🚀 go-pugleaf

A few thoughts.....
 
 Where the net goes.... a few of the more recent additions to the sundry nets
include China (mainland, I believe, not Taiwan), South Africa, and Poland.

 Computer Science personnel from developing nations... I have seen this 
phenomena at work.  I spent a few months at New Jersey Institute of Tech.,
and one was as likely to have friends named "Patel" as "Smith."  The school
strives to attract students from around the world, and largely succeeds. 
 From relating to a few, though, they do not all want to stay in the US after
college.  Many of them want to return to their homelands and help bring their
nations to the leading edge technologically.  I for one heartily support it.

	-sh
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Birchall		          [ Shag ]    			  birchall@njin
NJIN Official Random					birchall@pilot.njin.net
Promoting Alt.BBS.Internet, QuartzBBS/QuartzParadise, and clues for sale cheap.

birchall@pilot.njin.net (Official Random) writes:
> 
> Where the net goes.... a few of the more recent additions to the sundry nets
>include China (mainland, I believe, not Taiwan), South Africa, and Poland.

Does anyone have more information regarding the network in China?  I would
very much like to be able to send some files to someone at Beijing Normal
University.  Any information would be appreciated.

--
 David Paredes {dparedes@s.psych.uiuc.edu *or* dparedes@128.174.15.20}
 Univ. of Illinois/Psych 315/603 E. Daniel/Champaign, IL 61820/(217/244-3669)

I will read this my token dozen messages before 'u'ing.

Curt answer:
Many people and few people.

I've now received email from the Soviet Union.  Email from around the
world.  I've gone on vacation in very remote areas of the US miles from
paved roads when I have encountered people living there having PCs
and contempating getting a modem for their children.  Scary thought. ;^)

Who else?  Well let's see, the IRS has about a dozen Usenet nodes.
I think this scares a few more than the "spook agencies."
My "favorite" bookstore is just a hop off of UUCP.  But at the
same time, this is a very limited and very biased sample.  We should
not confuse the net with reality.

I know many scientists who don't have email access and are not interested
in access.  What of the general public? Computers and nets are just a tool,
and a few don't even like computers.  We have created something of
a technological elite, whether we like it or not.  We over-generalize the
speed of response for mass opinion.  We mistake the opinions of the few
of the many.  This says nothing of the person in remote areas just concern
with base survival.

We must achieve a balance the pure information age and the physical world
in which we live.  In the words of Bronowski (1974): "We must touch."

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
  Resident Cynic, Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers
  {uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene

In article <1991May23.115550.966@darwin.ntu.edu.au> b_duke@darwin.ntu.edu.au (Brian Duke) writes:
>How many sites in real developing countries are on the net. Is this group
>going to be another case of the well developed pontificating about the less
>developed? Or can they join in? Of course there will be expatriates from 
>developing countries working in developed countries. It used to be said 
>that there were more Nigerian Computer Scientists in the US than Nigeria. 
>They did not want to go home. Is this still the case? Does the net reach
>Africa, 

The net reaches South Africa.  It doesn't seem to make it anywhere else
on that continent, at least not yet.

>South America, PNG, Fiji, South East Asia etc? I hear there are 
>even difficulties with E-mail to some European countries such as Greece.

In Latin America, the United Nations has a project "huracan" to help put 
together low-cost mail networks throughout the region.  Ted Hope in Costa 
Rica will probably be posting here eventually, and he can tell you more
than I (at the moment he seems to be swamped with work).  The goal is to
have the net in every country in the region.
-- 
John Schonholtz						jms@netcom.com
I have no idea what the operating system of the yearr 2001 will be like,
but I do know that it will be called UNIX.

Hmmmm. Who is on the net?

How about a female part-time sports car mechanic who is an information junkie?
I don't even care for computers all that much (although I am not scared of them
like some people) and have marginal use for them in my very small business. I
live below the established USA "poverty level", am on Food Stamps, belong to
the SCA, am studying to become a libraraian (my need for computers is about to
change in a *big* way! :-) am a heavy poster to several soc.culture groups. I
come to you courtesy of a private BBS in Portland, Oregon, via a used Commodore
64 using a Kermit program.

The only thing I miss is the "space" afforded by a hard disk and larger memory,
but my "home" system has nearly unlimited file space, so it's not much of a
problem. I console myself, when twitted about my machine by IBM-pushers, that
this little machine would have filled a goodly space in the 50's, and belong to
a large business or university. :-)

I use it almost exclusively to access the net, and get about 15 pieces of email
a day from around the world...

