[Foundation-l] MMORPG and Wikimedia

Sat May 8 05:28:27 UTC 2010

Hello,

2010/5/7 jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com <jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com>:
> On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 9:41 AM, Yann Forget <yannfo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> 2010/5/7 Noein <pronoein at gmail.com>:
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>
>> > Now, one of the unsolved questions of the WMF is: how do we plan to
>> > communicate with analphabets?
>>
>> Thinking that analphabets would get encyclopedic knowledge through VR
>> shows a big misunderstanding of how the cause of analphabetism.
>> If people are analphabets is because they lack the resource to have a
>> proper education, so they won't get any access to a computer, much
>> less to Internet and VR worlds.
>>
>
> I can tell you of my experience with people from Kosovo who are not native
> english speakers, many of  have a hard time reading anything longer than 140
> characters. The dont like to read and books are very expensive, and the
> written language is very different than the spoken one.
>
>
> But they *will* watch videos, or listen to some talk, even in english or
> german or do something interactive.
> That is why we need videos of people (or computers) reading articles to them
> that they can pop into their dvd player or have share.  more people have
> some form of ability to play dvds.
>
> The mit ocw distributes hdds of data to schools with no internet access,
> they include video lectures and alot of material. very good stuff.
>
> I can imagine, but may be wrong, that in most villages in world, even the
> poorest, where 99% of the people done have computers and such, at least one
> person or school in town will have some form of dvd player. In fact, you
> could distribute articles in image format for a normal dvd player as well.

For a DVD player, you are a bit too optimist, for there is not even
electricity everywhere.
But many people have a mobile phone nowadays, so we could try making
MP3 available with encyclopedic content.

> mike

Regards,

Yann