<geek>

An ActiveRecord haiku on relationships:

I belongs_to you

But you has_many others

N-fidelity

</geek>

The NY Times has a photo op called "A Global Graveyard for Dead Computers in Ghana" that shows how Ghana is dealing with its ever-increasing number of dated computer equipment. The computers, which come mainly from the U.S. and Europe, are sent as charitable donations with the hope that they will reduce the digital divide. But as the pictures show, the recipients find more value obtaining the precious metals inside the computers, than using the computers themselves.

Due to the toxicity of those metals as well as the unorthodox methods of extracting them from computers, our donations are actually polluting Ghana. Greenpeace sampled the soil there and found high levels of lead and cadmium, among other not-so-friendly elements and compounds.

It's quite a dilemma. On one hand, it feels great to give to the less fortunate but on the other hand, our charitable gifts sometimes have adverse effects. Unfortunately, it's not always obvious (or documented) how things will turn out.

The last slide sums up the dilemma very well:

"The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, agreed to in 1989 and now adopted by a majority of notions, was meant to stop the dumping of toxic waste in poor countries. But rules get complicated when waste arrives as a gift." 

A lot happened on the internet in 2009:

• 90 trillion emails were sent
• 47 million new websites were added
• 1.73 billion people--a little over 1/4 of the world's population--were on the web.

The internet truly is a force to be reckoned with. But at only a quarter of world using it, we still have a ways to go. And in my opinion, that's especially true for Africa. Africa has ~1 billion people but of them, only 6.7% have access to the internet. That's crazy! Despite being the second most-populous continent, only 4 out of every 100 internet users lay their head there.

The continent has been plagued with senseless wars, underdeveloped infrastructure, and unimaginable corruption leaving the people unempowered.  But the internet can change that. It provides access to both the world and a world of information. It breaks down barriers and creates new opportunities.  Many people await change from the outside;  with the web, change can come from within. Given the right tools, Africans will take matters into their own hands.

Take William Kamkwamba for example. With some pictures and old schematics, he managed to build a windmill from spare parts and provide electricity to his family. His government was lacking so he made something happen. And this isn't an isolated case. There are plenty of other examples of African ingenuity.

Imagine how much more progress the people of Africa might independently make if they had access to the web. Africa needs the Internet. It's already transformed every other continent (except for maybe Antarctica). Once given access, people have been known to educate themselves, build businesses and use their own ability to prosper. If given the chance, Africans will too.

One of the things I loved to do in high school was look at my friend's media collections. No matter how much we had in common, their music, movies, books and video games always reminded me of our differences(in a good way). But it wasn't so much what they had, as much as it was how it all looked together.

Did they have have bookshelves, boxes or stands? Vinyl, Cassettes or CDs? Video Tapes or DVDs? And most fascinating of all was the arrangement. A collection might be sorted alphabetically, by genre, or by content. Or maybe by some arbitrary system that only made sense to them. Regardless, it was always interesting. People's collections and arrangements created a distinct signature as unique as their own fingerprints.

But the times are a-changin'. Everything has gone digital. Now we use e-readers, MP3 players and hard-drives. There's no need to wonder about bookshelves, vinyl or video tapes anymore because everyone is using bytes. And how we arrange it all is limited to our software's sort options.

We're in an awesome new era and technology has paved the way. I can put a thousand songs in my pocket and an entire library in my bag. It's convenient, transportable and I love it (it would've been a pain bringing all my CDs, DVDs, tapes and books with me overseas!). But compared to their pre-bit predecessors, these new digital media fingerprints have less personality. And that's something technology can't replicate.

Facebook. Myspace. Twitter. The list goes on...

It's funny how times change. Just a few years ago, we were afraid to put our personal information online. We were warned against having our last names on the internets. That our lives would be infiltrated at the drop of any personal data. We feared the strangers on the other end of modems.

But now we volunteer it. As we should. There's no stopping information; it'll come out sooner or later. And by trying to remain private, we relinquish control of our internet identities to whatever search engines index. But by accepting the web's new world order, we take the first step towards defining them.

We should make sure that if people search for us, they find what we want them to see.