[GLLUG] Internet Utopias Survey

[Chris Bell]

On Friday, 22 November 2019 16:57:20 GMT Christian Fuchs via GLLUG wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> As part of an AHRC research network, I conduct a survey about
> Internet/media utopias.
> 
> In the time of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and fake news, we
> experience a crisis of Internet platforms. Many people think we need
> Internet and media utopias today. But how could they look like?
> Indivduals engaged in the free software community might have good
> ideas...  I want to invite you to participate:
> 
> https://psmutopias.limequery.net/879161
> 
> Answering will take about five minutes. A number of participants with
> very visionary ideas will be invited to a workshop in 2020 in London,
> where participants will work on co-writing/co-authoring an
> Internet/Media Utopias Manifesto.
> 
> Kind regards, Christian Fuchs

Hello Christian Fuchs
I find that most people who contribute to local on-line forums in my area do 
not wish to know any more about IT than they are forced to, and are happy to 
accept any advice, good or bad, if it explodes in front of them. They think it 
is too difficult, and are simply not interested.
A few years ago I visited the BETT show and a teacher explained that she had 
just been appointed as head of the school's IT department, so had come along 
to find out what it was all about.
A friend offered the local council Adult Learning section a long course to 
include comparisons between Unix-compatible FOSS and well-known commercial 
systems. He spent a year answering requests for ever more detailed information 
before being told that they had no idea what he was talking about, so no 
thanks.
He is now in New Zealand where even the sheep are more intelligent.
The developers who built one of the local multi-storey tower blocks agreed to 
donate the entire ground floor for local community use, but one of the local 
councillors objected to a community computer club because "kids might join and 
learn how to access the internet". It has remained empty and unused for the 
several years since it was built.
At the end of the summer term last year a 12 year old distant relative in 
Devon handed his school a long list of serious software problems in their 
system, with details of some of the parts he had accessed. He told me that it 
was unchanged in the autumn.
I hope that UK education is improving, although sometimes there seems to be 
more interest in remote African villages.


-- 
Chris Bell
Website http://chrisbell.org.uk