Society and Information Technology in Second Life

Wednesdays, January 9 - July 30, 2008, 4-6, SLT/PT, 7-9 pm ET

on Berkman island in Second Life - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Berkman/114/70/25

 Course homepage - http://socinfotech.pbwiki.com

 

 

Instructor: Scott MacLeod (not on Harvard's faculty) = Aphilo Aarde (in Second Life)

http://scottmacleod.com/papers.htm

 

 May 7 2008 Soc and Info Tech class transcript

 

 

[16:00]  You: Hi

[16:00]  Boston Hutchinson is Online

[16:00]  Claryssa Schmidt: hi

[16:00]  Sonja Strom is Online

[16:00]  You: Hi Sara

[16:00]  01 Hifeng: hwllo

[16:00]  01 Hifeng: *hello

[16:01]  sara Gartenberg: hello

[16:01]  You: Zage, Claryssa HiFeng, Lychu

[16:01]  You: Welcome to "Society and Information Technology"

[16:01]  You: http://socinfotech.pbwiki.com - is the wiki for this course

[16:01]  In Kenzo is Offline

[16:02]  You: Hi Boston, Judith

[16:02]  Judith Underwood: hello

[16:02]  Boston Hutchinson: Hello everybody!

[16:02]  You: We'll continue to examine the digital divide this evening, to start.

[16:03]  You: We've been looking at it for the previous two classes, as well, starting with the assumption that the digital divide

[16:03]  You: is best understood in the context of global inequality.

[16:03]  Gareth Otsuka is Offline

[16:03]  You: I think that each of you may have some specialized knowlegde

[16:04]  You: One interesting aspect of group chat in SL

[16:04]  You: is the possiblity to contirbute to this unfolding conversation.

[16:04]  You: about the IT revolution.

[16:05]  You: I'm experiencing some lag here.

[16:05]  You: Of course, asking questions and contributing is anonymous, and

[16:05]  You: I also post these transcripts to the wiki

[16:05]  You: does extend the conversation in multiply ways.

[16:05]  You: http://socinfotech.pbwiki.com - is the wiki for this course

[16:05]  Juria Yoshikawa is Online

[16:05]  You: And group chat allows for multiple lines of reasoning that we can also refere back to

[16:06]  You: So please feel free to ask questions and make observations to complement the analyses I'll present.

[16:06]  You: I'd like to begin tonight by looking at some statistics

[16:07]  You: concerning Internet usage

[16:07]  You: comparing latest data with what users were doing around 2000

[16:07]  You: to begin to quantify some aspects of the digital divide

[16:08]  You: At present, there are about 1,355,110,631 Internet users world wide

[16:08]  Claryssa Schmidt: hi Rain

[16:08]  Rain Ninetails: hi!

[16:08]  You: Hi Rain

[16:08]  Rain Ninetails: :)

[16:08]  You: Since 2000 Africa has experienced the greatest growth

[16:08]  Boston Hutchinson: Hi Rain

[16:09]  You: Today there are 45,321,040 users in Africa out of an estimated population of 955,206,348

[16:10]  You: And since 2000, Internet usage has increased 903%

[16:10]  You: a huge increase that rewrites aspects of the digital divide

[16:10]  You: IN Asia there are 512,251,104

[16:11]  You: out of 3,776,181,949 population and this represents an increase of

[16:11]  You: 348 %

[16:11]  You: since 2000

[16:12]  You: Europe has 374,244,342 users out of 800,401,065 representing 256.1 % increase since 2000

[16:12]  Jayne Urqhart is Offline

[16:12]  You: The Middle East 33,625,200 out of 197,090,443 representing a 923.7 % increase

[16:13]  You: North America has 243,399,574 users out of 337,167,248 5.1 % representing a 125.2 % increase

[16:13]  You: Latin America/Caribbean has 127,093,209 out of 576,091,673 8.6 % representing 603.4 % increase

[16:14]  You: And Oceania / Australia 19,176,162 out of 33,981,562 representing 151.6 %

[16:14]  You: And the WORLD TOTAL 1,355,110,631 out of 6,676,120,288 rerpesenting a 275.4 % increase (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm)

[16:15]  Cookie Kappler is Online

[16:15]  You: So the Internet continues to grow dramatically, even after the incredible growth of the late 90s due significantly to browsers and the graphical user interface

[16:16]  You: And internet growth in developing areas of the world is growing remarkably as well

[16:17]  You: But about 1/5 of the world's population still do not have access to the Internet still.

