[p2p-research] More on: Suggestions wanted for education to p2p practices and attitude

[M. Fioretti]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 20:10:12 PM -0700, Stan Rhodes wrote:
> Marco,
> 
> I am wondering how "developing" you mean, because that can change a lot.  I
> know you are short on time, so let me summarize:

Stan,

great post, thanks. Length is OK and welcome, probably Michel will ask
you to reformat this as a post for the blog :-)

By "developing" right now (ie for next week talk) I mean children in
poor rural areas of Asia, Africa, Latin America. Sooner or later, I'll
surely use everything you wrote. The things I'll use first, ie next
week, are certainly the TippyTap (
http://www.akvo.org/wiki/index.php/Tippy_Tap) and the pot-in-pot
refridgeration system. I'm a big fan of keeping things as simple as
possible.
 
One thing I find particularly relevant, not for me but for p2p
discussion in general, is this comment of yours:

> Domain knowledge cannot be pooled by kids that don't have it.  Peer
> production tends to take a lot of domain knowledge we take for
> granted because we're all so educated and tech savvy.  We have
> information coming out our ears.

Because it's much more general than it looks. Substitute "kids" with
"adults who are illiterate or maybe even graduates of top university,
but just don't care and don't want to care about certain sectors of
knowledge and human activity"... and what you say is still 100%
valid. It's exactly what happens with Free Software all the time.

That 5% or less of humans who like to code software share it with the
world, and get frustrated when most everybody else, including
extremely smart people, simply ignores all that beauty, because they
couldn't find anything more BORING than learning to program and share
code... But this is a whole different discussion, of course.

	Thanks,

	       Marco
	       http://stop.zona-m.net