Geek post
For some reason. I'm incredibly tired after commuting all the way home, but this was a good day.
Still slow on the office-revamp progress, so I had to leave that hanging by lunch. Lunch was good at Banana Leaf greenbelt, some things are a bit clearer in my head, somewhat, at least I don't feel so lost anymore.
Attended the AIM globalization lecture this afternoon with Ramon Magsaysay Awardees Mahabir Pun (Nepal) and Palagummi Sainath (India), who talked about connectivity and rural villages. Sounded like a "..." session at first, but after attending it, left me feeling quite...well, it was a good session.
Mr. Pun gave a run-down of his entire project in Nepal of bringing the internet to rural villages, and with it, internet-based education. You're talking bringing wi-fi to remote villages sandwiched by 20-40km high mountains or somesuch, who until now have had no access to decent electricity. If that doesn't sound impossible enough, throw in problems with licensing, exorbitant internet-provider-license fees ($25,000 to bring the internet to rural areas?!!!!), illegality of VoiP service in Nepal, and troubles with lugging hardware to remote villages. Very few people, if any, knew anything about the inner workings of wi-fi technology, and also, they had to resort to smuggling used computers to get them to their destinations. Ayayay. THEN comes this dude from the Philippine Department of Education who starts shooting off an overly-long propaganda-slash-advertisement-session of the DepEd's CyberEd project, which mind you, is up to now, still not realized, and not to mention has been getting rather negative press as of late, the latest one being the President being quoted as declaring the project too costly and that she would rather the uneducated just be given jobs such as cleaning the streets.
Up to now, I still wish somebody grilled him on the spot regarding that, it was rather irritating given that he was supposed to be a reactor to Mr. Pun's presentation. Apparently, his idea of a reaction was to randomly add, "Just like the program in Nepal." ...I will stop griping now.
Sainath was a way better presentor, hands down. Very sharp, very quick on his feet, knew how to deliver statistics, mostly of extremes. India, he declared, ranks 4th in the world as having the most number of billionaires, next to the United States, Germany, and Russia. He adds that the billionaires in India, while fewer, are richer than those in Germany and Russia, as well as other European states, second only to the United States. On the other end of the spectrum, more than 200 million of the Indian population live on roughly 20 rupiah a day, which is around... $0.50. Or was it a month? Inequality has grown over the years despite markers of "growing GDP", however, do these figures actually mean something for majority of the population? Talking about connectivity in this sense, he said, these numbers are completely disconnected from most of the population, however, people are still wired to be connected in other ways tehy don't want to be, such as being connected to world market prices for agricultural goods when they'd rather not be; crop prices have fallen dramatically, values of their livelihoods have dropped worldwide because they are affected by the European Union's and the United States' large agricultural subsidies, making them unable to compete. Now THOSE figures, they are quite connected to, because that means less income for daily sustenance.
Wow, that was incredibly geeky of me. ;P
Anyway, I bumped into Chris who I met from the PCID staff during last month's Mindanao Islam/Democracy Media Forum by surprise. So meron nako kahiritan. Naiinis na yata yung Indian guy na nakaupo sa harap ko. Heh heh heh.
Oh and I bought design books. :D :D
I also like this song.
Still slow on the office-revamp progress, so I had to leave that hanging by lunch. Lunch was good at Banana Leaf greenbelt, some things are a bit clearer in my head, somewhat, at least I don't feel so lost anymore.
Attended the AIM globalization lecture this afternoon with Ramon Magsaysay Awardees Mahabir Pun (Nepal) and Palagummi Sainath (India), who talked about connectivity and rural villages. Sounded like a "..." session at first, but after attending it, left me feeling quite...well, it was a good session.
Mr. Pun gave a run-down of his entire project in Nepal of bringing the internet to rural villages, and with it, internet-based education. You're talking bringing wi-fi to remote villages sandwiched by 20-40km high mountains or somesuch, who until now have had no access to decent electricity. If that doesn't sound impossible enough, throw in problems with licensing, exorbitant internet-provider-license fees ($25,000 to bring the internet to rural areas?!!!!), illegality of VoiP service in Nepal, and troubles with lugging hardware to remote villages. Very few people, if any, knew anything about the inner workings of wi-fi technology, and also, they had to resort to smuggling used computers to get them to their destinations. Ayayay. THEN comes this dude from the Philippine Department of Education who starts shooting off an overly-long propaganda-slash-advertisement-session of the DepEd's CyberEd project, which mind you, is up to now, still not realized, and not to mention has been getting rather negative press as of late, the latest one being the President being quoted as declaring the project too costly and that she would rather the uneducated just be given jobs such as cleaning the streets.
Up to now, I still wish somebody grilled him on the spot regarding that, it was rather irritating given that he was supposed to be a reactor to Mr. Pun's presentation. Apparently, his idea of a reaction was to randomly add, "Just like the program in Nepal." ...I will stop griping now.
Sainath was a way better presentor, hands down. Very sharp, very quick on his feet, knew how to deliver statistics, mostly of extremes. India, he declared, ranks 4th in the world as having the most number of billionaires, next to the United States, Germany, and Russia. He adds that the billionaires in India, while fewer, are richer than those in Germany and Russia, as well as other European states, second only to the United States. On the other end of the spectrum, more than 200 million of the Indian population live on roughly 20 rupiah a day, which is around... $0.50. Or was it a month? Inequality has grown over the years despite markers of "growing GDP", however, do these figures actually mean something for majority of the population? Talking about connectivity in this sense, he said, these numbers are completely disconnected from most of the population, however, people are still wired to be connected in other ways tehy don't want to be, such as being connected to world market prices for agricultural goods when they'd rather not be; crop prices have fallen dramatically, values of their livelihoods have dropped worldwide because they are affected by the European Union's and the United States' large agricultural subsidies, making them unable to compete. Now THOSE figures, they are quite connected to, because that means less income for daily sustenance.
Wow, that was incredibly geeky of me. ;P
Anyway, I bumped into Chris who I met from the PCID staff during last month's Mindanao Islam/Democracy Media Forum by surprise. So meron nako kahiritan. Naiinis na yata yung Indian guy na nakaupo sa harap ko. Heh heh heh.
Oh and I bought design books. :D :D
I also like this song.