[16:17]  You decline ::CONTACT:: 3.1  on ::SATURN:: from A group member named Sonja Strom.

[16:17]  You: And its growth is by no means assured.

[16:17]  You: This video of the Internet Society of NY on "The Future of the Internet"

[16:18]  You: http://www.isoc-ny.org/?p=214

[16:19]  You: featuring Jimbo Wales, who started wikipedia, Jonathan Zittrain of the Berkman Ceinter and Oxford Internet Institute, Clay Shirky, Tim Wu

[16:19]  You: suggests that computers like MIT's One Laptop per Child designed to address the digital divide, in part, may be the most

[16:20]  Andromeda Mesmer is Offline

[16:20]  You: the most spectacular failure of recent time, comparable to Xerox Parc's failures

[16:20]  You: It made too many changes in its remarkable design.

[16:21]  You: ... and very visionary project

[16:21]  You: This may well not be the case, too - Negroponte is not fundamentally opposed to running Windows on it

[16:21]  Tori Annenberg is Online

[16:21]  You: but governments, which are prospective buyers of the OLPC are also not buying it dramatically.

[16:22]  Andromeda Mesmer is Online

[16:22]  You: Hans Rosling,

[16:22]  You: talk, on Debunking Third World Myths

[16:22]  You: in his TED

[16:23]  You: shows a correlation between adopting the Internet

[16:23]  You: and incrased standard of living

[16:23]  Joseph Tisch is Offline

[16:23]  You: and thus changing the dynamic of the digital divide

[16:24]  You: This fascinating video

[16:24]  You: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92

[16:25]  You: also suggests that global inequality since 1960 has become less polarized

[16:25]  You: But how the digital divide develops ahead even as internet usage changes dramatically is difficult to predict

[16:26]  You: So there are huge differences throughout the world

[16:26]  You: And both Africa and the Middle East have almost multiplied by 10 their internet usage since 2000

[16:26]  You: China is the largest user of the Internet today.

[16:27]  You: And while this real time world wide communication network! is growing

[16:27]  You: some forecasters, like Tim Wu at Columbia, suggests that we may see increased regional differentiation in the 2 decades

[16:28]  You: adding to the challenges of examining the digital divide

[16:28]  You: And within countries, and regions, the Internet is concentrated in certain cities and among upper income groups.

[16:29]  Juria Yoshikawa is Offline

[16:29]  You: So there is extreme uneveneness aroudn the world

[16:29]  You: and within countries in terms of internet usage and also the digital divide

[16:29]  Gwyneth Llewelyn is Offline

[16:29]  You: And part of this is due to access to Internet Service Providers

[16:30]  You: In most countries, key institutions signficantly influence Internet access

[16:31]  You: and governemnts and banking have soemtimes

[16:31]  Veeyawn Spoonhammer is Online

[16:31]  You: bypassed telecommunication providers by using staellite

[16:32]  You: Are there questions or observations thus far?

[16:32]  Veeyawn Spoonhammer is Offline

[16:32]  You: Do any of you have specialized knowledges about the digital divide?

[16:33]  You: So, the digital divide is also affected

[16:33]  You: by key business service cities

[16:33]  You: where you have good access, often private, licensed by the government

[16:34]  Widget Whiteberry is Online

[16:34]  You: And ISPs are of very differnet quality and price

[16:34]  Arrehn Oberlander: One question perhaps: of the 1/5th who do not have internet access.. Do we know how much of this population is "internet ready", that is possessing prerequistes of stable electricity, and a certain freedom of expression?

