issues

so there's all these people here in cambridge interested in ICT's for development. and each has his/her own perspective. it's not so much that they disagree, but more that they seem to focus on different areas of the problem. Geoffrey is very much into policy and putting the pressure on from above. Mike Best and the folks at the Media Lab are very much into the technology. how to create technology that is so cheap there is no longer an issue whether they should have it or not. others again are focusing on the need for technical (and other) education and vocational training. then there's the lawyers discussing the trade treaties, intellectual property problems and theikr effect on the situation.
and of course there's ethan and the guys at geekcorps. focusing on how best to put to use the availability of highly skilled volunteers, how to scale what is in effect a fairly expensive way of training people on the ground, and how to identify those problems and their it solutions that are worth most in the long term.
Oh, and of course there's leo hsu, and anthropologist working on understanding the inner functionings of geek-based .,orgs like geekcorps, and joost bonsen, a business school guy, working with entrepreneurship contests, and getting people to come up with great business ideas focused at the developing world. and jim moore, another berkman fellow also working with entrepreneurship issues, and andrew mcLaughlin working on inneficiencies in telecom monopolies when subjected to the internet economy, and, and, and, and.....

and the crazy thing is that all of these issues interest me. god knows i don't have the patience for the long, slow grind of policy in the face of ignorance and corruption, but i still want to know as much as possible about those issues. and being an Open Source fan the trade pæoliciy and intellectual property issues are interesting to me as well. and of course being a geek and tinkerer i can't heklp but find the Media Lab stuff fascinating.

all in all i want to be the generalist that i see myself as. i want to have a holistic approach, be a communicator, someone who sees and understands all the different issues (or at least one more issue than most other people), someone who gets the right people together. but wow. after just one week here in cambridge, after the relative starvation of interest that's the status quo in denmark, i'm stunned. so many people, so many valid points, and so little real knowledge about how to make the changes. that's a research challenge if i've ever seen one!