Masters in our own House?
Sunday, September 14th, 2008Economic hardship is expressed in the simplest terms in Vanuatu. The price of rice, of diesel and cooking gas, the selling price of copra and kava – all of these hit closest to home. The most pressing question facing our new government is how best to insulate Vanuatu from the worst of the economic turmoil affecting the world’s economies.
The question for all ni-Vanuatu is how to hold the new government to account.
PACNOG Talk
Monday, June 30th, 2008One of the items in yesterday’s brain dump was a talk I presented to the Pacific Network Operators Group (PACNOG) at the Sebel Hotel. It’s titled ‘Network Effects: Social Significance of Mobile Communications in Vanuatu‘. It explains Network Effects and how they manifest themselves in village life, then looks at some obvious and not-so-obvious implications [...]
Painting the Country Red
Friday, June 27th, 2008I’m writing this neither to praise Digicel, nor to bury them. What follows are anecdotal observations of the first few days after the birth of nation-wide communications in Vanuatu.
The Thermocline of Truth
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008I’m going to let someone else do the writing for this one. I like the metaphor a lot. It helps that it’s true, too.
I’ll integrate this into an upcoming column sometime soon.
Cargo Culture
Friday, May 2nd, 2008The phrase ‘cargo cult’ is well known here in Vanuatu, and probably better understood than anywhere else in the world. Pop sociologists, TV crews and trivia hounds love to belittle the ‘silly’ idea that performing the proper rituals will result in good things happening. They snicker at the uniformed, marching figures in Tanna, wondering what [...]
A National Plan
Friday, April 25th, 2008I have a confession to make. I’m a snob. At least, I am where technology is concerned. Okay, maybe I’m not the type to cross the street when I see someone with last year’s doohickey du jour. But I do notice when your smart phone looks (or acts) like a brick. I can tell at [...]
Uncommon Sense
Thursday, April 10th, 2008Throughout history, the distance between technology and society has been a defining characteristic of nations, empires and peoples. While it’s tempting to say that the most technologically sophisticated societies represent the pinnacle of human achievement, that’s not necessarily true. Some would argue that keeping social values paramount and learning how to adapt technology to human [...]
Letter to a Young Turk
Thursday, March 27th, 2008I’ve been arguing for the last few weeks that what’s needed most for Vanuatu is to invest significant time and effort into the creation of a new crop of technically savvy individuals who can help Vanuatu bridge the growing gap between life in the information age and life as we’ve always known it in the [...]
No Borders
Thursday, March 20th, 2008I made a mistake this week, or rather a misjudgement. I wrote about a new threat called Goolag, in which a malicious person could use Google to find servers on the Internet that are vulnerable to attack. The servers are infected with malicious code that causes anyone who visits them to be exposed to compromise. [...]
Splash and Ripple
Thursday, March 13th, 2008Drop a stone in the middle of the pool. Watch its ripples spread wider and wider across the surface. Inevitably – sometimes sooner than later – the ripples mingle and apparently disappear among the others. Cause and effect: A simple action creates immeasurable, unpredictable and unforeseeable results.
Among development professionals, this provokes roughly equal amounts of [...]