Last week South Africa played host to two freedom fighters of the digital domain. Genius of stature both. Founders of culture-shaking organisations that are reshaping our reality: Prof Lawrence Lessig (Creative Commons) and Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia).
[The heavyweight slammers with Sunday Times' Gregor Rohrig on his birthday]
I believe the SA Free Culture Tour (thanks Heather Ford & team of iCommons) has marked a turning point in ZA digital culture. It was huge fun, but there was also a huge message to get more active in policy-making and culture-building to ensure South Africa doesn’t slip into digital obscurity.
If you give a damn about the future of this country, especially if you intend to keep living here, I suggest a little listen to some of the recordings (the Sunday Times’ Special Report especially good). Unless of course you really enjoy limited bandwidth, paying staggering costs for the right to connect with other humans on the planet or other such injustices.. (there are those who enjoy S&M so I don’t want to assume, but I’d say the likelihood is that most of us find being a Telkom hostage horrifying).
We have more to be concerned about than the irritation of cost. The real tragedy of Telkom’s trickleflow of telecommunications to this promising young country, is that with the digital world accelerating and opening global connections of trade, education, distribution and capital flow, if we are left puttering in the slowlane it won’t be long before South Africa becomes a backwater. The braindrain will continue to pour out and Africa will be the poorer for their lack of foresight. [check Chilibean Paul throwing a solid klap at the parasitical parastatal]
We don’t need to whinge impotently about it though, there are a couple of things that we can do to respectfully suggest a longer-term vision.
Joining ISOC’s (Internet Society of South Africa) Public Policy group is a good start. Getting a proactive creative strategy mapped out for policy changes to help government serve us better is a great alternative to filling out all those tedious working visa forms. When you’re feeling particularly infuriated as your mailbox needs panelbeating from the last Telkom bill crashing in, take heart, you never know when you may find your self seated next to our Minister of Public Works Alec Irwin or Dr Ivy Matsepe-Cassaburi for dinner. You may have the opportunity to present that 3,8million signature strong petition you’ve collected through your site, politely, (with dessert to avoid indigestion).
If we all have a clear and constructive, practical approach to the problem, we may well offer our expertise as allies to help the government get Telkom out of the sticky patch of greed and seeming indifference to the future it has stumbled into. I’m going to take the Jimmy Wales’ default optimism stance, and believe that people inherently want to do good – even telecom monopoly excutives.
Similar Posts:
- Braai with Jimmy Wales & Larry Lessig
- Bring n’ Braai with some deep genius
- Are we just a nation of copy.cats?
- Freedom to Fury : Raging Bullard? really?
- Interview: Heather Ford CC (Creatively unCommon)
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April 23rd, 2007 at 10:15 pm
So, what about a National No-Telkom Day? Don’t use your landline for a day – no calls, no faxes, no dial-up – show them we can do without them and how much it will cost them…
Just pick a date, put up a good blog\campaign site, get international exposure and see how far we get – nothing to loose I would think.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:58 am
nothing like some guerilla warfare! i agree with Jerome!
April 24th, 2007 at 5:04 am
How about we take it a little bit further and cancel our Hellkom accounts and go with a 3G card option instead?
April 24th, 2007 at 8:12 am
I agree with the taking action thing, especially Colin’s idea of booting hellkom outta the way and going with 3g. I am making that move sometime in the very, very near future. I honestly believe that many more people will do the same on their own steam.
I think that action is much more effective than inaction. So i don’t necessarily agree with saying nothing and doing nothing in protest. I like it loud and clear and the more people who blog/talk/act on the topic the better!!
April 24th, 2007 at 9:40 am
i was at one of the Lessig talks, still wanted to pop the question to ask him if he is interested in taking on a job at Telkom, now that there is a position available…
guys, if it’s a campaign site or blog that you need, i can help with that: we’re building a web app geared towards building sites like this. pick a domain name, get together a couple of authors, set up the prelim framework, and take it from there.
here’s an example of a site we quickly put together in response to those FNB crime letters a while ago: http://www.letterstothepresident.co.za/
i’d be dead keen to help.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:43 am
some suggestions for a name:
wetireofthewire.co.za
wiredistired.co.za
etc. clearly, one can have some fun with the domain name…
April 24th, 2007 at 9:46 am
The 3G option is certainly something to look into, but e.g. in my area it is not stable (yet) – now, I can do without many things, but not without internet…
However, I feel it should be an integrated part of the ToHellWithTelkom campaign: offer alternatives, compare rates etc. Perhaps special offers to switch can be arranged with other providers?
http://www.hellkom.co.za/ seems to do a very decent job – just the ‘campaign’ is missing – so perhaps we should hook up, instead of reinventing the wheel.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Love it! – we need some constructive (practical tactical) steps that we see they should begin with.
One of the issues of working within a bloated bureaucracy (why does a swelled tick come to mind?) is that the people within it lose the power to innovate or come up with creative solutions.
Alan will know that was the crux of Lessig’s talk ..too much control results in impotence in innovation.
We may just need to help them come up with the next actions list.
I love these ideas, and we certainly MUST take action, but once they’ve paid attention ..it’s a good idea to give some simple strategies to avoid defiant defence.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:58 am
max: read / write / and action?
April 24th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Str8 up bru
April 24th, 2007 at 10:15 am
for some reason i’m reminding of those smash sites:
http://www.smashmywii.com/, http://www.smashmyps3.com/ & http://www.smashmyxbox.com/
too extreme?
April 24th, 2007 at 10:22 am
@ Alan – sure, let’s smash our phones and pc’s – life will be ‘different’ LOL
October 8th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Yes. Telkom is problematic at best. However alternative options are coming forward. The problem with Telkom is to date there was no one to compare them to. You might actually realize later that their service is not that bad (as we realized with BT’s service in London, when we stayed there for a while). New companies are Neotel and the value added service providers (or non fix line providers) like Vox Telecom which has recently released the ADSL phone ( view product on http://www.adslphone.co.za ) . Product like these can significantly reduce phone bills and actually earn people some income. The problems with non fixed line providers like Vox telecom are that you still required a fixed line from either Telkom or Neotel. But the rates are SIGNIFICALY cheaper and in many cases your phone bill can disappear completely with the FREE call service for both home and small businesses users. Then there is the added benefit of basic PABX functionality and free cordless phones. Most of the Value added providers uses VoIP (or voice over the Internet) to reduce costs with least cost routing options. I still think though that the ADSL data service from Telkom is good and would recommend it. Then simply add on your ADSL phone and you will have the best of both worlds.
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