the books!

Only 2 weeks left in Nicaragua. Only 1 week left to get my work done. Uy!

I am ready to be back home. I miss my husband, my home, my food, my life there. I am very happy to have had this experience, though. It has made a significant impact on my life and my future decisions. I feel like I have so much work left to do here - like I am just getting started! I plan to work like a dog over the next week to get as far as possible on the mobile technology center and the computation courses. I am quite disappointed that I cannot see the fruit of my labor in these projects. I hope to stay in contact with CESESMA to hear how the results develop.

I have already begun thinking about my plans for when I return to the US. I have so much work to do there as well. But I am very happy to be doing this kind of work. Rural access to information via ICTs is really intriguing and thrilling to me. I have found my niche in life.

I feel quite overwhelmed right now. I have a lot to think about. I have to figure out the best way to execute a rural mobile IT center using a laptop. I have to design a course in basic computation for kids who have never touched a computer. I have to complete a stellar report on my survey and findings. And this is all over the next couple of weeks. When I return to the US, I have to prepare for the GRE (I have already been doing this for some time now), I have to prepare for graduate studies, I have to give my internship with Inveneo all I´ve got, I have to develop my understanding of the field of ICTs for rural development and expand my circle of acquaintances in this field who can provide me with powerful insight, and I have to look for work. When I think about it this way, it is quite overwhelming, so I have to take it one day, one thing at a time.

I am ready to get back to the Bay Area, but I have definitely developed roots here in San Ramon. I know I will miss it, and I hope to return someday and with more tools to help the community members access the information they need to be successful in life.

What can I say about this past week? It´s been a haze of dust, banana trees, geckos, and farmers in baseball caps. Monday I visited communities near San Ramon with a staffperson from the UCA-San Ramon. I chatted briefly with a man whose family lost everything in the Contra war when he was young. He now owns a pulperia and is very happy to be able to get microloans from the Casa de los Niños in San Ramon. I tried to get him to play dominoes with me, but he said that´s a kid´s game.

Tuesday I visited La Corona with CESESMA staff. I am beginning to feel very comfortable in the communities that I visit on a regular basis, like La Corona. Wednesday, I visited La Pita and La Reyna again, the same as on Monday, but this day I did interviews with about six people (3 from each community). I really enjoyed chatting with the communal heads of each community. They have very interesting stories to tell. Don Ramon, from La Reyna, perked up when I told him I was very interested in cacao production. He has recently begun trying to grow cacao, but the dry weather has dried up his trees. Doña Maria Santos from La Pita is a short, stocky, and very cheerful woman who gave me a strong hug when I left. She lost her husband at a very young age, and now considers herself to be ancient at the age of 49. Both of these people were interviewees, so you will be able to see their (and others´) responses to the survey at sanramonict.pbwiki.com by the end of the first week in June. I have one more interview to do today and then I will begin analyzing the results this week.

Thursday I visited Los Pinos, where I learned what soils are best for cultivation along with about 15 other kids and young adults. Friday I helped an acquaintance with her English homework. It was a relatively quiet weekend. We have a group of university students from Appalachian State in North Carolina in town for the weekend, until Tuesday. Most of them are studying Appropriate Technologies. They are interesting to talk to, but their schedules are packed so tight it is difficult to get a chance to chat with them.

Karina left on Thursday, so I am running by myself to La Pita in the mornings. It is nice though - I can see the countryside asleep before the cows are let out to pasture and the sun begins to cook lunch.

Hasta la proxima!

A Note from Friday:

La Corona, 11 de mayo, 10 a.m.
“I walk past the small black bags filled with dirt in preparation for seedlings, past the hen & her chicks in search of stray food, past the latrine with its tin walls & doors, past the trash dumped in a ditch, to a small creek that runs behind La Corona´s communal hall. The hall is a one-room building with a bright mural of nutrition and healthy living painted on its front wall facing the main road. The creek is refreshing, its wet sheen gives me comfort in the day´s heat. Minnows & tadpoles struggle against the current above the muddy floor of the creek, less than 2 feet below the surface. A random breeze rattles the tall grasses growing on the banks of the creek. Every few minutes, a bird rockets through the tunnel created by this creek in the midst of the thick tropical vegetation. Insects hover on the surface of the creek, battling each other for any shady part like miniature bumper cars. My ears have grown accustomed to the birds, insects, children, and diesel-fueled buses that fill the air with their stories. I feel good here.”

I have just arrived back in Matagalpa from Leon. I feel sorry for my companions here in the cyber cafe, as I reek to high heaven. I haven´t changed clothes since Saturday morning, and have endured many sweaty hours in Leon´s infamous heat. I have barely slept this weekend, but my adrenaline and enthusiasm for the work I am doing keeps me going.

I swam in the ocean yesterday. The surf, the sky, the wet sand, the giggle of children in the waves, the gentle breeze - they were all like a therapeutic massage for me after so many days of concentration on my work. I got what I came to Leon for, and I left early this morning to hit the cybercafe here and get some work done. I haven´t had access to Internet for a week, so my online to-dos are piling up.

The survey is going well. Check out sanramonict.pbwiki.com for detailed information on the work I am doing. I was exhausted by Friday. The language barrier and the technology barrier combine to deal a heavy blow to my patience by the end of the week. This week will be even tougher, as I need to get in at least 19 more interviews. Uuf!

