Appropedia Blog

A question at BarCampAfrica: What use is a wiki, for the poor who have no internet?

1. First you need to develop the information the resource. But over time I'm sure the Appropedia community will put more and more effort into dissemination.
2. There are all kinds of ways of distributing offline content - in a computer (e.g. OLPC bundles), CD-ROM flash drives,  hard drives, printouts (leaflets, booklets or books*), education programs based on content developed on the wiki.
3. Phones. A story was told at BarCampAfrica of a conversation in Africa. "Have you heard of Google?" "Yes, of course." "Have you searched Google from a mobile phone?" "Of course - how else can you search with Google?" You only need one phone in the village with this capability to massively increase people's ability to find information.
4. Villagers who have moved to the city to work, that maintain a connection to the village - if they have internet access, they can send or take the information back to the village.
5. That other way - the one none of us have thought of yet.

There's no need to put weighting on the different channels. You might think #4 won't be effective, for example. You may be right. For now, the important part is #1: Create the resource.

* This is one reason that it's so important to use an open license that allows commercial use, so people can be motivated distribute this knowledge.