Changes between Version 2 and Version 3 of techies_of_color

Timestamp:

Aug 16, 2010, 9:00:45 PM (15 years ago)

Author:

alfredo

Comment:

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techies_of_color

@@ -5 +5 @@
 No other program of this type exists in this country.
 
+The converging crises in the major capitalist economies, the precarious state of the world environment, the political crisis in government in so many of the world's countries and the usurpation of government authority by international banks and committess have brought humanity to a point of urgency and increasing certainty that something must be done to save humanity.
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+The Internet, a community of more than 1.4 billion people world-wide, is one of humanity's responses. When all else fails, human beings come together to communicate and figure out how to survive; that is our legacy as a species. That's what's happening today with the Internet.
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+Humanity's crisis demands greater communication and collaboration among the world's people. And humanity has been forging ahead in doing that with world-wide efforts like the World Social Forum and the Climate Control movement and, of course, the Internet.
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+The Internet is humanity's way of facilitating the communication necessary to make all this collaboration possible.
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+At the same time, the global crisis against which we're mobilibizing depletes the resources required to build gatherings of large numbers of people. They are too large to put on, too expensive to get to and not capable of broadening the number of poor people attending. If we are going to ensure the progressive movements' continued collaboration world-wide, we are going to have to use the Internet and that is one reason why humanity invented it.
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+In that context, the role of technologists becomes critically and centrally important. Techies are the leaders of the Internet because we run its technology and lead the work on its software.
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+Progressive techies have a very special role to play:
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+* our political perspective prioritizes the use of the Internet and development of its software for organizing (rather than merely commerce);
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+* our commitment to Free and Open Source Software makes us central to a struggle that is fundamental to the Internet's future;
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+* the fierce opposition we have long had to controlling and interventionist government policies helps assure the Internet's essential independence and freedom;
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+* and our politics give the progressive movement a leadership position within the Internet. 
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+The Problem
 
 There is one weakness in this promising picture: techies, the Internet's leaders, are mainly white men. This means that, while people of color can do a lot on the Internet, the backbone (and the power to control and maintain the technology) is in the hands of white people.