Intel produced this fantastic map yesterday at the 2008 Research@Intel Day. Red countries have higher rates of technology adoption. This is really valuable data for thinking about how to influence the adoption of technology, and for thinking about the ICT4D political spectrum in more than two shades of grey (or red and orange I guess). I think anyone who reads about this kinda stuff already has some vague map like this in their head. The only real surprise is how slow, relatively, the US is (I guess South Africa being flat is a surprise too). But the country-by-country resolution here adds such a valuable data point to the conversation about the BoP and the overall role of technology in the developing world. (It’s also a pretty damn good crystal ball on the future distribution of economic development). I want one for my wall.
If there is anything I hate more than cell phones, it’s money.
I mean, of course everybody *likes* money, but seriously, who wants to actually deal with it? Going to the bank, cutting checks to the landlord, saving receipts, budgeting, negotiating salaries, calculating the tip, trying to find stuff on sale, thinking about taxes … man, I have so many more interesting things to do. It’s all just exhausting, if you ask me.
But. As usual. I’m griping.
Imagine a world without access to banks and the services they provide - baseline services such as credit, money transfers, savings. For many of the world’s poor this is the everyday reality and it’s a space where in part due to the spread of mobile telephony there are disruptions and innovations.- Jan Chipchase
So, ok, reality check. When it comes down to it: A) Thank Allah I’ve got enough to live on and B) Thank Jesus that I have some sort of infrastructure to deal with it in the first place. As in — literally — I’m thankful that I have a bank, and receipts and all that crufty stuff that makes it all actually work.
Because a hell of a lot of people don’t.
Here’s Chipchase on it earlier this week: “Imagine a world without access to banks and the services they provide - baseline services such as credit, money transfers, savings. For many of the world’s poor this is the everyday reality and it’s a space where in part due to the spread of mobile telephony there are disruptions and innovations.”
And, Hey! Look! there they go again, those damned Cellphones! :)
Since this money stuff seems to have some potential influence on the future (who knew!), I’m actually really excited to be heading to BarCampBank San Francisco next weekend, to talk about cell phones and money. With a bunch of finance geeks. The point of this unconference is to dig into some of the newest, craziest ideas in finance technology, to “foster innovations and the creation of new business models in the world of banking and finance.”
I’m hoping for some discussions about peer-to-peer lending a long with a bunch of talk about the future of mobile currency exchange. In general I’m hoping that there are some folks there who really grok the reality that mobile phones are the most important platform for application development in the developing world.
In this context, I don’t care about iPhones, I don’t care about web apps; I’m talking about paying your rent via SMS. I’m talking about currencies and payment methods that aren’t defined by a government or even a bank!
Or something. This stuff is all so crazy I get the feeling nobody really knows what’s obviously essential vs. obviously stupid as hell.
Anyway, I hope it will be a good conference that gets to some of the more important ICT4D issues. You really never know with unconferences. If we all want to talk about Baudrillard and Obama, that’s what we’ll do. (They’re exciting that way. Who knows, maybe I’ll lead a session on user-centered design, like I know anything. It would be better than the Baudrillard and Obama session at least.)
Here’s to some exciting innovation at BarCampBank on Saturday … maybe I’ll see you there.
I’ve been following the recent debate about the future of web standards and whatnot. It’s been making me think a bit about what I really want to see in the future of web standards. And I can’t get this great California zine Cometbus out of my head. (Well, ok, by “following the recent debate” I’m just trying to find a smart way to say I read a few blogs. Every single one of which is linked to on Tuesday by Jeremy Keith. Except this one from Thursday Zeldman post. Zing zing. Good stuff. Read the comments for sure. Or just read my post first if you want to feel good about skipping it altogether.)
Anyway, lemme explain.
In its essence I think that the call for better, more ambitious HTML and CSS specifications is great. Obviously it’s crazy that we’re just evolving to CSS 2.1 candidate recommendation after what, six years? (And I could have sworn we already passed the mark but, ok, I’ve complained enough about it enough this week).
