oneVillage Foundation

Pre-Planning for ICOS Conference
Ilya is organizing a conference on open source in Taiwan in December. This trip to Silicon Valley will help him to prepare for the conference. OVF is assisting with the planning of the ICOS conference. We already have lined up a keynote speaker, Steven Weber who will be presenting the political economics of multilateral collaboration, with an emphasis on open source. We also have the enthusiastic support of WorldVistA officials for discussing how Taiwan can play a key role in spreading the free and open-source OpenVistA hospital information management system throughout Asia, and to Chinese-speaking communities globally.

Issues Relating to the Inappropriate and Ill-thought Out Application of Technology
The problem with technology goes beyond the oft-used buzzword—digital divide. Many people in affluent regions face an equally daunting but dramatically different issue that of too much information—Information overload. The internet is growing exponentially and this reflects the exponential growth in human knowledge, human numbers and in the economy. It is not clear that the existing technologies are effectively being integrated to manage this rapidly growing complexity to ensure the continued success and dynamism of humanity in the coming years.

Cultural Preservation and Redevelopment
We wish to support Ilya in using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to help preserve Chinese and Taiwanese cultural heritage. A key goal is to ensure that Taiwan’s culture continues to thrive. Having recently seen Mayor Ma speak (see previous blog post) of his “Digital Taipei Vision,” we believe we are developing a framework for development that can lead to a cultural renaissance for Taiwan as well as ensuring economic security for the Taiwanese people. The appreciation of indigenous or local is based on more that just altruism of sentimentality, it reflects an understanding that people who live in a thriving cultures are more productive than people who are not. This has many social as well as economic benefits that are not always obvious. The culture and environment has an impact on the people that live in them. The question we ask as “ecoliving consultants” is how can people can be empowered to develop to their fullest potential considering all the components that humans interface with in their lives?

Networked Improvement Communities
Our mission is to develop a global network of committed people who value authentic and indigenous culture experiences, while balancing that commitment with the realization that technology is key to human evolution and the continued development of humanity. Ilya has a keen understanding of how ICT—particularly open source technologies—can be used to augment human capacity to develop innovative solutions and communicate ideas rapidly and effectively through the Internet. We seek to work with him to further develop these toolsets to demonstrate how they can be put together to create dynamic learning and collaborative environments.

We are planning for Ilya to meet with Doug Engelbart who along with inventing the mouse has developed technologies that have helped to make computing what it is today. While Doug is relatively well known for inventing the mouse, the real passion that has driven him thoughout his career has been improving collective IQ. He sees better utilization of human intellectual capital as key to truly addressing world urgent issues. As an inventor he has strived to create social networks that are fully realized in utilizing their collective intellect and on a larger scale, improving the collective IQ of humanity. He calls these Networked Improvement Communities or NICs.

Technology as well as the underlying cultural and social dynamics among groups of people determine the effectiveness in which their ideas and technologies come together so that they can achieve their goals and hopefully improve human condition. With the NIC, we propose an experiment in which we see technology as tool when properly applied under the right social conditions will augment human intelligence. A major goal is to design ICT architectures that are accessible and empowering to people not just in Taiwan and among affluent nations but in developing countries where people do not have the opportunities that we do to be successful and thrive.

Creating the Global Mindset for the Integration Economy
Posted by jefbuder at September 2, 2004 10:56 AM