A fantastic article explores the real world parallels of Africa with the virtual world of Second Life. It concurs with my belief that cultures that developed outside of the Western world that are not conditioned by print literacy will be the future operators of the information economy because they are more flexible and capable of understanding the interconnectedness of things.
Second Life: Platform or Sieve for Africa? « Africa in Virtual Worlds:
So it stands to reason: Social networks can learn a lot from African communities - at its roots, in its practices. We have seen this ‘connectedness’ in our development programmes when sixty (60) enthusiastic members of a community can mobilise more than 10 000 to inform a particular development process, at the drop of a hat with mobile and grapevine word-of-mouth street meetings.
Yet! Africa is still very much excluded in developing a global (networked) relationship economy. Resources from Africa used to build the developed world are not yet returned in the form of social and technical capital; and a scaled effort is needed to set up sufficient infrastructure and access - not only to virtual worlds (hear this please!) but to digital networks that could benefit greatly from local intelligence and could in return add much to refine local solutions.
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Thank you very much for taking the effort to read the post Antonio. I am glad you enjoyed it. You are always welcome.