Anyway, it’s all well and good. Things are slow. (per Zeldman: “a slow bitch.”)
But one of most the interesting points raised somewhere in the debate goes something like “We need to sometimes ignore web standards and screw around with doing cool stuff. Then the people who write the specs will HAVE to include all these cool ideas we came up with. YAY! Bring on the browser wars!”
I think this is awesome. Geek out with your canvas elements already.
One thing I would observe, however, is that most web developers are not professionals. And this is a Good Thing. The network is good because it is made up of people, real people, who are much better at Whatever They Do than they are at creating websites.
One thing I would observe, however, is that most web developers are not professionals. And this is a Good Thing. The network is good because it is made up of people, real people, who are much better at Whatever They Do than they are at creating websites. They write about industrial ergonomics or your new nephew or architectural criticism or lolcats. Smart stuff, stupid stuff, it all aggregates into a wonderful brown sludge and the one thing that 99% of the network has in common is that they can’t write code to save their life and really they could not give a damn about about all. At ALL. And they never will of course.
Amid all of the verysmart talk about the need for more advanced specifications, we should remember that no one really pays attention to them. They don’t even know that they freaking exist. I mean, do you care about the fancy traffic-law setting bodies that surely exist? No, of course, not you just want to go somewhere.
So the reason this whole debate doesn’t matter for the millions of Real People is that people don’t need to write code anymore. They just need tools to help them publish their content. And, oh yeah, let’s remember that there are BILLIONS of people don’t even have the luxury of doing any of this stuff yet.
Somehow, Real People people need tools that help them just go somewhere. Nothing in any spec matters until it filters into the tools that real people can use, like blogging platforms, CMS’s , and IDE’s. So let’s keep out heads and remember there is so much more to this “web” thing than proper validating HTML5 or CSS2.1 or XHTML2 fancy things, as good as those will be.
Thinking about this seems depressing at first. The issue really is about browsers and blogging tools, content rendering and content creation. The problem is even bigger than IE (which, holeeshit, passes ACID2!!).
But, for me at least, it is a reminder that we already have more capability on the web than we ever could use.
So yeah, think of the photocopier and zines.
What can you do with a fancy new photocopier that you couldn’t do with one from 10 years ago? Not much. Once you’ve cleared the hurdle of cheap, pushbutton printing, you’ve launched yourself into a world of possibility greater than most people can deal with. You accomplish the most important part of the web just by being a great writer, and photocopying it. So I would submit The most important thing about the web is simple, powerful, ultra-low-fi communication, multiplied over and over and over. Connecting people to people. Photocopier innovation, traffic rules, W3C debates … they just really doesn’t matter to the DIY kids making zines, because, well, who CARES?
The best thing you could do is give people more photocopiers, and make them really really easy to use. Make em cheaper, make more of em and screw the Canon XTRZ-992834 with laminating and pink staples. Screw variables in CSS. Because lots of people haven’t got photocopiers, much less telephones, much less usenet or blogspot and definitely none of us really have the capacity to use any of it to its community-centered potential.
Seems like Paypal is one of those “leapfrogging” technologies that could help entire regions skip the process of developing a banking infrastructure, which apparently takes about 200 years of war (judging from how the West has done it).
Good as it sounds, it is important to note that users in all the African countries covered by Paypal, can only send, but cannot receive money. They cannot receive payments online even if they are online merchants. -Oluniyi David Ajao
So news about Paypal’s international expansion is a great development.
but …
Out but not in?! How horribly ironic …
I am sure that there are major obstacles to the inexpensive, reliable, worldwide transaction of money, but it seems like exactly the kind of thing that a web-based market should be able to work around. I guess that there aren’t too many open source geeks that are into high finance.
