IP: Technology has potential to spread freedom in Africa

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Technology has potential to spread freedom in Africa

BY DAN GILLMOR

Mercury News Technology Columnist

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- I was in a van, riding with five other people 
toward an airport on the east coast of South Africa, when a mobile phone rang.
One of our party got the news from his wife, who was in Johannesburg 
watching CNN via satellite, that a plane had hit one of the World Trade 
Center towers in New York.

We'd been in Grahamstown, home of Rhodes University. There, several of us 
had spoken at Highway Africa, an annual conference where people from all 
over the continent ponder the social, political and economic implications 
of the Internet. I'd talked with great fervor about the collaborative 
nature of the Net, and its promise for improving lives if we used it the 
right way.
Just before we left Grahamstown, a local man had taken us to the site of a 
grim battle. On April 21, 1819, British soldiers, armed with the best 
technology of the time, slaughtered the natives who'd attacked in an effort 
to reclaim their land.

The late-winter breeze was chilly as we stood on ground -- now a rugby 
field -- where blood had turned the soil red those many years earlier. Our 
guide, whose ancestors had lived in the immediate vicinity long before 
white men arrived and subjugated the native peoples, told us what prior 
generations had told their children. He reminded us of humanity's constant 
quest for human dignity and self-determination.

<snip>

http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/opinion/dgillmor/dg091601.htm



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