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Open Economies - Greetings From Ghana

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Greetings From Ghana

  • To: <openeconomies(at)cyber.law.harvard.edu>
  • Subject: Greetings From Ghana
  • From: <jmoore(at)cyber.law.harvard.edu>
  • Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 12:20:04 -0500 (EST)
  • Importance: Normal
I am sitting here writing this at Mark Davies' Sony laptop, looking out at
the trees behind BusyInternet (Busyinternet.com).  The outside temperature
at 5:00 PM is in the 80s fehrenheit, with a golden sun still well up in the
equatorial sky.  Downstairs the cybercenter is, as usual, completely packed
with people, at a capacity of about a hundred at a time, and with many
patiently waiting.  LCD monitors in rows, people hunched over doing all
manner of experiencing, making their place in the global culture, mediated
by the web. Ben Walker has been interviewing users in the center, 24 hours
a day.  There is a daily ryrthm in the cybercenter, students after school
ends at 3pm, people in their twenties in the evening--and after midnite,
when the price goes down--journalists doing research for stories in the
papers.  Early morning business people checking in before work.

Open Economies Legal Director Sarah Guerrero and I have now been in Ghana
for almost a week, and a wonderful, if sometimes difficult, time it has
been.We have been catching up with friends in the entrepreneurial
ccommunity, seeing the world through their eyes.

Lots of issues:

Scarce financing, of course.

Delays in connecting to the undersea cable that sits just off-shore, ready.

Training, tech support are issues everywhere.

Interestngly, the value of Linus and Open Source seems not mainly the lower
acquisition cost of software, but because of higher reliability--important
in a world with fewer technical folks--and the somewhat more "geeky"--in
the positive sense--culture of these particular technical folks.  Not a
surprise for most of us, but interesting given that the "Open Source for
development" case is usually made in terms of avoiding license fees.  The
reality here is that support is the much bigger issue.

Must go, more later.

Regards, Jim
 
 
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