I missed this writeup from a little while ago. It is a good description of what Geekcorps is doing in Mali. Some of their really interesting projects are the Water Bottle Antenna, which provides a powered wifi antenna for about $3 (compared to $100) and the Desert PC which is basically a fanless, sealed machine designed for tough conditions (running a version of Linux of course — customized to minimize hard drive writes for durability!) What is not to love about a custom Linux distro for the developing world?
In the village of Bourem Inaly, Mali there are over 120 television sets powered by 12-volt car batteries, but there is almost nothing to watch. With its CanTV project, Geekcorps has helped the local radio station stream video content to the local community over WiFi. The radio station which rents these units out benefits from a new monthly revenue stream, while the villagers benefit with an improved source of news and entertainment.
Geekcorps Mali (which seems to be their flagship outfit in Africa, and was founded by Ethan Zuckerman is probably on the leading edge of in-the-field low-bandwidth applications. Geekcorps Low Bandwidth Networking is a wonderful (technical) document that describes in some detail the setup they are using. I use a lot of the same technologies (the mail and webserver) in my job as a sysadmin.
And I am totally in love with their Cantenna TV project for its emphasis on community media. Check out the video demo’ing a build of one of their antennas.
Rajan Harinarain, a South African entrepreneur and inventor has come up with a temporary foldaway house for use in emergency situations complete with electrical wiring and fittings, doors and windows that can be erected by a small team in 5 minutes.
Afrigadget is a great site (though with irregular posts) about a bunch of interesting developing world inspired inventions and tinkerers. Their most recent post covers a new type of emergency shelter. (Via Ndesanjo on Global Voices.)
John Maeda writes thoughtfully about simplicity and design at his MIT-based blog. He just posted a great bit about Paul Polak’s design for a low-resouce flashlight. Design under difficult conditions can lead to the same creative insight as design on a limitless budget.
“… this prototype flashlight that is completely solar powered (recharged in sunlight), easily constructed from common off-the-shelf parts, and can last for well over a decade of use.
New Wi-Fi distance record: 279 km!:
Ermanno Pietrosemoli and Javier Trivio (of EsLaRed) and Carlo Fonda (from the ICTP) have successfully established a whopping 279 km wifi link in Venezuela. They did it using a pair of Linksys WRT54Gs running DD-WRT and some recycled satellite dish antennas (no amplifiers!)
The Tactical Technology Collective is a nonprofit based in Amsterdam that has been doing great work distributing Free/Open Source technology to the global NGO sector.
This morning I was reminded (via Worldchanging) that they are working on creating several different “best of” software compliations for NGOs– kind of like that lovely old mixtape you have in your car, except with encryption tools, spyware tools and Firefox, among many others. And better liner notes. The first to be released was the “Security Edition” last October (which I suppose is, um, not to be confused with the ubiquitous AOL Security Edition discs at the grocery store).
The security version of NGO-in-a-box … is aimed predominantly at human rights, anti-corruption, and womens groups, independent media and journalists. Its purpose is to help these groups, and those who work as trainers and technical support with these groups, to orient themselves with the kinds of security and protection tools they could use and the ability to easily access and try them out. This boxset is made of three CDs and printed manual.
One of the most important parts of the CDs is the documentation, which somes in English, Spanish, French, Russian and Arabic. (Unfortunately a lot of the software only comes in English.)
It came as some surprise to me that the Security edition comes with a collection of FOSS applications that are designed to run on Windows (TM)(!). I think the decison to run on a closed platform (instead of Linux) was rather unfortunate … and unfortunately necessary for now. This CD provides a lot of great tools for NGOs at zero cost — and very few of the Tacitcal Tech’s audience is up and running with an Open platform on all of their machines. I hope, of course, that this won’t be the rule for future releases, but for now it seems pragmatic.
I’m looking forward to their future releases of a “Base Edition” “Advocacy Edition,” and especially the “Open Publishing Edition” (they’re only a few months behind schedule …)
Also worth noting: the Tactical Technology Collective is also a great proponent of the E-Riders philosophy + practice. They have a great page about eriding, and will be releasing a new white paper on the subject sometime soon. There is also a good website about E-Riding at http://www.eriders.net/ … it’s really too bad their blog has been dead all year!