[16:34]  You: But this is also changing quickly due to increased bandwidgth

[16:34]  You: Yes Arrehn

[16:35]  You: 4/5ths of the world population do not have internet access, ( if I mistyped)

[16:35]  You: While infrastructure, like electricity, is key for adoption

[16:35]  Arrehn Oberlander: Ah, my misread.

[16:36]  You: there are many other mitigating factors, such as literacy, and agrarian lifestyle, and cost of computers that limit adoption

[16:36]  Arrehn Oberlander: the OLPC program was interesting, in that it did not require internet infrastructure or stable electricity to be immediately useful.

[16:36]  You: A $100 laptop is a huge cost in India, where perhaps 70%of the population still lives on the land

[16:37]  You: And the OLPC may still prove successful, due to its very careful and thoughtful design

[16:38]  Veeyawn Spoonhammer is Online

[16:38]  You: Clay Shirky, in the above "Future of the Internet" at the Internet Soicety of NY's talk

[16:38]  You: wonders whether the OLPC may get picked apart for all its remarkable designs

[16:39]  You: And many in Africa are readily choosing cell phones, over devices like laptops

[16:39]  You: And, cell phone devices such as the Treo with the Palm OS are already small computers

[16:39]  Boston Hutchinson: Maybe the OLPC could be turned into a free cellphone (no service provider required)

[16:40]  You: That's a very interesting idea

[16:40]  You: Can anyone here provide more inforamtion about the OLPC vision and strategy and planning from now forward.

[16:41]  You: Turning it into a cel phone would be a kind of picking apart as well, and there may already exist workable cell phone devices, although the mesh networking technology offers advantages

[16:42]  You: In terms of Internet Content Provision

[16:42]  You: they tend to be overwhelmingly concentrated in US, Europe

[16:43]  You: although regional differences are emerging

[16:43]  You: This is changing because of the distributed set of nodes of the Internet, which is

[16:43]  You: has very low barriers to access

[16:43]  You: If we introduce the concept that Internet

[16:44]  You: computing is critical for life

[16:44]  You: it isn't the fault of the Interent - which is an incredibly powerful technology - that it amplifies inequality

[16:45]  You: (although Rosling offers a different interpretation of world wide trends)

[16:45]  You: And as I mentioned earlier

[16:45]  You: the uneven distribution of educaiton and technological literacy signficantly shapes the digital dividee

[16:46]  You: influencing the quality of labor and the ability to access information

[16:46]  You: Also, the capacity to access inforamtion technology

[16:46]  You: and transform the quality of education

[16:47]  You: is signficantly shaped by the digital divide

[16:47]  You: If everyone had the ability to be Berkman Island students,

[16:48]  You: or Harvard or Berkelely students

[16:48]  Andromeda Mesmer: or MIT

[16:48]  You: this is parlty due to access to information technology

[16:48]  You: But the world isn't like this

[16:48]  You: :)

[16:48]  Juria Yoshikawa is Online

[16:49]  You: A few 100,000s of students have access to great information technology. There continues to be a huge gap relative to the 6.6 billion

[16:49]  You: world inhabitants

[16:49]  You: So education becomes a key gap and obstacle

[16:50]  You: And with the IT revolution

[16:50]  You: and the digital divide

[16:51]  You: you cannot escape the global network

[16:51]  You: The greatest

[16:51]  You: for example

[16:51]  You: poverty documented is in the Pacific Islands

[16:52]  You: Internet connections are there, but education isn't

[16:52]  You: If a place connects to the Intenret,

[16:52]  You: people don't often know what to do with it.

[16:52]  You: And educational opportunity is poorly distributed

[16:53]  You: so the digital divide persists in relation to global inequality

[16:53]  Juria Yoshikawa is Offline

[16:53]  You: 80% of childrens' population

[16:53]  You: is in school.... so what's the problem?

[16:54]  You: 1/3 or teachers haven't finished their education

[16:54]  You: So teachers are often the bottleneck in much of the developing world

[16:54]  You: And I wonder whether education becomes warehousing, instead of education

[16:54]  You: Are there questions thus far?

[16:55]  You: Observations?

[16:55]  You: I'll post this transcript to the wiki

[16:55]  You: http://socinfotech.pbwiki.com

[16:55]  You: Thoughts?

