First, Picnic:
> we cannot compare Europe and Brazil on a political level because the
> situation is completely different, so, in Italy we would say:
>
> 2 pesi, 2 misure
You are right. I don't know that much about the context in Amsterdam,
but don't like the fashionization of picnic either. Anyway, I was in
Amsterdam last year for the uncommon ground session, inside picnic,
and had the opportunity to meet people and have good conversations.
There is a delicate balance to find somewhere, I guess.
> At the same time, i hold the Dutch happy fake creative industry is much
> dirtier: it is a malicious monster feeding itself with original subversive
> spirits: you are the opponent, someone has to do it; now that i pay you,
> you become an employee, employed, servant. You work for me, i use your
> energy.
>
> FUCK THAT SHIT.
Fuck that shit. But if they can be tricked to pay for Ian's ticket, I
think it can be worth a try. It's not like buying off his soul, is it?
Now to Brasil:
> In Brazil, for what i could see with my eyes, no one, who is not in a way
> part of the privilege-society, would even know what the word "software"
> means.
> Free software will not save them, not now. It might help the future
> generations, but still, nowadays, it is a high privilege, there, to be
> able to think, and express, and formulate an idea.
> Lots of people cannot write their native language. (Can you imagine code?)
About the three above, and perhaps walking off-topic: there is indeed a
wide distance between privileged people and the excluded ones (there are
not excluded 'minorities' in Brasil - they are the majority of people).
There are a lot of people who are taught in school to decode the alphabet
and sign their own names. They are able to sign a contract and decipher
its words, but not to have a full understanding about what it says. That's
all true. Free software won't save them. Some people claim less effort
should be put into ICT projects, and more resources in education, so
people will be able to read before arriving at a computer. To that I
disagree, and want to bring the attention back to the popular use of
technologies. There are few people who know what software means, but there
are almost 40 million internet users, in a population of ~190 million. As
I told in Berlin, I don't have any official statistics, but most of those
40 million use 'social networks', or whatever you call them, often. Very
often. Software, in a general sense, can help them. Actually, it does help
them - I know a lot of stories of people using inexpensive web
technologies to organize their own esquemas - from keymakers to drug
dealers. Free software makes it easy to create solutions based on that
behaviour. Or does it take a programmer to benefit from free software?
> So i guess the governors think different than here.
"The governors" in Brasil can not be taken as a whole for anything. Some
are ok but exceptions. Most are selfish and power-hungry.
> Still, most of the people who can think radical, are quite rich, compared
> to European standards.
It depends, but that's right. Brasil has a lot of different social
realities. I was born and raised in Porto Alegre, from a family that could
fit the 'middle class' definition in European terms: my grandfather a
truck driver, my mother a teacher, I have been to public schools. A lot of
people in the brasilian 'activist' networks come from wealthier
backgrounds, and that has been a problem for me sometimes. There is a
typical distortion: some of those people are the first to reject any kind
of financing for projects (after all, some of them don't pay for their
food or housing). But that is very very subjective - each network has to
find a way to balance the equation.
> In Brazil, anyone with a cultural education parallel to mine, has _way_
> much more money than i ever had in my greener days.
"Anyone" is too generic, ain't it?
> In this sense, i think it is good the government is funding free software,
> but that does not surprise me as much: money keeps circulating inside a
> certain clan.
That's a nice subject, but would take too long to explore. Money has
changed to a different clan, that has its own celebrities, power structure
and bullshit. But I have seen people who would be totally excluded from
anything before 2003 having the ability to enter that new power structure.
Maybe they were attractive to that power structure not only because of
their own individual merit but because their presence could mean
somethings in terms of internal propaganda (circulating inside the new
clan itself), but it is a fact.
--
FelipeFonseca
http://efeefe.no-ip.org - Blogue
http://bricolabs.net - BricoLabs, né?
http://metareciclagem.org - Nova versao!
