le peha le merko ku rigni poha

["Steven M. Belknap" <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>]

Goran:
>(Major faculties of the major universities of my country gained Net
>access ji'i four years ago. Other faculties two years ago. General
>public a year ago. Modem connections are very few and continually busy.
>We have only one connection to the outside world: a 32 ju'ocu'i Kbit
>link from Croatia to the Austria. Web access is excruciatingly slow.
>Lag is murderous. I found Klingon two or three years ago by accident
>(I found a list of academic mailing lists somewhere, and got interested
>in Klingon and Tolkien languages, since I knew what they were and
>various languages were my hobby). The first I learned about lojban
>was when Nick wrote something about it on the Klingon list. I got
>interested, mailed lojbab (as Nick gave me his address), and lojbab
>told me to join the lojban list. Everybody in Croatia who has heard
>about lojban at all has heard about it from me. Average univ professor
>doesn't know what UNIX is, let alone how to browse the Net resources.
>Computer equipment is fairly expensive (a 486-based system costs five
>times the average monthly wage, if the person lives on the streets with
>diet consisting from air and rain in the meantime). Easy? Phew! You live
>in a country where, if you work, you can get money enough for a decent
>living. Some folks are not that lucky. I know our country is not very
>well off, but I think that compared to some other countries we are rich
>indeed. I see Croats on the international Net fora; I have yet to
>encounter a North-Korean (a non-americanised one, I mean).)

In my suggestion about encouraging net access, I was referring to the group
lojbab mentioned, that is, people previously interested in lojban (or
Loglan) who do not currently use the internet. Perhaps I am wrong, but I
believe most of these people are from places where they could get internet
access without a big monetary outlay. I had a homeless patient in Chicago
several years ago who was a regular on the internet. He had no home, no
monetary income, no family, (and was rather, shall we say, unconventional
in his political views), but he could get access to the internet through a
public library in the Chicago suburbs. My point is that the situation
regarding 'net access is changing very rapidly in many parts of the world.
Assumptions about the difficulty of access to the internet
ought to be reevaluated by those who looked into the matter 5 or 10 years ago.

I certainly do not mean to suggest that *anyone* can get on the net. My
wife and I just returned from a three week trip to Manzanillo, Cuba where
we visited her family. Although the literacy rate is high and many are very
well educated, the Cuban people are starving. I went to the local hospital
to visit a sick cousin of my wife, only to discover that the hospital
(housed in a very fine edifice) had no medicines. My wife's cousin was
crying from hunger because the hospital provides very meager rations for
the patients. The hospital lacked cleaning supplies, bed linens, window
screens, and diligent housekeeping staff, so it was a filthy, horrible
mess. I spoke with several physicians who told me this was true of all the
hospitals in Cuba-except those catering to foreign medical tourists, which
were well equipped! Many of the medications donated to Cuba by Americans or
Europeans are diverted to the tourist hospitals and sold to the
tourist-patients, while Cuban patients die for want of these donated
medications.

There is only just enough paint to paint fine revolutionary slogans on the
walls, and not enough to protect the masonry, so many of the buildings in
Havana are crumbling into rubble. I have been to other countries which are
extremely poor, but have never seen anything like what I saw in Cuba.
Still, there are computers, networks, and modems in Cuba. There is
virtually no access to the net because of government restriction. Access
could be accomplished by a small minority of the population in Cuba, North
Korea, Iran, and other countries given a favorable political situation.

As an American physician at a University teaching hospital, I attend
largely to the medical care of the indigent, uneducated, drug-addicted, and
insane. The USA has plenty of poverty too. I am well aware that I am in a
tiny minority in terms of standard-of-living and access to the internet,
and you would be in error to infer otherwise.

Given all that, it would also be an error to underestimate the power of the
internet to facilitate communication among the lojbi. My point is that we
ought to encourage those who are interested in lojban to get on the
internet if this is technically and financially possible. If it is not
feasible, that's a shame, because we could use more members in the lojban
community, and it will be difficult for us to meet these people in any
other way. I would point out that both Goran & I found out about lojban on
the 'net, in spite of war, economic barriers, distance, and language. We
would not be having this interesting discussion if not for this
near-miraculous communications technology.

Incidently, there are several groups in the USA which donate used computer
equipment to needy people in other countries. You can find out about them
on the net. That won't help with modem connections though.

cohomihe le peha le merko ku rigni poha .i cohomihe la stivn


Steven M. Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria

email: sbelknap@uic.edu
Voice: 309/671-3403
Fax:   309/671-8413