[16:56]  You: Data or interpretations of the digital divide ahead that you've found?

[16:56]  You: Let's take a 10 minute break and return at 7 minutes past the hour

[16:56]  Michele Mrigesh is Offline

[16:57]  You: Please don't hesitate to type in thoughts or questions during the break.

[16:57]  Andromeda Mesmer: OK

[16:57]  You: See you soon?

[16:57]  You: Also, who here can't hear voice in SL?

[16:57]  You: brb

[16:57]  01 Hifeng: me

[16:57]  You: ok, I also can't speak out loud where I am?

[16:57]  Andromeda Mesmer: I'm not set up to hear it well.

[16:58]  You: Thnx . . .

[16:58]  You: Who else can't hear voice?

[16:58]  You: And who can not receive video streaming say on the screen behind me in SL?

[16:59]  Arrehn Oberlander: ( I do not have voice, and my quicktime initializes but does not play except for a "Q", but your typing is great )

[16:59]  Alexicon Kurka is Offline

[17:00]  Boston Hutchinson: I get the Q also. I presume there isn't a video avaiable currently?

[17:00]  Andromeda Mesmer is Offline

[17:03]  Boston Hutchinson: I'm wondering what will fix the digital divide: OLPC seems like an enabling technology, but what will happen to the kids who use it? Will they enter a new on-line labor market?

[17:03]  Andromeda Mesmer is Online

[17:04]  Arrehn Oberlander: We've seen an unskilled version of that, with MMORG goldfrarming.

[17:04]  Boston Hutchinson: The world is changing faster than any of the plans (like OLPC) to act upon it, so the result of any action is very hard to anticipate

[17:04]  Daisyblue Hefferman is Offline

[17:05]  Tori Annenberg is Offline

[17:05]  Andromeda Mesmer: i also recall reading somewhere that people in 3rd World countries did not want cheap computers, and that like everybody else, they wanted the latest and the best.

[17:06]  Boston Hutchinson: Yes, gold farming. I understand it's not a very good job. Are we all going to end up with dead-end on-line jobs, or is there a real opportunity here?

[17:06]  Andromeda Mesmer: I'm not sure how true that is. But it sound like human psychology operating.

[17:06]  Arrehn Oberlander: SL itself represents a decent opportunity. ALmost all of it is build on open technologies. There's very low barriers to entry.

[17:06]  Arrehn Oberlander: build = built

[17:06]  Boston Hutchinson: They seem to want Windows, just when the west is trying to escape to OS X and Linux!

[17:07]  You: Hi

[17:07]  Andromeda Mesmer: For anybody interested -- Sun Microsystems has a big display -- may have bought an island snd that is the official opening.

[17:07]  You: Great

[17:07]  You: Welcome back

[17:08]  Boston Hutchinson: I doubt that SL will run on OLPC, but in a few years maybe...

[17:08]  You: (I'm just inquiring about video streaming - I'm not streaming at present)

[17:09]  Arrehn Oberlander: Yes, true. THere are other cross-over opportunities available. SL is purely online, but there's a lot more opportunity it bridging online resources to physical ones.

[17:09]  Boston Hutchinson: Where's the Sun island, Andromeda? It should be interesting. THey do a lot of great research.

[17:09]  Arrehn Oberlander: it = in

[17:09]  You: SL does seem to offer opportunities - but users are still limiting, averaging around 60,000 in world

[17:09]  Andromeda Mesmer: Let me see if I have an LM somewhere. I only learned about it beause they have free cars :)

[17:09]  You: and there is a linux version that would run on OLPC if it had a faster chip and video card, I think.