Thomas Krag has a great-looking new book (with lead editor Rob Flickenger) about wireless networking in the developing world. And it’s always nice to see people taking advantage of the print-on-demand services of lulu.com.
The massive popularity of wireless networking has caused equipment costs to continually plummet, while equipment capabilities continue to increase. By applying this technology in areas that are badly in need of critical communications infrastructure, more people can be brought online than ever before, in less time, for very little cost. We hope to not only convince you that this is possible, but also show how we have made such networks work, and to give you the information and tools you need to start a network project in your local community.
The book is released under a Creative Commons license and is, as such, free. Read it at:
I had the pleasure of spending this weekend with Ndesanjo Macha (English Blog/Kiswahili Blog/Profile at Global Voices) in Greensboro, N.C., about an hour from my house in the woods near Pittsboro. We´re working together on a Kiswahili translation of WordPress, the excellent open source platform for this website.
We are fortunate to have the aid of the great invisible WordPress translator´s community, which has collaboratively published at least a couple (12) of essential how-to´s. Also there is of course the PoEdit team (mostly programmer Vaclav Slavik, I think), which makes the software that edits the software. Do you guys sell T-shirts, or what?
Any techno- or translation-minded folks please email chris at nonprofitdesign dot org. Help translate your favorite Open Source software into a new language.
I’m hoping we’ll be finished with it pretty soon, and we’ll be promoting it to the 30-80 million estimated Kiswahili-speakers in the world. (Mostly in Kenya, Tanz. and Uganda: here’s a wikipedia article about Swahili.)
In the meanwhile, I’ve transferred him to a shiny Wordpress 2.0 blog. It’s embargoed for now, but his new domain will resolve in a few days. He’s excited about WordPress because Google’s Blogger, while being terrifically easy to use — is so limited a platform that it hurts to use. (Seriously, Google: you don’t have *categories*, for god’s sake. That’s so 2005. The workaround hacks are hideous. ) And Blogger certainly does not have the same blogger-developer community.
Ndesanjo has been using Blogger with great success in Tanzania for some time now, and he says that he sees new Tanzanian bloggers every day. (However, he sent me a link to a new Tanzanian blog portal. I signed up and found an extremely small user base‚ writing in English.) But most of the Tanzanian bloggers stick to good-ole Blogger and have had to hack their templates a bit to get key phrases into Swahili.
Yikes. Who wants to try to figure out a content management system template on a dial up connection? With no documentation? No thanks. That´s where we come in with the translation.
Ndesanjo recently described the Swahili blogosphere in this way:
For some reasons, most Kiswahili bloggers are either poets or poetry lovers. It is nearly impossible to translate most of the poems and convey the same message. Most of the time these poet bloggers are challenging each other with creative use of complex and deep Swahili, which is an established tradition in Swahili poetry.
Listservs are always so easy to miss. Sometimes they’re a joy and sometimes they’re dead, but they’re always elusive, popping up just when you think you know every fold of your little online landscape. So, at the risk of being pedestrian, here’s a few quick links from super-excited Carole.
Information Society: Voices from the South - http://www.dgroups.org/groups/is - good for a time, more philosophical than practical
Ictforruralwomen (http://list.matrixlinks.ca/mailman/listinfo/ictforruralwomen) - really good but high volume
Oke-Ogun Community Development Agenda 2000 Plus - see www.cawd.info, and here’s their contact and info: http://www.cawd.info/content/aboutus/contact_us.html
Voluntary Sector Forum (http://www.voluntary-sector.ca/eng/index.cfm) - useless unless you’re in non-profit sector advocacy in Canada
Nonprofit Online News - great & diverse NGO/IT links
Open Forum on Telecentres and Development (seems to be telecentres-l@lyris.idrc.ca, or surf on www.IDRC.ca)
Bellanet (seems to be bellanet-l@lyris.bellanet.org)
AfricaFiles InfoServ (www.africafiles.org) - good for various African topics; no IT component
I’ve been reading an excellent report from Eldis (an incredible clearinghouse of development information) about the implementation of OCT programs in developing countries. In part the report seeks to question some conventional wisdom about the necessity of trendy technologies. On the whole it is a great synopsis of practical research with a clearheaded focus on poverty elimination. I recommend the full text pdf, and here’s a bit from the executive report:
This report reviews the evidence on how (or if) ICTs should be used in support of poverty reduction exercises.
