[crosspost]Gates: Food, Medicine, and not computers (fwd)

["N.A. Prakash" <prakash@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There have been a few responses already to the following post on 
linux-without-borders. 

prakash

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 05 Nov 2000 13:37:48 -0500
From: Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: linux-without-borders@xxxxxxx
Subject: Gates: Food, Medicine, and not computers

Since many of you are much closer to the subject of this news item
than I am, I am curious as to your views: Bill Gates closed off
a Seattle conference on computers and the developing nations with
the statement that he no longer believes computers will help them.

http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,393015,00.html

>From my comfortable Canadian beach office, I have personally seen
positive results in South America and Africa as direct outcomes of our
computing and internet projects (the Humanity CD-Rom project comes to
mind), but I will be the first to confess that the number of mothers
who can come up to one of these machines to seek medical or
agricultural information pales in comparison to the vast numbers who
can not make the journey, let alone interpret and implement the
results effectively.  

Still, I hold that, by placing access to information within _closer_
reach, I increase the chances that some local visitor to this
information might carry it out into the countryside.  Is this, as
Gates suggests, a totally naiive view of the way things are?

-- 
Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@xxxxxxxx>: office voice/fax: 01 519 4222723
T(C)Inc Business Innovations through Open Source http://www.teledyn.com
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