[17:09]  Gentle Heron is Offline

[17:09]  Andromeda Mesmer: SPECIAL free cars. :)

[17:10]  You: We've been looking at mechanisms that influence the digital divide so far

[17:11]  You: Another mechanism that continues to shape the digital divide

[17:11]  You: relates to the networking aspect of the Internet

[17:12]  You: for reasons which are not directly economic

[17:12]  You: Just as the connection of financial markets to the Internet creates continual volatility

[17:12]  You: If developing countries have their financial markets dependent on the global market

[17:13]  You: they too become more volatile and this doesn't create opportunities for

[17:13]  You: people without access to computing or the WWW

[17:13]  You: If you have huge amounts of money flowing in, and people's fingers on the trigger

[17:13]  You: the lower you are in terms of the food chain of the global system,

[17:14]  You: the more subject you are to the volatility and vagaries of financial flows

[17:14]  You: and this leaves groups that are in a weak position vis-a-vis access to IT in an ongoing weak position.

[17:14]  You: Another mechanism

[17:15]  You: Governments are a barrier to transforming the digital divide

[17:15]  You: because they relate to the financial markets

[17:15]  Alexicon Kurka is Online

[17:15]  You: Say we believe that governments are trying to do the best thing for their country

[17:16]  You: financially, and say they encourage foriegn direct investment

[17:16]  You: which depends on global patters, where international trade is the lifeline of countries

[17:16]  You: and production expands,

[17:16]  You: IN such an economy, when things accelerate

[17:17]  You: governments just go with the flow

[17:17]  Jon Seattle is Offline

[17:17]  You: So governments

[17:18]  You: have some limited influence on the global economy, but it's small

[17:18]  You: and decreasing in the global political economy

[17:18]  You: although some claim that governmetns support the global system

[17:19]  You: But I follow Professor Manuel Castells in taking the other argument

[17:19]  You: that even when governments try, they have little influence over the world markets

[17:19]  Michele Mrigesh is Online

[17:20]  You: And when governments are not, at the same time, useful in being protective of citizens,

[17:20]  You: you have a crisis of legitimacy.

[17:20]  You: Is this happening in the world?

[17:20]  You: So, another MECHANISM

[17:21]  You: As a result of widespread social exclusion

[17:21]  You: and poverty, people find jobs in alternative economies, - e.g. crime, illegal transportation

[17:21]  You: jobs which are on the margin of the economy

[17:22]  You: and this leads to the development of an URBAN, INFORMAL ECONOMY

[17:22]  Michele Mrigesh is Offline

[17:22]  You: on the margin of the economy

[17:22]  You: and in realtiy an informal labor force oscillates in a minimum of 1/3 - 2/3rds of countries

[17:23]  You: 1 low productivity

[17:23]  You: 2 a criminal economy

[17:23]  You: So an informal economy includes

[17:23]  You: And where you have low productivity, you have little capital

[17:24]  You: and what happens is, for example, in India, you might have people producing metal work for doors, and windows

[17:24]  You: in entirely informal ways,

[17:24]  You: along with street food cooking, and preparation

[17:24]  You: along with street food cooking, and preparation

[17:24]  Veeyawn Spoonhammer is Offline

[17:24]  You: as a growing part of the economy

[17:24]  You: eploying hundreds of thousands of people

[17:25]  You: Therefore, the urban informa economy emerges

[17:25]  You: which leads to survival

[17:25]  You: but locks a country in to low production

[17:25]  You: 2) Criminality is defined by societies

[17:26]  Perry Proudhon is Offline

[17:26]  You: as a part of the urban informal economy. Some illegal things ought to

[17:26]  You: be decriminalized

[17:26]  You: For example,

[17:27]  You: Marijuana in Amsterdam, Holland, and Humboldt County in Northern California

[17:27]  You: Criminality is as fundamental response to poor development in urban informal economies

[17:27]  Michele Mrigesh is Online

[17:27]  You: Some business groups who lure farmers to drow coca or opium or also

[17:28]  Boston Hutchinson: Apparently, they've just made it more illegal in the U.K.

[17:28]  Boston Hutchinson: (marijuana, that is.)

[17:28]  You: to hire people as killers, thiefs, or mass production of children as workers on the gloable market,

[17:28]  You: smuggling

[17:28]  You: and other kinds of traffic

[17:29]  You: (A sign of the times ?)

