Mobile technology improving lives in Africa
We believe that we have set out on a program that not only helps impoverished communities, but also helps them help themselves through information and cognitive development. We feel that the impact of our proposed goals transcends many traditional funding areas because our program, “News Available Everywhere,”
First and foremost, our program advances the further the development of an international system of justice and advances human rights around the globe. However, the information framework we seek do develop would also expand grass roots efforts to control population and reproductive health, particularly in the area of slowing down the progress of the AIDS virus, worldwide. So, too, our initiative lays the groundwork for cognitive development in impoverished communities, that allows for conservation, sustainability, and economic and political self-governance. Best of all, our foundation’s mission creates a system of electronic delivery that will allow all future programs to be able to proceed with reduced deforestation, and reliance on fossil fuels.
We feel our program will help people both in the United States, as well as people in remote and impoverished countries, worldwide.
This initiative is born from our company-wide goal to put honest, bias-free news and information in the hands (or the pockets) of everyone on the planet who wants it, and deliver it on an earth-friendly, “carbon toe-print,” electronic platform. Many might argue that the Internet already achieves this. Not so. Hundreds of millions of people on our planet have no access to the Internet, nor the equipment to use it upon. The Internet is based upon a profit model, and cultures and communities that could most benefit from the information on the Internet do not have food to eat, water to drink, or medical supplies, much less a computer, an Internet service provider, and a web browser. There is a sharp economic barrier that prevents the majority of the world population from benefiting from electronic information. And even if everyone on the planet had a DSL connection, they do not have the resources to access the information.
We think this is pathetic.
So, too, millions live under conditions so oppressed that the flow of news and information are controlled and brokered like feed grains by dictatorial factions.
We feel that the opportunity to better one’s self through the self-education afforded by access to information should be considered a basic human right.
Currently, to receive the electronic medium takes money. This simple fact is a huge obstacle to our goal of providing bias-free news to everyone. Clearly we are, at this time, unable to reach a sizable portion of the world population because of the economic barriers that prevent news and information from reaching the people that sometimes need them most.
To achieve that goal, we have launched the Herald de Paris Foundation, with the specific goal of utilizing affordable, existing technologies to find innovative ways to deliver clean, electronic information to every point on the planet regardless how remote, and regardless of economic status. Our plan is to raise an entire global generation without barriers to news and information, all without the deforestation of a single tree.
Since about 1960, there are roughly twice as many human beings on our planet, and half as many trees. The result is untold amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which may be contributing as much, or more, to global warming as commercial manufacturing does.
While we are interested in is new ways to deliver electronic information beyond the current Internet model, such as NASA’s promising Disruption-Tolerant Networking, the interstellar Internet currently being developed at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, new technologies are perhaps decades away, and cost prohibitive. We are currently limited solely to existing, affordable technologies, or more specifically, second-hand, last-generation equipment. This program has the additional benefit of preventing operable hand-held devices from ending up in a landfill before they have exhausted their serviceable lives.
It is our belief that we can only become a truly peaceful, unified, and global community if the same information is available to all, and that means removing the economic barriers to information.
At the moment, we are still in the age where you must cut down trees, mill paper, print upon it, and drop printed media by fossil-fuel-
Our program directly furthers the development of an international system of justice and advances human rights around the globe by ensuring that news and information are not brokered like commodities in third-world nations.
It is important to note here that our intention is not a proprietary information delivery system. We feel that would be like putting up a radio tower and only broadcasting to specific households. Instead, our goal is to provide a system for the delivery of electronic information for all, which transcends economic and political boundaries, and allows all people everywhere to benefit from vast resources of information.
You read that correctly - we feel it would be improper to build a proprietary system of information delivery. Whatever we are able to create, we will make available to any and all. Why? We are trying to set an example that even corporations need to step up and give back. If we sit idle while on our current path, there will be no world as we now know it, to garner the profits of the entrepreneurial spirit from.
Mobile technology is already helping people in communities around the world. Mobile infrastructure is already delivering information and education to combat AIDS in Africa. Most recently, it was used to monitor election polling and results in Ghana. Currently, there is a decided economic division to electronic media and information technology. Apply a global information technology to weather, agriculture, and other news and information around the world, and we become a globally more intelligent people.
Best of all, since younger generations take to electronic information almost organically, the ability to deliver unbiased news and information to everyone increases the cognitive development of entire generations, and fosters intellectual discussion and (global) community. Simply put, our program will help any impoverished nation help itself.
Since we have resolved to work with existing technologies, this project can come to fruition more quickly, and save millions over developing an all-new technology. It is our hope that once we realize our goals, enterprising corporations will undertake the future advances, and solidify this effort while creating jobs.
I hope you will join us in this most ambitious effort. The deforestation of our planet and the reversal of the build-up of greenhouse gasses can only become a thing of the past when the economic barriers to electronic information are eliminated. We simply need a cleaner world.
If you are interested in joining us in this most ambitious effort, I urge you to contact me through the contact box on our website's Op Ed page. The Herald de Paris Foundation aims to make for a better world. It shall take a global effort to pull this off.
Thank you and joyous wishes for all, this holiday season.
Jes Alexander, Publisher
