Free Software

Throughout Latin America the “Latin American Festival of Installation of Free Software” (FLISOL 2008) recently concluded. This event, which has been held since 2005, has as its main objective to promote the use of free software, presenting its philosophy, its scopes and development. During the event, the diverse local communities of free software (in each country, in each city/locality),
simultaneously organized events in which they set up, in a free and legal way; free software on the computers that the public brought to the event. In addition and simultaneously, lectures, presentations and workshops on local, national and Latin-American subject matters concerning the Free Software, in all its range of expressions were also provided.

Zimbabwe: Using New Technologies to Fight for Democracy

In countries such as Zimbabwe where media freedom is extremely restricted, new technologies have become powerful tools for political campaigning, communication, advocacy and mobilisation. Since Robert Mugabe turned the country into a dictatorship, bloggers and civic organisations have resorted to using new tools and applications such as blogs, Flickr, Facebook, SMS, YouTube and mashups to fight for democracy, media freedom and good governance.

Hello Africa

A documentary about mobile phone culture in Africa released

Before 2001, the year the first cell tower was erected in Zanzibar, people had very limited means of communicating with each other from a distance. Today, the situation is completely the opposite. Cell towers from main operators cover the whole island and people communicate all the time with their mobile phones. It is difficult to imagine how it once was before.

There are plenty of aspects about the ongoing changes that could be covered in a documentary, but the purpose of this fillm is not to elaborate and draw conclusions. The purpose is to catch the vibe, the know, show what’s going on right now. A snapshot of the Zanzibarian zeitgeist.

Tech Killed the Kenyan Blog (Potash)

In 2006 when I discovered Kenyan blogs, I stopped reading newspapers. I used to skim in fact rather than read newspapers because what Kibaki and Raila do is not news, how it affects me is. And newspapers didn’t tell me that. I cannot blame them, they weren’t addressing me… my demographic. Some blogs did.

As a blogger, a lot of my writing then was very political. Political in the sense of: how a certain kind of Kenyan responds to and copes with the consequences of bad governance. It wasn’t about the shenanigans of the political class but the ways in which some of us responded to them. When the political class made a cameo appearance in my blog it was because I, or one of my peers, had enjoyed their largesse. A largesse that faded into the new harems, bellies, Benzos and numbered accounts of a Kibaki era noveau riche class. In the Moi days, I liked to point out, they shared the love. You could walk into town and take a matatu home with a slice of Goldenberg money.

Read it here