Suze Hammond
trifid@agora.rain.com

(Sorry about the typo of "librarian". :-)

If *I* can do it, so can Zaire!

In article <1991May23.211452.17937@netcom.COM> jms@netcom.COM (John Schonholtz) writes:
>In article <1991May23.115550.966@darwin.ntu.edu.au> b_duke@darwin.ntu.edu.au (Brian Duke) writes:
>>How many sites in real developing countries are on the net. Is this group
>>going to be another case of the well developed pontificating about the less
>>developed? 

There are roughly 50 institutions in India, mostly Universities
and Research Labs which have access to Internet for email ONLY.
As far as I know, a very small fraction of these (< 5 for sure)
get a newsfeed.

Many private companies have access to Internet, a fallout of the
above networking efforts.  I routinely interact with my sisters
in Bombay by email as a consequence.

Reading and writing news is not too common, because it's quite
new and because only a few organisations have it in the first
place.

There are tremendous computer skills in India, the stumbling
block here is a fabulously inefficient state-owned telecom
system.
-- 
_______________________________________________________________________________
Ajay Shah, (213)734-3930, ajayshah@usc.edu
                             The more things change, the more they stay insane.
_______________________________________________________________________________

>The net reaches South Africa.  It doesn't seem to make it anywhere else
>on that continent, at least not yet.

I believe I have received e-mail from Egypt and Tunisia (although the
Tunisians may have been doing something strange to get to me, they
were asking questions regarding bringing up a new net link in Tunis,
it should be up by now.) Isn't American University, Cairo on the net?

-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | bzs@world.std.com          | uunet!world!bzs
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD

>>>>> On 24 May 91 05:58:07 GMT, bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) said:

>The net reaches South Africa.  It doesn't seem to make it anywhere else
>on that continent, at least not yet.

Barry> I believe I have received e-mail from Egypt and Tunisia (although the
Barry> Tunisians may have been doing something strange to get to me, they
Barry> were asking questions regarding bringing up a new net link in Tunis,
Barry> it should be up by now.) Isn't American University, Cairo on the net?

There also is a regular poster from Namibia, who's name escapes me.

Regarding "who is on the net":

One of the two "cover topics" of the current (Summer '91) Whole Earth
Review magazine (a quarterly, formerly called CoEvolution Quarterly)
is "Electronic Democracy".  There are several excellent articles which
opened my eyes as to just *how many* diverse people and needs are
already represented on various "nets" -- Usenet, Fidonet, Internet,
as well as many local, state, national, and "Non-Governmental 
Organization" (NGO) grassroots-action groups that are establishing 
their own.  Also discussed are the communications-provider companies
that are helping these groups "get networked" quicker and easier.

One article describes the state of Montana's "Big Sky Telegraph"
net, used for dial-up remote education by rural dwellers (Montana 
is bigger than many *countries*...).

I highly recommend the issue to anyone interested in how this 
technology is changing the lives and opportunities available to 
people in the USA and around the globe.

/John


-- 
John Ciccarelli (jciccare@adobe.com, {sun|decwrl}!adobe!jciccare, 415-962-6677)
Adobe Systems, 1585 Charleston Road, Mountain View, California USA 94039-7900

In <1991May23.211452.17937@netcom.COM> jms@netcom.COM (John Schonholtz) writes:

>The net reaches South Africa.  It doesn't seem to make it anywhere else
>on that continent, at least not yet.

Which "net" is that? ;-)

The zone 5 (Africa) Fidonet gateway is sitting here at Rhodes University
and we are dialling Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Ethiopia.  We also
have users from neighbouring countries (e.g. Namibia) that have guest
accounts on our Unix systems and dial in via X.25 (cheaper than direct
dial via modem).

There are a few problems with this - these Fidonet nodes are inherently
"single user" systems and just because there is an individual running a
system in say, Kenya, doesn't mean that the country is actually "connected".
It does show, however, that email access to less developed countries is
more than just possible.  South Africa has bootstrapped its way from a
Fidonet gateway up to uucp and (shortly) full TCP/IP connectivity over a
period of two years.

