Thoughts about Internet Freedom

[Jorge Amodio]

> internet for me is a technology allow us to connect to you easily.. no
> additional cost... no barrier customs, time and space...
>
> before... in 1996 this is not possible for us in indonesia...  and still not
> possible in some  remote village :-)

Glad to know you keep the spirit and keep working to get more people connected.

Ages ago, and funny now that we have the UN-ITU-IGF-WSIS circus, small
projects run under the umbrella of UNDP and some ONGs (Carlos and
others from APC may remember), many of us early young net activist
geeks use to travel around the world carrying a modem and disks with a
UUCP version for PC's.

In the early days of the network in Argentina, before we were able to
establish the very first permanent connection, at the University of
Buenos Aires and in cooperation with the IT project of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs (another UNDP one), we enabled dialup accounts for
remote nodes using UUCP, yes we all were craving for a better
connection but having at least email was a tremendous progress for
many remote locations. We were duplicating diskettes like AOL was
mailing CDs.

Technology normally helps to make things easier, faster, better, what
makes it possible is PEOPLE !!

Another gig I was involved during my tenure on different UNDP
projects, was actually working with other folks to make a "bridge"
between the UN internal email system (I believe it was called
billings, can't remember now) and get UN NY DMIS (Data Management
Information Services) hooked up with JVNcNet (one of the old regionals
of the NSFNet era), many said that it was an impossible thing to do,
technically and bureaucratically, we just did it and undp.org was
born.

I'm really sad to see that as a civil society group with non
commercial interests it seems that now to be in the picture we have to
learn to dance at the beat of somebody else's music.

The GAC or any other form of para-intergovernmental arrangement will
keep trying at any cost and with all resources to gain control, not
because they know what to do with it, just because is intrinsic for
each government to show who is in control, will see what the BoD has
to say about all this ... have fun in SFO, was planning to go but
other priorities keep me on the sidelines and with no much time to
participate and contribute more.

Cheers
Jorge

>
> note: 1. next week we will install an wardes (village netcafe) in a remote
> district called Long Bawan, east kalimantan province (borneo highland) ...
> remote district no road access... no electricity ( the river water electric
> generator was not working for 8 months)... of course no internet for most of
> the people there... but they live prosperous exporting salt, vegetable and
> rice to sarawak (malaysia) and brunei.
> 2. prosperous means not under poverty... enough food, school for the kids
> till highschool and there is a christian seminary there... most of the
> people are dayak tribe (long daya) and christian
>
> On 03/07/2011 01:41 AM, Jorge Amodio wrote:
>>>
>>> (That being said, i can see that some other "inventions" might be very
>>> deserving also)
>>>
>>
>> I'd give you just one, without vaccines many of us would be 6 feet
>> under, there are many "inventions", not all of them that great like
>> the atomic bomb ...
>>
>> As you said the printing press has been a great achievement to
>> increase the efficiency to distribute the written word, but perhaps
>> more important has been the invention of the written word.
>>
>> The Internet today is a conglomerate of many things that you can call
>> "inventions" or "achievements in technology", Internet without HTML
>> and the DNS would not be the same, etc. It would be hard to imagine a
>> high performance router made out of vacuum tubes.
>>
>> Without the invention of packet switching there would be no Internet
>> and you would probably be complaining to the PTT for the price of the
>> kilo-octet and dealing with many different interpretations and
>> implementations (being there, done that) of ITU-T formerly CCITT X.abc
>> recommendations.
>>
>> IMHO the best and more notorious side effect of the Internet is that
>> since its conception we learned to work in a cooperative manner across
>> borders, to "freely" share information and experiences, regardless of
>> nationality, color, religion, sexual orientation, educational
>> background, etc. What makes Internet unique and so relevant is the
>> "spirit" of the people which (excuse my french) with all this shit
>> about governance, IP&  commercial interests, yada, yada, we are
>> loosing.
>>
>> We have an old proverb in spanish that says "La culpa no es del
>> chancho, sino del que le da de comer", in english would be something
>> like "Don't blame the pig, blame those who feed it."
>>
>> My .02
>> Jorge
>>
>>
>>
>
>