Geodog

A night at the Oh-So Berkeley CyberSalon

As long time readers know, I love the People's Republic of Berkeley, foibles and all, and have celebrated its wonderful quirks in my writing and photography for the last 3 years, and even been banned from Adsense for having done so. But sometimes the Berkeley scene and its inhabitants much-lampooned well-meaning but sometimes unthinking do-gooding missionary zeal and neo-puritanism is too much, even for me, and tonight's evening at the Berkeley CyberSalon was an example of such.

I recently read about the Berkeley CyberSalon on Scott Rosenberg's blog, and joined the mailing list based on his recommendation. It seemed like a good opportunity to hear about new ideas in technology as well as a good way to meet other people in Berkeley interested in socio-political issues around technology. I also thought it was a brilliant idea for a publicist to host a salon, and it substantially increased my respect for Sylvia Paull, who had I last seen earlier this week at Kevin Werbach's Pre-Pre SuperNova party standing on a table frantically banging together two wine glasses in an effort to encourage people to sit down. When I got the email about tonight's panel discussion, it sounded quite interesting:

While technology can level the playing field for developing countries, it often supplants and destroys the very cultures these societies have taken centuries, if not millennia, to develop. How should we introduce new technologies to developing countries so that we can keep the best of both worlds? ... Invited panelists include: Lee Felsenstein, who built the first portable computer, the Osborne, and has tried to port the Internet to the jungles of Laos using the pedal power of the bicycle. Eric Brewer, cofounder of spider search engine Inktomi and computer science professor at UC Berkeley, who just led a delegation of open source computing advocates to India. Richard Komans, who set up an Internet Bookmobile Project in Uganda to download and publish books on the spot, and Jessica Mitchell, a Geekcorps technology volunteer who is working with Ghana’s ISPs. And invited to join the discussion on the other side of the debate: Claudia Carr, UCB associate professor in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, who has firsthand experience of the way modern technology destroys ancient cultures. Iain Boal, social historian of science and technics at UCBs Institute of International Studies, edited a book called "Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information," which sheds some insights on the damage caused by high-tech, for export or not.

so I decided to check it out.

Unfortunately only half of the panel invitees showed up, and both of the two who were more pessimistic about the benefits of technology were no-shows, but in spite of that the panel discussion got off to a good start. Lee Felsenstein led off by presenting the project he worked on to create rugged Linux Internet computers that would survive heat and would allow people in remote corners of Laos break the monopoly on market and price information that currently exists because of their lack of communication with the world outside their village. As soon as he mentioned that the computers would be powered with by human (kid) pedaled bicycle generators, the co-host and moderator, Sylvia Paull, interrupted in full Jerry Springer fashion with a bunch of inane questions about abusing children, and called on several young people in the audiences to answer whether they would be willing to pedal a bike to be able to use the Internet. Lee tried to get started again talking about his project, but was interrupted again by more suggestions from the moderator that he was in some way abusing the Laotians by trying to provide them with the access to the outside world that they had asked for, following which he essentially gave up trying to talk. One thing that I did get out of Lee's talk was that the system he built was never deployed in Laos, for reasons that he wasn't give the opportunity to explain, but will be deployed soon on a Native American reservation that he asked us not to mention yet. Following Lee another speaker, whose name I didn't catch, but who was subbing in for Eric Brewer, stood up and spoke for just a few minutes about creating WIFI based WANS in Asia, and didn't get much of a reaction either way.

Next up was Greg Brown, an extremely personable entrepreneur who was involved in bringing satellite TV to Africa. Once again, he got part-way through his talk when Sylvia started berating him, this time about bringing MTV to the developing countries, and what a terrible thing it was. Greg seemed more comfortable challenging Sylvia than Lee was, and he pointed out that while cultures can lose local identity when you bring technology in, they also need the ability to voice their own concerns to the wider world, which broadcast gives. Unfortunately, no one wanted to discuss the empowering part of offering choice and the possibility of talking back to the Western World using the West's own technology, the moderator and the audience just wanted to blame Greg for importing the wasteland of current American popular culture to the developing world.

Last up was Richard Koman, who had been part of the Internet Archive's Bookmobile in Uganda project, and who talked about the reception the bookmobile got in Uganda (and painted a far less encouraging picture than Brewster Kahle has when I have heard him describe it). Richard got interrupted as well, in his case by questions from the audience like "Why didn't you use African books?" (they did have a few primers written in African languages, but Ugandan's wanted English books, and African books published in English are generally copyrighted) and "Why didn't you go to Oakland" (the need is much greater in Uganda).

Many of the questions and challenges had an incredibly patronizing undertone of the wealthy (white) do-gooders trying to protect the poor (colored) noble savages from the ravages of western technology, following which the do-gooders would get into their Volvos and drive back to their homes in Berkeley with electricity, clean running water, telephones, and fast Internet connections and write in their blogs on their i-Macs about the horrors of technology for the third world. Both people of color in the room picked up on the tone and commented on it, but nobody responded directly to their comments. It was Berkeley at its most superficial and most stereotypical. Along with the bizarre in-your-face with sophomoric challenge moderating style, it also seemed like such an unproductive dichotomy to draw, like a bourgeois church club in 1820's Manchester England resolving that England should spare India the pollution and working conditions (and power) of the satanic mills of the industrial revolutions. It was disappointing that the discussion was so unproductive and superficial, because there are serious issues worth working on nearby. Technology and western culture are coming to the developing world, and anyone who has lived or traveled extensively in the developing world is aware of the deep hunger for both. The more interesting and actionable question is how can we empower people in the developing world to be producers of culture, and users of technology for their own benefit, as opposed to being just consumers of monopoly culture, and objects of technology. That's a discussion that I'd like to engage in with some of Berkeley's many technologically literate and socially conscious residents, but it wasn't to be had during tonight's the Berkeley CyberSalon, which is too bad.

The evening wasn't a total bust, as I had the opportunity after the event was over to chat with several of the panelists, who were quite interesting, and I ran into some old acquaintances from Berkeley techno-politics. Plus my hopes were raised when several people told me that tonight's moderating style was an aberration, not the way Sylvia usually runs things. Next month the CyberSalon is featuring one of my local heros, Becky O' Malley, editor of my beloved the Berkeley Daily Planet, as well as Craig Newmark, who is always interesting. And I still haven't met Jeff Ubois, my co-author on the Beast Blog. So maybe I will give it a second try.

Cross-Posted at The Berkeley Blog