Another problem is internal infra-structure.  How badly do universities
in the same country need to talk to each other?  Our experience was that
local networking only took off after we got international email access.
Up until then, an "email culture" doesn't exist, and has no reason to
exist because it is easy enough to pick up the phone and talk to
somebody.  However you can sell international email as being "cheaper
than a fax", and once this is accepted, local networking (even within an
organisation) booms because the culture is acceptable.

Conversely, if you don't have internal networking, sites don't develop
the skills or experience required to handle international traffic.
In short, it is a complex and non-obvious set of causes and effects that
gets a developing country (as opposed to a single individual in that
country) "on the net".

Lastly, you can have all the will and skills and hardware in the world
in a given place, but if you can't get a reliable telephone connection
across town, let alone into a neighbouring country, you will land up
frustrated.  Other problems, such as reliable power, hardware
maintenance etc pale into insignificance compared to lack of comms
infrastructure.

In South(ern) Africa, there are many people at many sites (Fidonet, uucp
and TCP/IP) who are more than willing to provide connectivity and
technical assistance to sites in neighbouring countries.

--
     F.F.  Jacot Guillarmod - Computing  Centre - Rhodes  University
     Artillery Road - P.O Box 94 - Grahamstown - 6140 - South Africa
     Internet: ccfj@hippo.ru.ac.za    Phone: +27 [0]461 22023 xt 284
     uucp: ..!uunet!m2xenix!quagga!hippo!ccfj  Fax: +27 [0]461 25049

In <1991May24.142757.7892@cbfsb.att.com> Dan_Jacobson@ATT.COM writes:

>There also is a regular poster from Namibia, who's name escapes me.

Eberhard Lisse (spel@hippo.ru.ac.za) who is a medical doctor at Katatura
State Hospital in Windhoek, Namibia.  He has a guest account on
this system.

--
     F.F.  Jacot Guillarmod - Computing  Centre - Rhodes  University
     Artillery Road - P.O Box 94 - Grahamstown - 6140 - South Africa
     Internet: ccfj@hippo.ru.ac.za    Phone: +27 [0]461 22023 xt 284
     uucp: ..!uunet!m2xenix!quagga!hippo!ccfj  Fax: +27 [0]461 25049

In <1991May23.211452.17937@netcom.COM> jms@netcom.COM (John Schonholtz) writes:

>The net reaches South Africa.  It doesn't seem to make it anywhere else
>on that continent, at least not yet.

From the SAfrican gateway, we forward Fidonet mail to Botswana, and
are busy getting a newly registered .NA on the air. Negotiations
have been going on a long time in an effort to link to the
University in Harare (Zimbabwe). 

We are willing and keen to link to any other site in Africa. We have
some experience with low-tech problems, and in dealing with places
for which 1200 bd is a moderate speed.
 
Mike
--
Mike Lawrie
Director Computing Services, Rhodes University, South Africa
.....................<ccml@hippo.ru.ac.za>..........................
Rhodes University condemns racism and racial segregation 

In <1991May24.142757.7892@cbfsb.att.com> Dan_Jacobson@ATT.COM writes:

>There also is a regular poster from Namibia, who's name escapes me.

Must be Eberhard Lisse, who picks up email at <spel@hippo.ru.ac.za>
amongst other places.

Mike
--
Mike Lawrie
Director Computing Services, Rhodes University, South Africa
.....................<ccml@hippo.ru.ac.za>..........................
Rhodes University condemns racism and racial segregation 

In article <1991May23.150108.27255@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> dparedes@s.psych.uiuc.edu (David Paredes) writes:
>birchall@pilot.njin.net (Official Random) writes:
>> 
>> Where the net goes.... a few of the more recent additions to the sundry nets
>>include China (mainland, I believe, not Taiwan), South Africa, and Poland.
>
>Does anyone have more information regarding the network in China?  I would
>very much like to be able to send some files to someone at Beijing Normal
>University.  Any information would be appreciated.
I am also interested int eh bejing connection since I know an american phd
there I would like to contact. IF anyone has an address it would be
appreciated.
Gowj
gowj@novavax.nova.edu
linc
james

Not too special myself, but while I was teaching
in Seoul, South Korea, I could regularly correspond
on the nets with people back in the US.  The un-
fortunate thing was the turnaround time--it takes
two or three days, if things work right, but 
mail seems to get lost in the ozone pretty easily.
I have several friends there I would love to hear
from, but even with email, we haven't been able to
keep up correspondance.

taimi ames
ames@reed.edu