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Upgrading International Development, Part II

A Talk with Ethan Zuckerman, Global Voices Online Co-founder, Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law

In part two of the interview, Ethan shares his views on conquering digital divides, activism and technology, and how improvements in technology might affect us in the future. You can read the first part of the interview here.
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How can we use technology to turn apathy into action?

I think the only force that combats apathy is empathy. Until you care about a situation in another part of the world, it’s very hard to decide to pay attention to that situation and even harder to decide to act.

To get people to care across cultural, language and geographic barriers requires some sort of exposure. I knew very little about Africa and cared very little until I lived in Ghana as a student in 1993. Coming back to the US, I was suddenly interested in African politics because there were a lot of people in Ghana I cared deeply for. This discovery is what led me to form Geekcorps - I wanted to give other geeks the chance to get exposed to different parts of the world, build interpersonal ties and work on solutions to tough technical problems.

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Upgrading International Development

A Talk with Ethan Zuckerman, Global Voices Online Co-founder, Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law

I had the opportunity to correspond with Ethan Zuckerman, just back from a trip to Zimbabwe and the Digital Citizen Indaba conference on blogging. In part one of the interview, Ethan talks about his involvement in international development, blogging, the lack of media coverage on foreign investment in Africa, and the prospects of an African blogging conference.

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I came across your blog and Global Voices through being an avid reader of Sokari Ekine’s blog Black Looks. Now it seems that whenever there’s a topic I find interesting either you or Sokari is involved! How did you first get involved in international development and technology issues?

Sokari is one of my favorite reads as well, and one of the bloggers who’s helped convince me of the power of this medium to build friendships across barriers of nationality, race, gender and other obstacles. I’m very grateful to her for the work she did as the founding Africa editor for Global Voices.
I’ve been interested in international development since I lived in Ghana as a student in 1993. But I didn’t think about getting involved in development issues until my work on Tripod.com. Coming out of the experience of helping to run a successful dot.com, I wondered whether any of the lessons I learned could be applicable in building technology businesses in Africa. I was lucky enough to have the mentorship of Professor Dick Sabot, who was a brilliant development economist as well as an entrepreneur, and who helped encourage me to channel my interests into Geekcorps, the NGO I founded in 1999 to work on technology transfer in the developing world.

What has been the response to projects like BlogAfrica and Global Voices Online?

The two projects have had very different responses, probably because they’ve had very different purposes. BlogAfrica was designed to be a tool useful to a small group of people - folks who follow Africa closely and want to keep up with a large number of voices for the continent. For those folks, it’s a little rough around the edges, but functional and basically useful. But it’s not a site I spend a lot of time promoting and celebrating - the folks who would find it useful generally already know about it.

Global Voices, on the other hand, is a site that I’d love everyone to read. It’s designed to pull people into stories they’d otherwise miss, broaden their worldview and introduce them to people they otherwise would never get to know. It’s been amazingly successful - we were just honored with the Knight Batten award for innovation in journalism. Technorati ranks us as the 175th most popular blog in the blogosphere… which is pretty good for a blog that doesn’t focus on technology, popular culture or US politics.
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Fighting Corruption: Bribe Payers Index 2006

Switzerland received the best ranking on the BPI 2006

Transparency International released the Bribe Payers Index yesterday, an analysis of the custom of bribing by companies from the top exporting countries. The index sheds light on a problem that is often characterized as rooted solely in the developing world. Switzerland ranked the highest on the list. Germany came in at number seven; The United States was ranked number nine.

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Recycle Your Cell-Phone, Save a Gorilla

Adopt a gorilla at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International

Zoo Atlanta and The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International are working together with a company called Eco-Cell to recycle cell phones, help the environment and raise money for gorilla conservation. Cell phones and other electronics contain a number of hazardous substances that can have a serious impact on the environment. Donating your phone and having it recycled will ensure that they will be reused or properly recycled. For each cell phone received, a donation will be made to The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International.
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A Look Behind the Prison Walls

Award-winning photojournalist Jane Evelyn Atwood ’s work reflects a deep involvement with her subjects over long periods of time. Atwood penetrates worlds that most of us do not know, or choose to ignore. Her project Too Much Time documents the lives of incarcerated women in the US, France, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Switzerland, India and Israel. Initially spurred by curiosity, the project went on to inspire the outrage that kept Atwood going with the subject for nine years.
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The Homeless World Cup 2006

The Homeless World Cup soccer tournament kicked off this Sunday in Cape Town, South Africa. The idea for the games was conceived in 2001 after a conference of the International Network of Street Papers sold by the homeless. The first tournament took place in Graz in 2003. “We really can help change the world, end poverty and homelessness,” said organizer Mel Young in an interview with Associated Press writer Clare Nullis. “All we have to do is take a little round ball and start kicking it around.”
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Reach Out and Finance Someone

Courtesy Grameen Foundation

A few weeks ago I interviewed Peter Bladin, vice president of Grameen Foundation, the US-based wing of Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen Bank – the Bangladesh institution often referred to as the first large-scale microfinance project in the world. Although the interview (published today) focuses on the connection between technology and microfinance, we also talked a bit about Village Phone, the program where locals sell mobile phone air time in their communities, and make a profit doing so.
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Arundhati Roy asks herself: What form of resistance is effective and acceptable?

Be sure to take a close look at Arundhati Roy’s provocative question about the future of non-violent resistance and armed struggle. “What is effective?,” she wonders. “What is the right thing to do?”
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Iranian Bloggers Joined by President Ahmadinejad

President Ahmadinejad as depicted on his very own blog

Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to have decided that he’s not getting his message across. He’s chosen an interesting new route to the hearts and minds of his own people and those in the West – blogging, which effectively lets him get his viewpoint across without being filtered through any hostile media. He provides translations from the original Farsi into French, Arabic and some rather quaint English reminiscent of a Persian folktale.
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Creating A New Universe

How to Create a New Universe (diagram by QJ.net)

Fascinating story here, brought to my attention by Futurismic…

Led by Professor Nobuyuki Sakai, the Astrophysics Research Group at Japan’s Yamagata University is planning to create a ‘mini-big bang’ and a new ‘baby-universe’ right there in its laboratory! The revolutionary experiment will use a particle accelerator to propel electrically charged particles at high speed at a uniquely dense (i.e. high mass) spherical particle, with an isolated north or south magnetic field, called a ‘magnetic monopole‘. The monopole will then gain enough mass and energy to begin expanding in a process of ‘cosmic inflation‘ similar to that which befell our own universe after the Big Bang.
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features

Upgrading International Development, Part II

Upgrading International Development

Fighting Corruption: Bribe Payers Index 2006

Recycle Your Cell-Phone, Save a Gorilla

A Look Behind the Prison Walls

The Homeless World Cup 2006

Reach Out and Finance Someone

Arundhati Roy asks herself: What form of resistance is effective and acceptable?

Iranian Bloggers Joined by President Ahmadinejad

Creating A New Universe

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features

Upgrading International Development, Part II

Upgrading International Development

Fighting Corruption: Bribe Payers Index 2006

Recycle Your Cell-Phone, Save a Gorilla

A Look Behind the Prison Walls

The Homeless World Cup 2006

Reach Out and Finance Someone

Arundhati Roy asks herself: What form of resistance is effective and acceptable?

Iranian Bloggers Joined by President Ahmadinejad

Creating A New Universe