"The Waitt Institute is a private operating foundation focused on building and disseminating innovative technologies to enable people to lead the lives they choose. We work at the intersection of technology and comprehensive community-building. In order to serve people in marginalized communities, we focus on the incubation and development of innovations in the use of technologies in community-building."
"Dell the Conqueror" by Michael Canellos, CNET News.com, August 28, 2003
In this piece Michael Canellos lavishes praise on Dell, calling it the "most influential PC company in the world". I just thought I would chime in and say that the praise is well deserved. Dell's computers are not innovative or designed to be a work of modern art, like Macs, but they are solid, reliable machines that perform exceptionally well. In the past I've used desktops, laptops, and servers from Apple, Sony, SGI, and 2 other small vendors, whose names I no longer remember. I must say that Dell's computers - in all 3 categories - gave me the least amount of headache. Yes, I too have heard complaints about Dell's support being less than stellar, but... I never had to use their support (i.e. outside of the Knowledge Base and downloadable drivers). Not once. "Blue screen of death"? - what's that? My dual-processor (2x300 MHz) server has been running without a glitch for... 6 years. In fact, it is serving you this very blog. When I find I need a conversation piece, I'll think of Apple and its $3,000 (ouch!) G5, but as long as I want to have plenty of work done with minimal disruptions, Dell will be my choice.
"The Digital Divide That Wasn't" by Amey Stone, Business Week Online, August 19, 2003
This special report uses numbers from recent studies to support its thesis that the "Digital Divide" has narrowed to a point, where it no longer warrants the use of this term. Lower costs of computer hardware and greater availability of high-speed access to the Internet has transformed the divide in question from the chasm between "haves" and "have nots", into an individual choice between being connected or not. Increasingly, those that stay disconnected are not "have nots", but "want nots" (to use this contorted English), even in countries other than the United States and the European Union. Is this a good description of the state of affairs? Read the report and decide for yourself.
Reader Vishant Shah comments:
Here is the next genereation of numbers to pay attention to, I think: The Pew Internet and the American Life project found 59% of American households connected to the Internet while 62% of households owned cell phones. Last year, African-Americans surpassed whites in cell phone ownership (65% vs. 62%) and over half of Hispanics surveyed had cell phones. (Fattah, Hassan, “America Untethered” American Demographics, March 1, 2003.)It starts to get interesting as more people connect online using mobile devices over wireless (cell,wifi) networks.Vlad Wielbut responds:
Interesting to watch this, indeed. Personally, I'm doubtful that cell phones or even PDAs can substitute for laptops or desktops when Internet access is concerned (especially WWW) . Americans appear to be more reluctant than Europeans or Asians to use their cell phones for anything other than voice conversations... The use of SMS in the US, for example, is insignificant compared to its popularity in Europe. Part of the reason for that is, I believe, relatively cheap, ubiquitous, and unmetered Internet connectivity from work and home in the US. I pay the same amount whether I send one e-mail or a thousand from my computer per day. This isn't the case with SMS. In Europe, where Internet access is metered, people are more likely to use their cell phones to send short messages, despite the thumb gymnastics required.Reader Vishant Shah responds:
Sure. I think, however, for non-laptop/desktop people (a large %), this is a very interesting development and that also happens to be more likely underserved populations (hispanics and african americans), so I wouldn't write data services off so quickly for those people. Community serving organizations have had success with email campaigns among upper-income, highly educated and more-likely white (moveon.org), but not with lower and middle class/communities of color using traditional internet connections. The question is now whether these people who are very heavy users of cell phones for intimate communication and not connecting to the internet with laptops/desktops are willing to use their cell phones for other purposes such as receiving get out the vote messages and acting on it. Conceptually, cell phones were adopted b/c they were easier to get and so leveraging them for increasing participation can be a logical extenstion. And, it challenges traditional notions of bridging the digital divide because these people don't need to come to the technology (ctc's, libes, etc.), they are already wearing it. Of course, I am trying such a project out this fall in a local election on the west coast... let you know how it goes. BTW, SMS/emailing phones for this kind of thing is very cheap for community serving groups and it is completely off of the org's radar screens. See Josh's weblog on this-only one comment-mine <smile>.
- "Challenges and Opportunities for Social Ventures"
- The Annual Global Social Venture Symposium
- Held October 10, 2003 in New York, NY
- This Symposium will: Explore current trends in the capital markets affecting social entrepreneurs. — Highlight the experience of several leading experienced social venture entrepreneurs in getting to break-even and scale. — Act as a community-building opportunity for social venture entrepreneurs from the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, social venture board members, academics and students, and foundation, venture capital, and corporate investors from New York and around the world.