Charles Matthews wrote:
I have some experience at the YMCA Kampala
(Uganda) - which has its
own computer room; and my mother is just back from a secondary school
in the coffee-growing area of Tanzania. The latter has no working
computers, and is not likely to be able to get technician-level help.
Those are relatively typical, I suppose, of the capital
city/up-country constrasts in Africa, where things are relatively
hopeful (for example, high uptakes of primary education).
Any donated software is likely to find its way to institutions,
rather than individuals - that's one point.
Of course we have to get Wikipedia ready with a working Wiki
rating/tagging/validation system. That is really our whole job.
I work with a help-Africa charity called Care For Life that is based
in Mozambique, and I think if Wikipedia could provide reliable,
selectable content, that humanitarian organizations like Care For Life
could creatively solve the problem of distribution. I could ask the
board of Care For Life, but it seems it would be a small matter to
create a Wikipedia Appliance that was optimized for price and utility
in a given area. For example, Care For Life could purchase or receive
donations of cheap computers and provide them with Wikipedia 1.0
loaded at their Literacy Centers.
One needs to consider what requirements should be a part of a "cheap
computer". CD drives are relatively recent in the technological
history, and the older slower drives may be made available for these
machines. On the other hand, it may not be cost effective to upgrade
these machines to have great graphics. This would suggest that there
should be a 1.0 version with all pictures stripped out so that the
recipients can at least benefit from the text.
Ec