There is one characteristic that is common to most of the ICT-related poverty alleviation programs. It finds that the most effective ICTs used are typically basic ones – telephone and radio are most common, and when computers or the Internet are involved, they are for restricted, targeted uses.
It finds several common characteristics of successful projects:
* the focus is on poverty alleviation and not on ICT use
* ICT components are kept as simple as practical
* ICT practitioners are involved in the design of the ICT components
* there is significant community involvement
* there is a focus on training to ensure success and sustainability
* there is consideration of a plan for success; how to replicate and scale project if it is successful
I’ve just been getting into a magazine called “Developments: The International Development Magazine.” It features respectable journalists writing informed pieces about new issues in international development. The most recent issue is a great bit about Open Source Software and the impact of free programs in the developing world.
I appreciate the E.M. Forester reference in the title of this editorial note, “Only Connect,” which is from Howard’s End. The full text is: “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. ” Another favorite Forester truism, from Passage to India, is that “Ideas are fatal to caste.”
But there is some irony I think in sticking Forester in here, considering his great distopian story “The Machine Stops,” (full text) in which human progress has “come to mean the progress of the Machine,” and everyone has thousands of meaningless, connections with friends they have never met.
Sidney Perkowitz has an excellent discussion of Forester’s views of technology and “The Machine Stops;” here’s a bit (via American Prospect):
Fearing that more technology meant less humanity, he utterly rejected the technical achievements of his time. In 1908, after hearing of the first successful airplane flight over a kilometer-long circuit, he wrote in his journal, “. . . if I live to be old, I shall see the sky as pestilential as the roads. . . . Science . . . is enslaving [man] to machines. . . . Such a soul as mine will be crushed out.” But we have come to learn that instead of producing a monolithically “bad” or “good” effect, a rich technology usually generates a balance sheet of benefits and costs—many of them unpredictable, because people use technology in unexpected ways. Thomas Mann once said, “A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth.” A significant technology also embraces opposites; if some of its applications constrain human potential, others enhance it.
And so, with some apprectiation of situational humor and contradiction, I think this issue of Developments gets even better.
Here’s the bit from the editorial leadin of the current issue:
In Zambia a street market vendor is paying for his order of Coca-Cola by text message. In Tanzania a candidate in the Presidential elections has been awarded his degree after completing it online through distance learning. In Nairobi, a daughter is sending money to her father in rural Kenya with prepaid pay as you go airtime. And in Namibia schoolchildren are surfing the net, sending emails and writing essays thanks to FLOSS, open source software written by enthusiastic programmers who don’t want any payment.
New technology is changing the face of international development in ways that no one predicted. And in this issue of developments we ask how technology can fight poverty – from the fisherman using his mobile to check which market wants his catch to the Ethiopians taking to blogging to change global perceptions of their country. The net, of course, has long been touted as a revolutionary tool for international development, but the global explosion in mobile phone use means it has rapidly caught up. And mobile phones are easier to share, requiring much less time to use, are more portable and you don’t have to read or write to use them.
The ICT4D (Informaiton and Communication Technology for Development) Africa Scan is a serious undertaking that seeks to provide a reference of the major ICT development activities in Africa.
This is a useful place for researchers to begin when attempting to understand the current pace and direction of technology development work on the continent.
