I enjoyed the visit to the center on 14th. This center can set a good example of how free ICT can open up several new options. Making such a center sustainable and soon replicate that in several other places in the country is our challenge.
one of the immediate things that can be done is to create an album of paintings and create a book at lulu.com and market it internationally. That may generate some revenue, which can be used in turn to create more such centers.
Do check if the center can become a digital wikibazaar/mart by providing some services to the neighborhood. Does having such centers in rural and sub-urban areas possible? Can we use this center as a breeding center for others? there are several such questions I have in my mind.
As long as we do this with 100% transparency, these centers can demonstrate to the rest of the world how to run a p2p trade with social development and involvement.
-- Nagarjuna G http://www.gnowledge.org
I enjoyed the visit to the center on 14th. This center can set a good example of how free ICT can open up several new options. Making such a center sustainable and soon replicate that in several other places in the country is our challenge.
one of the immediate things that can be done is to create an album of paintings and create a book at lulu.com and market it internationally. That may generate some revenue, which can be used in turn to create more such centers.
Do check if the center can become a digital wikibazaar/mart by providing some services to the neighborhood. Does having such centers in rural and sub-urban areas possible? Can we use this center as a breeding center for others? there are several such questions I have in my mind.
As long as we do this with 100% transparency, these centers can demonstrate to the rest of the world how to run a p2p trade with social development and involvement.
Dear dr nargarjun..thanks much for initating this dialougue. I would like to bring in another aspect of the debate. as we talk about free ICT...we need to talk about free society - the lack of toilets in the area - the wage injustice - lack of clean water...so there is a rights approach as well - as the center exists in a society which is not just - and we will be wrong in only speaking about the encoding and decoding of the digital word - but not the working class/caste/gender world .
In some sense its the rights approach that has helped the center..Sarasu's book "The future is ours" has glimpses of this. The peoples movements songs we sing..are also important part of the work - as much as gimp.
RMS When asked what he would wish for them and their slum, he said: "I want other people to stop *ill-treating you all* ( emphasis mine) and I want things to look up. And will Free Software do that? No, but I hope it will make a change in small ways."
Quoting Sarasu from the AC3 - the first lines of her book - "For most people, the mention of slums reminds them of a nasty place. They forget that those who live in these areas are human being. People fail to understand that we have same rights as they have."
-s
On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 13:43 +0530, Senthil Sundaram (sensunda) wrote:
Dear dr nargarjun..thanks much for initating this dialougue. I would like to bring in another aspect of the debate. as we talk about free ICT...we need to talk about free society - the lack of toilets in the area - the wage injustice - lack of clean water...so there is a rights approach as well - as the center exists in a society which is not just - and we will be wrong in only speaking about the encoding and decoding of the digital word - but not the working class/caste/gender world .
In some sense its the rights approach that has helped the center..Sarasu's book "The future is ours" has glimpses of this. The peoples movements songs we sing..are also important part of the work - as much as gimp.
We are workers and what work we do depends on what skills we have. And what skills we have depends on what access we had. Unless we are born rich, access to what we need is denied. What free ICT does is to make that access possible by giving the right to access for more people to participate in active social life.
If we analyze carefully how surplus gets generated, and look at the cause of it, we do realize that it comes from the worker's skills (This is of course from Marx). Except for labor (unskilled work) the rest of the skills are controlled by the owners of the workers, by holding the tools we use in their custody, and by owning the workers (all the non-disclosure agreements workers sign when they join as employees). workers do not have the freedom to transmit the skills to others without permission from the owners. If you look at this issue a little more closely, we see that the transmission of these skills actually requires the right to read and write, for learning a skill requires a right to interpret. my suggestion is to support the transmission of skills using free ICT. which will eventually help people to learn the skills they need. ICT made the access almost zero cost.
My theory is that the divisions that we see in the society are primarily due to lack of free flow of knowledge, because it is knowledge that creates the added value. Rich may like to give away their material wealth often, but they seldom share their knowledge. For them knowledge is the ultimate means of exploitation, that is their real capital. Stock exchange is another place where knowledge is frequently bartered. Knowledge ceases to be a means of exploitations once it is freed. That is the reason why I consider freeing knowledge leads to free society.
Take away the tools human beings use, take away the languages, songs, and paintings we use, what remains is a the brute animal with flesh and bones.
