Let a Thousand Blogsoms Bloom
Dave Winer points today to a stimulating
USA
Today article sure to gladden Jeff
Jarvis' heart, about Internet adoption and blogs in Iraq:
Iraqis enjoy new freedom of expression on Web journals
By César G. Soriano, USA TODAY
BAGHDAD — A year ago, few Iraqis had ever had access to a computer,
much less used it to communicate to the outside world.
Now, Internet cafes seemingly dot every block in Baghdad, and new ones
open often. That has led to a new phenomenon here: bloggers.
"We suffered for years under Saddam Hussein, not being able to speak
out," says Omar Fadhil, 24, a dentist. "Now, you can make your voice
heard around the world."
Hence, the blog. Short for "web log," a blog is a diary or
journal posted on the Internet for all the world to read. E-mails can be sent
to the blog, so it's also interactive.
The article naturally describes the famous Salam
Pax blog, now available in book
form, (who'da thought?) and a photo
album. It also cites two educated brothers, a dentist and a pediatrician,
Omar and Ali Fadhil. They are pro-American and hugely grateful for the American
intervention.
"We get threatening e-mails from Palestinians and Arab-Americans
who write, 'You are traitors. If I were in Iraq, I would shoot you,' "
Ali says. Other e-mails accuse the brothers of being CIA agents who are writing
from Washington, "as if the CIA didn't have anything better to do than
run a blog," he says.
"My ideas are very shocking to people," Ali says. "I tell
people I am a friend of America, a friend of Israel. Some of my colleagues
at the hospital think I am an infidel. It's impossible to change a man's mind,
but you can only make him consider other alternatives."
Digital Divide
The two brothers jointly maintain their blog. In America, they'd earn about
$30,000, monthly between them but USA Today reports that the average Iraqi doctor
earns $150 per month. The typical price for connectivity at Baghdad's proliferating
Internet cafés is $1 per hour. That means some people are spending the
equivalent of $1,000 per hour to update their blog. Doesn't the blogosphere
have an award for that level of dedication?
Like many bloggers, the Fadhil brothers' site solicits donations to help
make ends meet. They've received more than $1,000, most of it from Americans.
The money is wired to Kuwait, where friends pick it up. The Fadhils' site
gets about 3,300 visitors and a few dozen e-mails a day.
Maintaining the blog "is really a 24-hour job," Omar says.
"When I'm not blogging, I'm thinking about what to blog. I'm watching
the news, discussing topics. It's become part of our life."
There are about 30 Iraqi bloggers in Baghdad, plus a few other blogs
written by Iraqis abroad. Not all share the Fadhil brothers' optimism. "You
have your Fox TV. I am offering a counter response," says Faisa Jarrar,
whose blog is critical of the U.S. occupation. Her mixed Sunni-Shiite family
began in December with a joint blog, afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com. Now, each
of Jarrar's three sons has his own blog. Raed, 26, Jarrar's eldest, is studying
in Jordan. Khalid, 21, and Majid, 17, are in Baghdad.
This is crazy. Broadband costs the US military nothing. They should be spreading
GPRS or WiFi or WiMax everywhere, and handing out routers with the food rations.
Hell, Linksys and Cisco could get a huge write-off by donating equipment for
the Marines to distribute. Isn't this called Yankee ingenuity? If the Iraqi
wireless scene were data-friendly and cell modems cheap and plentiful, then
the Iraqis might have a better use for the phones than for detonating
IEDs.
Why kill people to pacify them when you can get them to sit down and engage
each other constructively? Even if the Mayor of Salt Lake City is right, it's
worth it: he doesn't
support universal broadband because it causes people to get fat while they
download music. At least they're not shooting at us.
As Doc says, the three most important
attributes of the Internet are infrastructure,
infrastructure,
infrastructure.
Sister Cities
At the International session at Bloggercon
II on Saturday, I wondered why bloggers can't take the initiative by acting
globally and locally? Why not revive the sister city program, but conduct
it at Internet speed, mediated by bloggers rather than chambers of commerce?
This would be a pure grassroots effort, with groups of bloggers in US cities
and villages "adopting" similar-sized cities in Iraq and then donating
equipment and connectivity so that Iraqis can get on the Internet and blog sell
stuff on eBay and do some phone banking and all the rest. Since Iraqi is essentially
a U.S. colony, why not issue them U.S. charge cards? The US should insure card
issuers against losses–as good a use of some of those 87 billion dollars
as cluster bombs.
Naturally, we'd have to get somebody to translate some blog software into Arabic,
as Jeff Jarvis is Jonesing for. Joi? Loïc?
Ethan? Ferris? Anyone? (Shameless
plug for Open Republic: This is precisely the kind of well-defined, small project
that the Open Republic project would whip out its checkbook for. There's nothing
like a paying client to grab a freelancer's attention!)
Bloggers donated a lot of the $40,000,000 collected by Howard Dean's campaign.
We might be equally motivated to address problems directly rather than supporting
someone else in the hope that they will find a solution.
Just a thought.
"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more
to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace
so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and
let them have it."
— Dwight Eisenhower
10:20:19 PM 
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