[17:29]  You: While all of the above sounds spectacular

[17:29]  You: daily life in most countries involves a criminal eocnomy and marks daily life

[17:29]  You: These are fundamental dimensions

[17:30]  You: and there's no trickle down

[17:30]  You: highly profitable activities in which profits get absorbed into the top of the system

[17:30]  You: To shield yourself, when you're at the top, you better have thugs to protect wealth

[17:30]  Boston Hutchinson: Is the gang economy of our time similar to the feudal economy of the middle ages?

[17:31]  You: And the transaction costs of being a criminal are very high.

[17:31]  You: Feudalism was quite focused regionally, and around a very different kind of info exchange

[17:32]  You: but there are similarities . . .

[17:32]  Boston Hutchinson: I wonder if there are similar solutions to the problems caused by both.

[17:32]  You: So you can have a high tech economy in a country, with very low tech urban informatl economy

[17:32]  You: For example, Boston?

[17:33]  You: In today's world, you may have a high tech world in terms of communication in a country

[17:33]  You: with a low tech, no-learning, high risk, and locked in populations.

[17:34]  Boston Hutchinson: We have the historical record for what solved the problems of people living under feudalism. Is there something in that to guide us in solving the problems of current criminal economies?

[17:34]  You: is income generating activity

[17:34]  You: The definition of informal labor

[17:34]  Michele Mrigesh is Offline

[17:34]  Boston Hutchinson: Sorry, I don't have a specific example...

[17:35]  You: that does not follow or respect regulation of this activity - a scavenger economy, of sorts

[17:35]  Arawn Spitteler is Online

[17:35]  Cookie Kappler is Offline

[17:35]  Michele Mrigesh is Online

[17:35]  You: That criminals can network in a real time world wide network, makes the solutions quite

[17:36]  Cookie Kappler is Online

[17:36]  You: like, other groups helped by high technology,make the solutions quite different.

[17:36]  You: How does generic labor differ?

[17:37]  You: Unemployment in the developing country is the only option -

[17:37]  You: Those supported as formally unemployed - a relative few - benefit from a kind of labor union aristocracy

[17:38]  You: How to examine this?

[17:38]  You: In this new world, either the working class works, or they are out.

[17:39]  You: In the macro picture, You look at money that was paid and what circulates, for differences . . .

[17:39]  Boston Hutchinson: Yes, but extending government regulation in the form of human rights into the network might be effective in the way that the gradual adoption of democracy and human rights helped solve the previous problems. Unregulated networks may be inherently criminal. A certain level of enforcement of the rights of users may be required.

[17:39]  You: (An interesting reference: "The Informal Economy" - Johns Hopkins Univer Press)

[17:40]  You: The urban, informal economy is immune from this, to some degree, Boston

[17:40]  Morrhys Graysmark is Online

[17:40]  You: in many countries

[17:40]  Sonja Strom is Offline

[17:40]  You: Another MECHANISM

[17:41]  You: Fortunately, this is not systematic in all societies, but in many

[17:41]  You: As millions are excluded, corruption permeats

[17:41]  You: and ethnic strife, banditism, and civil war starts

[17:42]  Boston Hutchinson: Yes, exacltly, corruption at the bottom comes from exclusion.

[17:42]  You: eg. in Colobmia, which is, nevertheless, quite advanced in some wyas.

[17:42]  You: eg. in Colobmia, which is, nevertheless, quite advanced in some wyas.

[17:42]  You: Yes, and the bottom don't have opportunities

[17:42]  Boston Hutchinson: Corruption at the top is more addressable by legal means, and I think it's the source of much of the exclusion of those at the bottom.

[17:42]  Boston Hutchinson: The mortgage crisis is an example.

[17:43]  You: Yes

[17:43]  Geo Meek is Online

[17:43]  You: When all exits are closed in a society, so that there are no optioins,

[17:43]  You: then all the options become the government

[17:43]  You: Government becoes the intermediary and is the connecting point

[17:44]  You: and takes most of the resources for itself

[17:44]  You: Mbutu, for example, took $10 million dollars from that poor country

[17:44]  You: People will support government

[17:45]  You: especially if you distribute to everybody with your ethnic connection

[17:45]  You: - you give to some, and not to others

[17:45]  You: So others from a different ethnic group are excluded

[17:45]  You: and it becomes easy to see who is in and who is out

[17:46]  You: Why is Africa ethnically divided?

