Instead of keep paying $500 per month for the opportunity of one of these days getting my dissertation idea approved, I am letting reality define what is more important to accomplish now. Following my instincts could be more valuable than another title; and more if we consider that our individual activism may also be regarded as the result of our research work. You may call it practical research or simply politics; but for me is life getting in the middle.
I found it recently and was amazed nobody told me about it. Or if someone told me before, I forgot about it. It is probably because now it is easier to stop and enjoy a complete movie online.
But if you think that belongs to the past, I just saw a more up to date movie called “Hillary the Movie“, which is also available completely free and online.
Why should I keep paying income tax? …many people are now finding out that income tax is illegal or unconstitutional, according to the movie “Freedom to Fascism” which is available at no costs, here on the Internet. It is gaining momentum and I am getting prepared to stop my payments any of these years. For now, the best I can do is to file my tax return because my employer already sent part of my hard earned money to them.
I was surprised to find the whole movie Sicko available online, which you can see it now here. There I found how inconvenient would be to choose Hillary as our next President, and how a Public Health Care System should be like in Canada or England. Barack Obama is trying to work around the corrupt establishment, but I believe a strong character like Al Gore could make a better difference.
A truly inspiring section in the movie from 1:06:45 to 1:08:12 include the following: “Choice depends on the freedom to choose. And if you are shackle with death, you don’t have the freedom to choose. . . . The people in debt become hopeless, and hopeless people don’t vote. . . . Keeping people hopeless and pessimistic. I think there are two ways people are controlled: first of all, frighten people, and secondly demoralize them. An educated, healthy, and comforted nation is harder to govern. . . . The top 1% of the world population have 80% of the world wealth is incredible, and people put up with it. Pow! Their poor are demoralized, they are frightened, and therefore perhaps they think that the safest way to do is take orders and hope for the best.”
This tagging schema called eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) using XML is now a standard for the publication of financial data, to communicate freely between diverse computer systems, applications, organizations, or languages.
It is impressive how the financial world is evolving while I procrastinate. Likewise, once I get back to work on my dissertation, I will sure find many more interesting developments where to get a good topic from.
Taking a year break has helped me organize my thoughts, to gain a fresh view of the process, pay debts, prioritize time, and strenghten relationships. Now is time to ramp up my efforts, creating manageable small goals, to reach again the speed of research required to graduate.
This presentation includes those theories and paradigms that peak my interest, like The Edinburgh Scenarios or moving from process to flow through the network model called “Fluid Dynamics”.
I have been traveling. First a couple of days to Washington DC for the Masonic Week, then a week and a half to Philadelphia PA, and recently to Dallas TX for work related training in SAP.
Songan, P., Hamid, K., Yeo, A. W., Gnaniah, J., & Zen, H. (2006). Challenges to Community Informatics to Bridging the Digital Divide. Idea Group Inc.
The authors of this article, all representing the University Malaysia Sarawak in Malaysia, mention the term Community Informatics (CI) as the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) applied to reduce or eliminate the “digital divide”. CI was first introduced by Michael Gurstein in his article with the same name in the year 2000. From the e-Bario initiative in Malaysia, the authors demonstrate that ICT needs to be provided with education and training.
The challenges identified to bridge the digital divide using ICT are: 1) the cost of the infrastructure to maintain constant connectivity; 2) the language of the resources, usually the non-native language English; 3) the coordination of approaches using skilled human resources with rural population; and 4) the awareness about the ICT being introduced in the rural and surrounding communities.
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- Community Informatics (CI) is the application of ICT to overcome the “digital divide”
- Although the information revolution threatens to increase income inequity, nationally and internationally, it can provide tools, which can dramatically reduce isolation and poverty and alleviate its worst effects.
- The World Bank recommends a systematic approach to the application of ICT to the needs of rural communities.
- the economics of telecommunications are related to distance. The greater the distance from communities of interest, the greater the savings in travel costs and time. … In gaining access to information, geography alone places rural people at a disadvantage compared to urbanites
- The e-Barrio project is one of the most notable of Malaysia’s Internet development initiatives.
- the project demonstrates that ICT cannot just be “dropped” in a rural village, but needs to be accompanied by training and education to be successful and sustainable.
- Based on the experience of the e-Bario project, the challenges that are faced in using ICT for bridging the digital divide are largely related to the aspects that are described below:
- - Costly Infrastructure, Connectivity and Use
- - Language of Resources
- - - The contents of training manuals and the materials that are available on the Internet are primarily in English, which are not understood by many people in the rural areas.
- - Coordinated Approaches and Skilled Human Resources
- - Awareness in Development of ICT among Rural Communities
- - - the Government has been promoting the advantages of the “k-economy” in which dependence on physical resources will give way to the exploitation of knowledge resources in the future development of the economy
