submitted to the watson foundation 10/29/03

“What is the point of the Watson Fellowship?”

I hate that question. Everyone asks; everyone gets a different answer. The truth is, I don’t think a good answer exists. No answer is the right combination of informative and vague. Yes, I am here to learn – but what about? About the digital divide, about other cultures, about adversity and ingenuity, or just “about myself”? All of the above, I know. However, in deciding how to spend my time, all of the above do not always point in the same direction. So far, my biggest “progress, difficulties and triumphs” have been in deciding what to do with myself, and in deciding what I want to get out of the fellowship.

The original project proposal I submitted as part of the application process was too carefully written to be pragmatic; it ties everything together on paper, but provides very little guidance in my day-to-day. In it, I stated that I wanted “to begin to understand, on a broad level, the way technology affects societies – for better and for worse.” Quite auspicious, and quite impractical. As soon as I set foot in Cape Verde, I realized I had no idea how I would begin to understand the way technology affects societies. My plan – to study initiatives actively pushing computers on the local population – was not applicable. There were no such initiatives to study. I had expected to find communities reacting to the presence of computers, but there were no computers to provoke a reaction (weblog: premature reflections).

So, after a few days of indecision (spent miserably on the beaches), I shifted the focus to more general areas of development and capacity building. My “Outreach or Evangelism?” proposal grew out of a concern over the cultural imperialism implicit in globalization; these concerns are as relevant to general development as they are to Internet and Communications Technology (ITC) development. After this adjustment, I split my time between (1) formal meetings with program directors and (2) informal visits to schools and towns (weblog: a typical day). At the formal level, I met with cabinet ministers and directors from a variety of national and international aid organizations (e.g. UNDP, ACDI/VOCA, USAID, Peace Corps); they provided me with a much-needed crash course in the varying models of development. As the development community in Cape Verde is quite small, it was surprisingly easy to schedule meetings with even the highest-ranking officials. At the informal level, I went to many of Cape Verde’s less developed islands to visit teachers and community volunteers. These visits, which comprised most of my time in Cape Verde, allowed me to see the way in which the lofty plans were (or weren’t) implemented.

Through all this, though, I was constantly nagged by the question, “why am I here?” In planning the year, I saw no need to produce anything – no need to do anything that would be of use to anyone other than me. In fact, the Watson fellow’s lack of responsibilities was part of what made the fellowship so appealing. However, the absence of a productive goal left me feeling directionless. I would have an engaging discussion with the Minister of Education or an eye-opening visit to a neglected school, and then go home and write about it in my journal. It seemed anticlimactic. The information and experience was fascinating, but I wasn’t doing anything with it.

Roughly one month in I decided that my pre-departure decision to remain an impartial evaluator - “at most a ‘participant observer’”, wasn’t going to work. And though I had firmly resolved not to be one of the missionaries of technology that I ridiculed in my proposal, I got involved in a few side projects. Most often, I tried to help by providing information. Some Peace Corps volunteers needed help finding funding and donated equipment, so I put up a web page with links to these resources (weblog: resources); schoolteachers complained that there was no one to teach them advanced computer skills, so I gave a few impromptu lessons and tried to walk them through the available online curriculums; I helped digitize some Portuguese computer training materials, etc. Arguably, I lost my impartiality; however, this allowed me to learn much more about the ‘digital divide’ than I ever would have from conversations and “simply being there” (weblog: thoughts on cape verde).

Then, seven weeks after arriving in Cape Verde, I flew to South Africa. The two countries, and my experience and activities in each, have had very little in common. At the moment, I’ve rented a room in Cape Town and have been given a temporary desk in the offices of bridges.org, an organization whose mission is to find ways to “use ICT to improve peoples’ lives.” After two months of roaming around, trying to osmose myself with knowledge of globalization and the world's miseries, it is refreshing to work with an organization with a solid methodology and theoretical framework. I feel like I was dogpaddling in the ocean and have just come across the Swedish swim team. I have an informal arrangement with bridges.org in which I will help them write case studies of “bridge builders” (weblog: site B) and they will let me use the bridges.org name to open doors that would otherwise be closed. But fear not, the collaboration is informal and temporary, and I will soon move on.

All told, the first few months have been disorienting and overwhelmingly gratifying. My activities have been wildly different from what I predicted last November. I often find myself departing from and returning to my original proposal, which I have come to regard more as a mission statement than a concrete plan of action. The most consistent shift, highlighted above, has been my desire to do stuff -- writing, researching, helping, etc. -- rather than just see stuff. However, the more fundamental change, which hit me about three weeks into Cape Verde, was the decision not to resist change -- to regard digressions from my original proposal not as guilty pleasures, but as great opportunities.

Addendum: Budget & Expenses
suppressed