[17:46]  You: Because of the Berlin treaty on Africa

[17:46]  You: Belgium and France divided African countries up

[17:47]  You: and made them into artificial conglomerates

[17:47]  You: > modenr nation states

[17:47]  You: so certain ethnicities come to support the state

[17:47]  You: Anyone wanting to access the resrouces of the state

[17:48]  You: and there's a mechanism for who can and who can't

[17:48]  You: leading to marginality, discarded parts of the population, and banditism

[17:48]  Daisyblue Hefferman is Online

[17:48]  You: It isn't a pretty picture.

[17:48]  You: So, another MECHANISM

[17:48]  You: Under such conditions, you can sometimes have a massive movement of populations

[17:49]  You: massive migration - and economic and geographical displacement

[17:49]  You: you also have fast urbanization

[17:49]  You: where rural situations becme unsafe

[17:50]  You: and people gravitate to the city, where they are visiable and therefore safe, tehy say.

[17:50]  You: where 1.5 million were displace

[17:50]  You: e.g. in Bogota, Colmbia

[17:50]  You: In Africa this is much worse

[17:51]  Hot Cup of Tea : Relax with a warming hot cup of tea, Arrehn Oberlander !

[17:51]  Hot Cup of Tea : Relax with a warming hot cup of tea, Arrehn Oberlander !

[17:51]  You: and this is singificantly caused internally in countries

[17:51]  You: where cities don't have economic capacity

[17:51]  You: A last MECHANISM, before we close

[17:52]  You: These conditions of mass dereliction perpetuate themselves by mass migration and degradation of life

[17:52]  You: mass prostitution

[17:52]  You: you might have 250 million workers in semi-slave conditions

[17:52]  Jayne Urqhart is Online

[17:53]  You: In Thailand, some estimate 7 million prostitutes

[17:53]  You: and sexual tourism on a global scale

[17:53]  You: which isn't clandestine

[17:53]  You: The U.S has made it a crime, and it's difficult to prove

[17:54]  You: You also have children sold for adoption

[17:54]  You: And adopted children in developing coutnries can be worth $25000 if they are legal

[17:54]  You: Illegal migration becomes a mass phenomenon

[17:55]  You: and the mass phonomenon which dislocates children -

[17:55]  You: children happen to be the future of society

[17:55]  You: prefabricte conditions of the future

[17:55]  You: under all conditions

[17:56]  You: thoughts, questions?

[17:56]  You: Observations?

[17:56]  You: So, in the last five minutes +

[17:56]  Gentle Heron is Online

[17:56]  Beyers Sellers is Online

[17:57]  You: We'll continue with the digital divide next Wednesday, here on Berkman Island

[17:57]  You: from 4-6 SLt

[17:57]  Aidan Aquacade is Offline

[17:57]  You: And I'll post this transcript here - http://socinfotech.pbiwki.com

[17:58]  Arrehn Oberlander: Thanks Aphilo.

[17:58]  You: Who here is not located in the US?

[17:58]  Evus Alter: tHANK YOU

[17:58]  Claryssa Schmidt: thanks Aphilo

[17:58]  Andromeda Mesmer: Thank you, Aphilo.

[17:58]  01 Hifeng: thanks

[17:58]  sara Gartenberg: that was interesting

[17:58]  You: You're welcome :)

[17:58]  Andromeda Mesmer: I am in Canada.

[17:58]  You: thanks

[17:58]  Boston Hutchinson: Thanks, Aphilo. Very interesting lecture.

[17:58]  You: Thanks for coming . . .

[17:58]  You: See you next week . . .

[17:58]  Aidan Aquacade is Online

[17:58]  You: based?

[17:58]  You: HiFeng - where are you?

[17:59]  01 Hifeng: um

[17:59]  You: (you don't have to answer)

[17:59]  01 Hifeng: i can im that o_O

[17:59]  You: Thank you all . . . and see you next week.