The purpose of this pilot is to experiment with a different way of presenting “who is doing what” in the area of ICT for Development (ICT4D) in Africa. It takes as its starting point a representative sample of funding institutions and maps their ICT4D programs and initiatives in Africa against a backdrop of countries, regions and themes. It also makes an attempt to identify the organisations with which these development institutions partner, and in what areas these partnerships occur.
The result is currently not a comprehensive inventory, but an illustration of the potential of using geographic, thematic and partnership information to not only provide an inventory or a snapshot of ICT4D activity in Africa, but to begin to see trends in terms of emerging themes, in terms of countries and regions of specialisation, in terms of partnerships, etc.
This report details how budget-strapped organizations working in the developing world are able to use open source software to accomplish computing task that would otherwise just be too expensive.
From the introduction:
The emphasis on openness in open source software has fostered the growth of a world-wide community of developers contributing to the evolution and improvement of various software programs for use in networked servers and desktop systems ranging from operating systems and web servers, to e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets. While such a diffused structure for software development may seem chaotic, this approach is being considered as a more democratic alternative to monolithic single vendor efforts.
Interest in OSS is Likely to Grow:
While ICT priorities will vary among countries, as it increases as a component of a country s development strategy, understanding OSS dynamics should also have more importance. With some discussions becoming quite passionate, decision-makers will have questions about the potential that open source software may offer, where and how it should be used, along with its potential risks.
OSS is Different from Proprietary Software:
With OSS, the programming code used to create software solutions is available for inspection, modification, re-use and distribution by others. It is often assumed that open source software is free of charge. While this can be the case, OSS can be purchased for a fee as well. The concept of free, in this context, emphasizes what can be done with the source code rather than its cost. Because of its collaborative nature, the open source model lends itself to allow participants to be both producers and consumers/users of the software.
OSS Arguments Range from the Technical to the Economic:
The OSS topic incorporates the concepts of community, public good, non-commercialism, ecosystems, and issues of intellectual property, copyrights and patents. Underlying much of the discussion is that ‘information’ in general, and ’software’ as a means of delivery is unlike other goods and services. Central to the discussion are the issues of when and if information should be owned versus shared, what is the value of software, and when is it considered a commodity.
While poking around on stuff related to the WSIS in Tunis, I found this excellent document about wireless internet in Africa, which was used at the first meeting of the WSIS in 2003. I only wish that there was an updated copy somewhere …
“The most intriguing application [of wireless technology] in developing nations is the deployment of low-cost broadband Internet infrastructure and last-mile distribution.
The rationale for such interest is simple in theory: The digital divide cannot be resolved any time soon because of the prohibitive cost of deploying conventional wired infrastructure in developing countries. Wireless Internet, however, has the potential to solve this bottleneck, as the collection of articles and case studies in this volume demonstrates. …
So, why should this topic become central to the World Summit on Information Society initiative? First, wireless Internet may be a very effective and inexpensive connectivity tool, but it does not carry any magic in itself. It can only be successfully deployed as demand for connectivity and bandwidth emerges in support of relevant applications for the populations served. These may be supporting e-government, e-education, e-health, e-business or e-agriculture applications. But those are not easily implemented in the developing world. They do suggest that wireless Internet can indeed be sustainably and in some cases profitably deployed in support of economic and social development objectives in developing countries.
The greatest aspect of this document is that it represents how often the most successful cases of adoption is grassroots and local — this type of development does not work well when it is imposed by some NGO or corporation.
You can read the entire document at infodev, an organization created to “promote better understanding, and effective use, of information and communication technologies (ICT) as tools of poverty reduction and broad-based, sustainable development.”
Here’s another update on the laptop debate/idea from Ethan Zuckerman, the ICT-blogger-fellow at Harvard. He usefully recounts the point of the new prototypical $100 laptop as being a radical step toward computer-aided learning in developing countries. I appreciate his skepticism about the project, especially his explicit reference to the late, not-so-great simputer idea, which bombed because of economics.