I had a bit of culture shock on Saturday. I left early Saturday morning for Leon and arrived at the hostel that I was to meet the rest of the FSD team at by mid-morning. The hostel was filled with English-speaking travelers who were all dressed in neutral-toned travel shorts and tank tops. After coming from a place where the majority of the community do not have access to electricity and have to gather their water for the day at 5 a.m. before it runs out, I was a little uncomfortable. I felt very out of place, and just wanted to get out of there. It intimidated me. I´ll have a bit of adjusting to do when I get back to the States.

The past week was very exciting, and I got a lot of great work done. However, before I write a book here, I need to end this entry and get some more work done. Thanks for continuing to read my scratchings here, and be sure to check out my pbwiki for details on the work. I will write more within the week. Abrazos!

Yesterday I went to Los Guacimos, a community about 30 minutes outside of San Ramon. I had met a young woman on the bus coming back from Matagalpa one evening, and she asked me to visit her to help her practice her English. So two weeks later here I was on the bus heading into the hinterlands of Nicaragua´s northern territories with a slight idea of where I was going.

Ivania proved to be very friendly. I helped her with pronunciation, vocabulary, and some grammar and then I was served a heaping plate of food by her mother. It was great food. When I asked for the time, I realized I would miss my appointment with the UCA-San Ramon. But I had to wait another hour and a half for the next bus to pass by in that direction, so Ivania invited me for a walk to the top of a nearby hill. The view was fantastic. I took a few pictures. When we came back, her mother had two handfuls of “huevos de amor”, or fertilized eggs, for me to take back with me. I couldn’t complain too much about the time after all the gifts they gave me, including their amicability. I finally caught the bus back around 2:20 p.m. and arrived in San Ramon at 3 – two hours late for my appointment with the UCA. I ran to the UCA office, but Abraham, with whom I was to meet, quickly told me he has too much to do right now and that he had waited for me at 1. I was very disappointed because it has now been two weeks in San Ramon and I still have not begun my work with the UCA. I am about to give up on them – I only have about 5 and a half weeks left here. I am afraid that it is getting too late to begin a new project. But my emotions are superseding my intelligence, so I need to step back and rethink my situation. Right now, I feel that I am working very hard for myself and for these organizations. I feel disregarded many days. I feel that they want me to face reality and not try to deal with it. I am trying hard to keep proactive and to keep advancing my goals, but I feel that I am getting quite a bit of pushback from the organizations. I feel that they do not understand how important this work is for me personally. Perhaps I am being self-centered in my quest for deliverables/results from this experience. But I feel that after paying a hefty load for this experience, leaving my husband for two months to fend for himself, and quitting my job, I feel that I can be a little bit more demanding. Is it wrong that I came here with a goal in mind, rather than just to experience the poverty of Nicaragua?

But when my intelligence overcomes my exhaustion and self-doubt, I realize that I need to be more respectful of other people’s time here. I was assuming that it is part of the culture to be flexible with appointments. I was wrong. I disrespected the UCA´s time, and now I pay for it. Next time, I will have to check my clock more regularly and respect my appointments. Monday I will try to set up an appointment with the UCA again. If nothing else, I can learn from their work and apply that experience here at CESESMA. Besides, they aren´t planning to do a telecenter until June, and I don´t believe I have time to do a pilot project with them anyway. Also, it is not too late to use them for the survey. I don’t even start the survey until Tuesday. I will trudge ahead with my plans and learn from this experience today. Heck, at least I got some huevos de amor out of it!

The lack of a break from my work is beginning to affect me. I miss being able to escape my work and catch a movie, or have some beers with friends, or go for a relaxing hike. My work is constantly surrounding me and in my thoughts here. I even dream about it! I keep telling myself that this is temporary and I need to just keep trudging ahead, but it is tough. I am glad to have another intern from the US here – I will be sad to see her go. She helps me to escape for a little while, even if that just means speaking in English.

I had my test run of the survey on Thursday. I found a lot of bugs that I will be working out this weekend. But I also discovered that the survey will not be nearly as useful as I was hoping. For one, the level of confidence is extremely low. I did not properly research and prepare for the survey, so the sample is not well representative. Secondly, the survey consists of two primary sections: the first on the current situation of access to ICTs here in San Ramon municipio, the second on how access to ICTs can best serve the community by verifying the type of information that they need to access. The first part of the survey is primarily for recording purposes to demonstrate to foreign organizations that the state of access to ICTs in San Ramon is almost nill. CESESMA already knows this, so that section is not very helpful to them. The second section is meant to be used as a guide to determine which technologies can best serve the community by providing them with the information that they need most. The problem is that a person who has never had access to a technology does not usually know what kind of information they can use that technology to access. When I ask what kind of information would you like to have access to, the response I am getting is “I would like a computer to access information.” They have already been taught that they need a computer. So when I ask what kind of information would you access through the computer, they become confused and have trouble answering the question. This is very disheartening to me. I have been taught that you should not look at technology as an end, but as a means to an end. You should look at the informational needs, and determine how best to access that information through which technologies. But these kids have no idea what information they need yet. They need to be made aware of the possibilities that a computer provides before they can determine what information they want to access. I am not sure if I should go ahead with my original plan on the survey, or adjust it according to this finding.

So, I keep working on my survey. I keep asking people when they are doing what in case I can accompany them. I keep trying to get an appointment with the UCA. I keep reading my Telecommunications Essentials book in my free time (that is my only diversion, as my family has hijacked the TV and only watches telenovelas and cartoons). I keep trying to stay focused on the task at hand and finish it in a timely and productive way. Uff! I am going to go get some ice cream now.