Briefly, the human beings in the so called slums do not have many other rights, I do agree with you on that, but my analysis suggests that those rights can not be and will not be available to us unless we free knowledge. Software being a small subset of that knowledge, but with huge exploitative potential, holding that in people's hands rather than in the hands of the MMCs or with Govt is a very important step. Therefore imparting this new skill will not deny them the other rights, in fact this skill will help them to gain control of the social process.
One of the reason why I emphasize the need for entering into wikitrade, because it will take care of subsistence requirements as well as the flow of knowledge and eliminates the possibility of exploitative powers.
All other rights are subservient to the right to read. Right to information does not still give you the right to read, since the means of reading are held by someone else.
Bottomline is: No one can compete with us in sharing knowledge (or transparency). This is our hack. By amplifying this in every social department we can achieve what we want to achieve. I have very briefly outlined the logic in gnowledge manifesto presented in the first FSFS conference in Trivandrum. http://db.hbcse.tifr.res.in/gn/gnowledge-manifesto.html One day I will elaborate this into a full essay.
Even if I am wrong, we are not loosing anything by providing one of the fundamental rights. Right?
Nagarjuna
On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 2:45 PM, Nagarjuna G nagarjun@gnowledge.org wrote:
If we analyze carefully how surplus gets generated, and look at the cause of it, we do realize that it comes from the worker's skills (This is of course from Marx). Except for labor (unskilled work) the rest of the skills are controlled by the owners of the workers, by holding the tools we use in their custody, and by owning the workers (all the non-disclosure agreements workers sign when they join as employees). workers do not have the freedom to transmit the skills to others without permission from the owners.
yes. exactly. I was amazed seeing the agreement that my first employer (who was yet to give me a salary) offered. Those who gave knowledge my teachers, my friends, my parents, my elders and the public involved me didn't even asked for anything on what I might do with the knowledge that I gained from them.
But a company which recruits not because of the salary that they are going give but for the skills (that came to me by the efforts of whole of the society) I possess, even before giving a months' salary started claiming rights on the knowledge.. Ridiculous, I felt.
not every one signs the agreement because they agree to it.. but their family , need to live.. etc., force them to agree to it.. this is what employers' exploit.. that put axe on the whole of society.. It is difficult to unite them for same/ similar reasons.. this exactly prompted me to start a discussion on, 'Employee agreement in a FOSS' company some time back in this list as well as ILUGC..
http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/pipermail/ilugc/2008-December/044896.html
-- ஆமாச்சு
On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 09:07 +0530, ம. ஸ்ரீ ராமதாஸ்|Sri Ramadoss M wrote:
On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 2:45 PM, Nagarjuna G nagarjun@gnowledge.org wrote:
If we analyze carefully how surplus gets generated, and look at the cause of it, we do realize that it comes from the worker's skills (This is of course from Marx). Except for labor (unskilled work) the rest of the skills are controlled by the owners of the workers, by holding the tools we use in their custody, and by owning the workers (all the non-disclosure agreements workers sign when they join as employees). workers do not have the freedom to transmit the skills to others without permission from the owners.
yes. exactly. I was amazed seeing the agreement that my first employer (who was yet to give me a salary) offered. Those who gave knowledge my teachers, my friends, my parents, my elders and the public involved me didn't even asked for anything on what I might do with the knowledge that I gained from them.
But a company which recruits not because of the salary that they are going give but for the skills (that came to me by the efforts of whole of the society) I possess, even before giving a months' salary started claiming rights on the knowledge.. Ridiculous, I felt.
Indeed!
not every one signs the agreement because they agree to it.. but their family , need to live.. etc., force them to agree to it.. this is what employers' exploit.. that put axe on the whole of society.. It is difficult to unite them for same/ similar reasons.. this exactly prompted me to start a discussion on, 'Employee agreement in a FOSS' company some time back in this list as well as ILUGC..
The current FOSS companies are not using an alternate model. That is why they are milching free software for their benifit and not for the benifit of the workers. That is why we need new experiments. Myself and Paritosh thought and created a concept called wiki-eKosystem wekosystem.org. Your comments and contributions will help us to find a good alternative.
Nagarjuna
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Nagarjuna G -
Senthil Sundaram (sensunda) -
ம. ஸ்ரீ ராம தாஸ் |Sri Ramadoss M