You know, that pesky money thing. Always a problem when dealing with poverty.
here’s a bit:
“After peppering Negroponte with two hours of questions, I’m fairly convinced that this laptop won’t suffer the problems the Simputer did - I believe it will get produced and distributed and that the software will enable e-books, web browsing, word processing and programming. As much as I enjoy the geekery of challenging Negroponte and others on the fine points of hardware and software design for the developing world, I’m convinced that some extremely smart people are working very hard on the hardware and software side of things. While I might question some of the decisions made, I don’t know that my second-guessing is helpful at this point.
Being a great way to communicate quickly, maps can also be incredibly dense with information. When they are put to a wholesome use, maps, like apple pie and puppies, deserve to have a special place in every home.
Take, for example, the incredible work coming out of the Dutch group Mapping Worlds. They’ve beautifully mapped global poverty, international migration, and civil conflict. They even have a special section of maps for Millennium Development Goals!
These Nederlanders have their act together.
This is their fabulous map of the failed funding effort being undertaken by the developed world for poverty relief. (You can find a larger one on their site. You know you want to.) It’s shameful, really.
If you enjoy this and have a second or two, be sure to toy with their animated, more robust version at the Center For Global Development, where they have mapped an index of international commitment to the Development Goals. No really, check that last link, it’s fantastic.
Here’s what they say about this project:
The Commitment to Development Index reminds the world that reducing poverty in developing countries is about far more than giving money. Trade, investment, migration, security, environment, and technology policies matter, too. Now in its third year, the CDI ranks 21 of the richest nations on their performance in each policy area, giving you the big picture. View the rankings in charts, learn what the Index rewards and penalizes, compare country report cards, and post comments or suggestions.
Ethan Zuckerman is one of the best bloggers in the world; he must get paid by Harvard to do it, or something. (He does.)
His musing last week on the ICT/geek community’s response to the Katrina relief effort is a fascinating look at how we can potentially respond with the full weight of technology’s resources.
Most notably, Ethan has been recently instrumental in organizing and developing the Katrina Peoplefinder database (in record time, no less), which exceeded 100,000 entries in the first week of September. I think that this is, for once, an example of how activism in a purely digital sense can in fact be utterly essential, not a trival, isolated indulgence.
Please Note: This database (at http://www.katrinalist.com) still has a growing amount of data; you can still volunteer to enter data remotely (from anywhere in the world, in your pajamas, at The Katrina Peoplefinder Wiki.
What is amazing is that this activism has been the work of a very loosely organized group of more than 2,000 people all over the world. The work done by organizers was largely administrative - they assigned various “chunks” of data from fragmented bulletin boards to volunteers who put standardized information into a central database. This I think, was impressively smart, and it needs to be replicated in many other contexts, present and future.
And I believe that the folks involved in the development of the project are acutely aware of this need, and they are taking admirable leadership roles. Online code guru Dave Weiner wrote, for example, about the need of a standardized, open, XML format for transmitting data about missing people. A day later, there it was, the People Finder Interchange Format.
These developments have rediscovered the power of existing technologies. Innovative uses of our everyday-geek tools - including VOIP phones, podcasts, wikis, weblogs, SMS text messages and databases - can affect change in the world. Really, they can. But in the highly developed world we are accustomed to treating them as though they were simply luxuries, toys. I commend the folks who have done so much in the last few weeks toward making them real, social tools.
Ethan Zuckerman’s fascinating post reviewing the online post-Katrina relief effort is here:
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John Maeda writes thoughtfully about simplicity and design at his 
The purpose of this pilot is to experiment with a different way of presenting “who is doing what” in the area of ICT for Development (ICT4D) in Africa. It takes as its starting point a representative sample of funding institutions and maps their ICT4D programs and initiatives in Africa against a backdrop of countries, regions and themes. It also makes an attempt to identify the organisations with which these development institutions partner, and in what areas these partnerships occur.
