From: J. Maxwell Legg <income@ihug.co.nz>
>> I agree entirely, I thought we learned during the famine in Kenya that
(with
>> current tech) you just _can't_ ship enough food to feed a country.
>
>Yeah, sure. One could also make the analogy that it is impossible in this
day
>and age to recover the brain from say a victim of a car smash and get it
>uploaded. Well before being able to handle emergencies, lots of commitment
will
>be needed to change the status quo in order for practice to make perfect.
David
>Brin's 'transparent society' is one such change that will be needed to
knock the
>nay sayers off their perch.
The biggest problem when it comes to the underdeveloped countries is not that their farmland is unfertile. It is that theํr infrastructure is poor. Even if we could feed them all it's a slippery path to walk.
Free food and other material products will destroy their (farming) economy
as indeed it has done in several of the undeveloped countries. There simply
is no incetive to work for food if you can get it for free. Thus the food
crisis goes on and on. Therefore it will be best in the long run to keep the
material aid to a minimum. Not counting disaster aid off course.
A technological way to do this, and a good idea for an extropian bussines,
would be to make a "hardware browser" for the internet. A touch sensitive A4
screen that has the functionality of one of top browsers. If it then ran on
solar power and connected to the net via sattelite it should be useable
everywhere.
Oh yeah... it should be dirt chep.
<grin>Maybe drop them by airplane in the undeveloped areas. "Browser bombing."</grin>
It would probably cost less than many other expensive foreign aid projects and would help the poor to help themself.
Hilsen/regards
Max M Rasmussen
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